Kink and Isolation

I can’t remember where the quote came from. I want to say it’s Coupland, but I could be wrong.

People lose the ability to make friends somewhere around the time they buy their first piece of expensive furniture.

I don’t know if it’s really true. It seems that way sometimes.

Part of the problem with making friends is that you lose your ability to put up with shenanigans as you get older. Your time is running out. You have things to do. You’ve got the life experience to connect all the red flags in rapid succession.  Why bother putting up with months of uncovering layers of petty rage, stupidity, or energy-sucking insanity, just to eventually confirm that your first impression was right all along?

Having friends is work.  You work enough.

The upside is that the friends you do make after the Expensive Furniture Line tend to be quality people.  You can make a friend. You don’t make “friends,” anymore, though.  You stop collecting the people that populate the scene.  You lose the bit players in the weird stories, where you’re driving some random creep who knows-someone-that-knows-someone to a halfway house at 4 am, because an illegally parked car was towed, and he groped the wrong breast, and you aren’t up for a stabbing occurring in your own apartment.

You lose all the “friends” you somehow collect because they just happened to be there.

I had lousy “friends.”

Some of them haunt my facebook.  They’re fatter, balder, sadder people at copies of parties I’ve already been to.

A good chunk of the people who surrender to their pet perversions are middle class people in their 30′s. Kink isn’t free. There’s equipment to buy. Specialized clothing. Sitters. Arrangements. People often say that they’ve always “been that way” in their own minds (and really, aren’t we all?), but they weren’t able act on their fantasies for whatever reason. Then one day they come to grips with their own mortality, or want to “spice up” their long-term relationship, or they bail on their long term relationship and want something totally different. It’s the product of boredom with the monotony of work-a-day existence.

Use it before you lose it.

So, there they are, obsessed with something that is really important and kind of meaningless all at the same time–like music or movies or custom cars. Pop culture in genital form. It’s all high emotions and pretty fixations on nothing. And, it’s got social circles attached. People on the internet. Parties. Conventions. Community. Scenesters.

“Friends.”

Only this time there are more rules. There’s less aimlessness. You’ve got something to accomplish on this go-round. You’ve got to get off.

I don’t know.

He wants to go out. He wants like-minded friends. If I had to guess, he’s re-acquired his recurring obsession with threesomes.

Suddenly, there’s the threat of meeting people. I’m a little wary.

On the other hand, he’s got far, far less patience for people than I do. Most likely, I’ve got nothing to worry about.