TM 175 -- Who is your best friend and why?
Am I the only one here who remembers King Lear? The play starts out with an old man asking who loves him best, and ends up with half the cast dead. Or blind. Or dead and blind.
I don't exactly consider this an auspicious precedent.
You see, everyone is approaching this question as though it were thoroughly innocuous. And please do. Take this chance to sing the praises of a person who is very important in your life. By all means. But superlatives are odious, and to designate one friend as "best" necessarily involves exclusion of all others.
One might begin to see how, in my particular case, this is a potentially dangerous idea.
Exhibit A: The lovely and capable kismetandcoffee has written a touching (if not entirely unequivocal) tribute to my friendship.
Exhibit B: Not so very long ago, the lovely and capable merryirene made a similar declaration in a published interview.
In short, the obvious conclusion: This is a very bad time for me not to be speaking to Deadpool.
Nate and Wade. Wade and Nate. Cable & Deadpool, names knotted forever (or, more precisely, from 2005 until so long as Marvel sees fit) by the stout cord of an ampersand. All I would need to say -- were I currently speaking to Deadpool -- is that while the sentiments of these two lovely and capable women are appreciated -- and so far as possible returned -- their fragile and fleeting feelings cannot be compared to the ones shared between two men. During one brief evening in Intercourse, Pennsylvania -- I could say -- Wade and I shared more than Irene or Domino could ever hope to understand.
I could say that, if I were still speaking to Deadpool. Then, Irene and Dom could take the opportunity to roll their eyes at me, mutter "typical," and dole out such punishment as they saw fit. I'd sleep on the couch for a few nights; some paper work would "accidentally" be misfiled, and I would be forced to sort it out myself. Then it would all blow over, and maybe -- just maybe, in the course of rolling their eyes at me -- Dom and Irene would take a look at each other, and realize that they were both, for once, on the same side. Just by favoring Wade over the two of them, I might actually convince the two of them to agree about something.
Instead, if I'm not careful, they're going to end up like Lear's daughters: poisoning each other, for the favor of a man who -- in all honesty -- probably doesn't deserve either of them.
So, Domino and Irene -- in the (probably futile) hope of dampening the powder keg of further conflict, I will simply say this:
Outside of my half-crazy, angst-ridden, generationally anomalous and chronologically impossible patchwork of a family, the two of you are (always will be, always have been) the most important people in my life. Full stop, end of thought, no exceptions. Irene: you're my good right hand, the person who listens to every one of my insane schemes and says, "All right, great idea, good and well. Now, let's find a way to do this." Domino: you're the one who I would absolutely in all cases and with no exceptions want by my side in a firefight. You're the person who's seen me at my best and worst. You're the woman I love.
The two of you together have done more than anyone alive in this world to make me the man that I am, to help me be the man that I want to be.
Both of you.
And that's all I have to say about that.
I don't exactly consider this an auspicious precedent.
You see, everyone is approaching this question as though it were thoroughly innocuous. And please do. Take this chance to sing the praises of a person who is very important in your life. By all means. But superlatives are odious, and to designate one friend as "best" necessarily involves exclusion of all others.
One might begin to see how, in my particular case, this is a potentially dangerous idea.
Exhibit A: The lovely and capable kismetandcoffee has written a touching (if not entirely unequivocal) tribute to my friendship.
Exhibit B: Not so very long ago, the lovely and capable merryirene made a similar declaration in a published interview.
In short, the obvious conclusion: This is a very bad time for me not to be speaking to Deadpool.
Nate and Wade. Wade and Nate. Cable & Deadpool, names knotted forever (or, more precisely, from 2005 until so long as Marvel sees fit) by the stout cord of an ampersand. All I would need to say -- were I currently speaking to Deadpool -- is that while the sentiments of these two lovely and capable women are appreciated -- and so far as possible returned -- their fragile and fleeting feelings cannot be compared to the ones shared between two men. During one brief evening in Intercourse, Pennsylvania -- I could say -- Wade and I shared more than Irene or Domino could ever hope to understand.
I could say that, if I were still speaking to Deadpool. Then, Irene and Dom could take the opportunity to roll their eyes at me, mutter "typical," and dole out such punishment as they saw fit. I'd sleep on the couch for a few nights; some paper work would "accidentally" be misfiled, and I would be forced to sort it out myself. Then it would all blow over, and maybe -- just maybe, in the course of rolling their eyes at me -- Dom and Irene would take a look at each other, and realize that they were both, for once, on the same side. Just by favoring Wade over the two of them, I might actually convince the two of them to agree about something.
Instead, if I'm not careful, they're going to end up like Lear's daughters: poisoning each other, for the favor of a man who -- in all honesty -- probably doesn't deserve either of them.
So, Domino and Irene -- in the (probably futile) hope of dampening the powder keg of further conflict, I will simply say this:
Outside of my half-crazy, angst-ridden, generationally anomalous and chronologically impossible patchwork of a family, the two of you are (always will be, always have been) the most important people in my life. Full stop, end of thought, no exceptions. Irene: you're my good right hand, the person who listens to every one of my insane schemes and says, "All right, great idea, good and well. Now, let's find a way to do this." Domino: you're the one who I would absolutely in all cases and with no exceptions want by my side in a firefight. You're the person who's seen me at my best and worst. You're the woman I love.
The two of you together have done more than anyone alive in this world to make me the man that I am, to help me be the man that I want to be.
Both of you.
And that's all I have to say about that.