Linda, and a July 29, 1987 greeting card

Aida once told me that communicating with a friend who you loved was so good that you just wanted to "inhale" him or her. Since childhood, that was how I felt about a few of the children of my father's booze buddies. Being with them wasn't just a matter of passing the time, it provided a sense of completion in those moments which was otherwise absent from my life.

Linda was one of those types of friends for me for several years. She and I did more sleepovers than any of my other friends and I remember setting up a small tent and camping out in our front yard so we could giggle and talk well past our bed time. We had also had an experience during one of her previous nights spent at my house which encouraged us to get out of the house.

My parents had come home drunk and noisily had sex while Linda was there. We were watching T.V., but it couldn't drown out their squeaky bed. Afterwards, my mother came downstairs and asked me to remove a splinter she'd somehow gotten into her toe. Linda tried to suppress her titters as my mother slurred her words and remained oblivious to just how much we'd (unwillingly) overheard. Both of my parents were too dull and self-absorbed to think about how they may have just embarrassed themselves when a guest was in our home.

When we were teens, we used to spend hours at the mall in the biggest nearby town. This was when arcade games were a big deal and we'd waste a lot of quarters playing "Space Invaders" or "Dig Dug". When Linda ran out of money, I promised her a dollar more to continue playing if she'd pick up a bunch of random flyers lying in a pile on a bench and hand them out to people. She gamely did so until the stupid joke wore thin and I gave her the cash. As we walked back to the arcade, we saw a scattered pile of the same flyers on a distant bench where people who'd taken them from her abandoned them once out of sight and we both burst out laughing.

Linda's family rowed in the same socioeconomic boat as mine so she wasn't as put off by the squalor we lived in. I knew that she didn't spread our (literally) dirty secrets as some other kids did after seeing how we lived. She was also the only person who I knew who defended me in school when other kids made fun of me.

Linda was two years younger than me and said that, one day while my class was outside playing softball during gym, hers was sitting in an English class. I was horrible at sports due to my weight and Linda told me that the other kids in the room were laughing at me as they watched from a distance as I struggled to hit the ball and run to bases. She told me that the English teacher told them to cut it out and that I was smarter than them and read books. He said that they would do well to follow my example. I think Linda told me this to make me feel better, but it only further clued me in on the fact that I was being mocked and bullied not only by the kids on the bus and in my grade, but by the whole school.

As the years went by and I went to college, lost weight, and got a job far from home, Linda and I saw each other less and less. I tried to hold the friendship together, but she became too busy with her own life. After she married my class's biggest loser and had a baby, she didn't have time to spend with me. It wouldn't be accurate to say we grew apart, but our lives did.

Linda was the last in-person friend from my hometown who I "inhaled." Then, Tito came along, and I could draw him in day and night, and I did. When a fresh supply of tapes showed up in my mailbox, I was filled with joy. When the mailbox was empty, I played the old ones again and again. He was the air I breathed and provided a sense of completion found in another person that I hadn't had since childhood. This happened even before we got into our long distance relationship, and this was something I tried to communicate in the card pictured with this post.

Envy, and a July 26, 1987 note (partial)

Linda's house felt large and threadbare. It was clean and tidy, but the years had left the bare boards looking weathered and worn down. It had been built many decades ago, but had never had any updates to the interior. I dropped by her place to pick her up so we could drive about 45 minutes to a mall that included one of my favorite targets of sarcasm, "Big Lots." Linda didn't have a car or much money so these sojourns were a good way for us to spend some time together without breaking either of our small banks.

Linda's hair was black and nearly straight. She usually had it cut it into a mid-length bob and wore jeans  and a polyester shirt in a plain color. She was of average weight, but she fretted about her "thunder thighs" and told me that she feared she'd have the thick, wavy legs that she saw on her mother. She was well-groomed, but quite plain. This was in contrast to me who, at that time, wore elaborate make-up and dressed to the nines.

As we made the long trek to the mall, Linda said something no one had ever said to me before and I have not heard since. She said, "I was jealous of you when we were kids." Since I had grown up poor, fat, bullied, and abused, I was stunned to hear her say this. As a fellow child of an alcoholic who knew my circumstances better than any other outsider, I couldn't fathom what would compel her to feel that way.

When I asked her why, she told me that my mother was always "so nice" and that she was always buying my sister and me things. It was true. On a material level, my mother did go over the top for us. She not only bought a great many toys and other items during my childhood, but when I was older and became a KISS fan, she'd march into record shops and ask them to hand over free promotional items. I was too embarrassed to ask, but she was incredibly bold. However, she did emotionally abuse her children until their sense of self-worth was reduced to nothing. I told Linda that the face my mother showed her was not the only one she possessed, but I could tell that she didn't believe me.

Linda told me that her mother had also expressed envy of my mother and this further shocked me. My parents fought all the time and my dad frequently stormed out of the house after arguments and hung around in bars until late at night. She told me that her mother felt that way because my dad was on disability whereas her family was on welfare. They got less money from entitlements than we did and had to live with the indignity of food stamps. Her father also sometimes physically abused her mother whereas my parents limited their abuse to words.

My conversation with Linda opened up a window on a perspective that had been tightly shut before. As bad as my life circumstances were, there were still others who had it worse. The level of hardship I endured was a matter of perspective. Since Linda wasn't bullied daily at school and could be average and invisible, I always saw her as better off than me, but she saw me as smarter, better loved, and more materially wealthy than her. Both of our views were informed by incompleteness though. She only saw my advantages and I only saw hers.

I had more fun with Linda in my childhood than any other friend and I tried to carry on that relationship into my adult life. Our infrequent trips to "Big Lots" and other types of shopping stopped when she had a baby and didn't have time to venture into the world with me anymore. By the time Tito came into my life, Linda had largely exited it so she is rarely mentioned in any of my correspondence with him, but "Big Lots," which I connected with spending time with her, was still there.