Once upon a time there was a boy. He was a smart boy, not brilliant, but very smart nonetheless. He did very well at school… in fact he consistently topped the class… which inevitably earned him a nerdy reputation. While other kids were out kicking footies, or riding skateboards, or hanging out at the mall, he was at home finishing assignments. He didn’t have a lot of friends, and the ones he did have, were just like him.

Toward the end of high school, he got his first glimpse of cool. Despite speaking in a slightly high-pitched, odd voice, his academic brilliance was somehow noted by almost everyone. He still couldn’t get a girlfriend, but he became reasonably well known, and even well liked. People found that despite his intelligence, he had a good sense of humour and was interesting and fun. This novel combination led him to achieve minor celebrity status. Not bad… for a bona-fide nerd.

When he got into medicine at Uni, he finally felt like he had arrived. He surrounded himself with other clever people just like him, and immersed himself in the party circuit they created around themselves. He met girls… he talked to them… some of them even liked him. He drunk a lot, he partied hard - but he remained focused.

Surrounded by his new friends though, he began to change. It started out with small things… a minor wardrobe makeover… then hair… but soon became more noticeable. He began to speak more about himself, and what he thought, and how he saw things. He sculpted an air of dismissiveness and detachment, so that everything soon became a shade of grey. He studied what people he considered cool did, and copied them.

One day I knocked on his door. He opened it, waving a cigarette and wearing sandals and a kaftan, The Jesus and Mary Chain blaring from his new Marantz stereo. He didn’t speak… just beckoned me in. I passed a coffee table where a pile of NME magazines sat beside novels by Satre and Kafka - both bookmarked. Beads adorned the door to his room, which as far as I could tell, seemed to have been adopted by Bedouins. He poured himself a glass of Absinth, and plopped himself down in one of the large lounge chairs - then indicated for me to sit opposite him. Just as I moved, he yelled - and I turned to see a carefully placed Joy Division Berlin concert bootleg had been carefully left on the arm. “Careful with that” he shouted over the deafening music, “it cost $60 and took 2 months to get here”.

To be honest, I don’t really recall much else from my last visit to the Image Man. I’m sure we talked, or he talked, but since I couldn’t hear it, and most of it was just him randomly quoting existentialist literature, I quickly forgot it. He never offered me a drink, or anything to eat, or anything one might deem hospitality. I seemed little more than a conduit for his desperate efforts to impress.

I left him sitting in his big chair, gently bobbing to the grinding guitar feedback of Some candy talkin’ and staring at his shoes. He never got up to see me out.

I never went back.

Tags: friendship, general //