My Friend Allison

About 10 years ago my friend Rebecca was getting married on Block Island. I worked with Rebecca at an internet site called The Hub (it used to be a channel on AOL, the old AOL) and we had become good friends. A group of New York people (one of whom I knew, and two of whom I knew only slightly) rented a car to drive up to Rhode Island together. It was me, Felicia, John, and Allison. Felicia and I were good friends (she also worked at the Hub). I had met Allison once at a party in Brooklyn at this fantastic loft/warehouse space where Rebecca lived and she and I had taken the subway back into the city together. I remember we talked about religion as we sat waiting for the train. I liked her very much. She was Rebecca’s best friend.

So here we all were, on a road trip, connected to each other only through Rebecca.

It’s a trip that was so memorable that we all still reference it. We had gotten rooms at one of the big old-fashioned hotels on Block Island. And you just never know what traveling with someone is going to be like, especially people that you don’t know all that well. But the four of us just CLICKED. We worked together as a group. We split up the driving. There wasn’t one drip in the group. Also, kudos to John. It was three girls and him. We eventually were all tormenting him by throwing references to “tampons” into the conversation, because we would get such a predictable response. He was hilarious – we loved him. “Oh, come on, do we have to talk about THAT stuff?” he’d say as one of us would start raving about our ovulation, just to get a rise out of him.

We took the ferry out to Block Island. It was a rough windy day, and I remember John got us all beers on the ferry and we, being naive, thought it would be awesome to drink them out on the deck, so we all walked out on the deck and – whoosh – our beer foam was lifted bodily off each of our beers and flew, willy nilly, into each other’s faces. John’s beer foam flew right into my face. It was hilarious – because all of the locals (and what is even more ridiculous – I AM a local) were drinking their beers inside the boat, because they obviously knew the danger of beer-foam-flying … so they must have watched our naive stumbling outside with some humor. “Watch … they’ll be back inside in 2 seconds …” Covered in beer foam, the four of us staggered back inside the ferry, laughing hysterically.

It was autumn, which is my favorite time to go out to Block Island. My sister taught out there for a year and my visits to her were in the fall and also the early spring. It’s a whole different place out there then than during the tourist season. The ocean was a deep dark blue, and there was that light in the air – the long low autumn light – we were all exhilarated. First of all, to be out of the city on a little road trip, but second of all, because the surroundings were so beautiful.

Our hotel was a big rambling Victorian structure that you can see when you get off the ferry in Block Island. It had an enormous wraparound porch with Adirondack chairs, and the stairways were thickly carpeted and narrow, the lobby filled with gee-gaws and clutter. Felicia and I shared a room, and Allison and John shared a room. Again, hilarious. They didn’t even know each other. But I swear – within an hour of our drive, we had become siblings.

Cashel was just a baby at this time – Maria was a friend of Rebecca’s too (she also worked at the Hub) – so it was so cool to see Maria and Cashel strolling up Main Street. Or, actually (hard to imagine now), he was probably in his stroller. He was still just a white-haired little chubb-ball at this point, obsessed with cars of any kind (all of which he referred to as “da-bwah” – except for one startling moment when he pointed at a vehicle going by and said clearly, “JEEP.”) Cashel lived in Brooklyn at that time, so I saw him almost every weekend.

That night was the rehearsal dinner, that we were not invited to, so we went to a local dive bar – and Rebecca and her husband-to-be ended up joining us there after the rehearsal dinner. It was a crazy joint. Most places in Block Island are. There was a great juke box. And I remember it was that night that Allison and I first really clicked. We were having so much fun. Just with each other. We were like sisters. The place wasn’t packed, because it was off-season, and we had this whole area upstairs to ourselves, and we all got pitchers of beer and whooped it up, a happy foursome. At one point, Allison and I started doing some interpretive dance, and once we started, we could not stop. We would make up stories: “Okay, so you’re a bitchy girl in high school and I’m a shy girl who wants to be your friend … GO.” And we would act it out to, oh, the Steve Miller song that was playing. It was so stupid and so fun. It was like being a little kid.

And I still find that with Allison – she, my dear beautiful blonde-haired friend of many years now … when we are together, we can go into a zone of childhood, we are free with each other that way … It’s not a polite grown-up-friend kind of relationship, although of course we have very deep conversations and she has really been there for me in SO many ways over the years. But when I think of the two of us and how we became friends … doing interpretive pantomime dance in a dive bar on Block Island – acting out various scenarios – for HOURS, guys – HOURS … it makes so much sense, because in many ways that is still who we are to each other. We give each other that freedom.

Later that night, the four of us were staggering back to our hotel, a little bit worse for the wear, and WAY TOO LOUD for our environment. Someone screamed at us from a nearby house to keep it down. Ooops. Sorry. We are being bad guests.

And I remember for some reason, as we walked down the street, I was pontificating about instances of racism seen on The Real World (shut up, Sheila) – and out of nowhere – I fell. This was a wipeout of epic proportions. One minute I was up, the next I was down. I broke the fall completely with my palms and I skidded on the sidewalk. For the rest of the weekend, I kept referring to “my stigmata”. I was feeling no pain, though. As I got back up, Allison (who was laughing hysterically) said, “What happened, Sheila?” I said, “I have no idea. I think I just fell on a crack in the atmosphere.” Allison still, to this day, says that to me on occasion. Or she will remind me of it. “Member when you fell on a crack in the atmosphere and got stigmata?” Only in my life would a sentence like that make any sense.

The wedding was outside on a beautiful golden field in the center of Block Island. Cashel wore a blue velvet suit. The memory of him, now a Boy Scout, and 11 years old, is killing me!

The reception was outside, under a tent. There was a huge orange harvest moon, rising up out of the black ocean. The beauty was almost too much. It’s like having a too-rich dinner followed by too-many lavish desserts. Too much beauty. We would step out from under the tent and stare up at the moon and just say, “God. Look at that.”

Felicia, who is a photographer, had brought her old-fashioned Polaroid camera, and we took many pictures, many of which I still have. For some reason, I so remember one of the photos that I, or someone else, took. Felicia was squatting, she had no shoes on by that point, and she was talking to Cashel. I showed Felicia the picture, and she, a gorgeous black girl with little braids on her head, said, in dismay, “I look like a squatting native.” We all still say that phrase. Squatting native! We all howled about it. “No, you don’t, Felicia!” “Look at me, with the bare feet and the braids – God! I am totally a squatting native!”

The weekend was so magical it was hard to let it go. Felicia, John, Allison and I were all kind of sad and quiet as we packed up to go home the next morning. Who would we be without each other?? It felt like the four of us had been traveling forever. We NEEDED John there, to talk about girlie things like menstruation and vaginas, just to tease him. “You know what, John?” “What?” “I was just thinking about my vagina …” “Oh, for God’s SAKE!” He would get so embarrassed so of course it was impossible NOT to tease him. Our dynamic as a group was magnificent! The four of us did go out a couple of times after that, trying to recapture the group glory. It was an unlikely group, but it worked. It’s not easy to travel with people, either. There always seems to be someone who is too anal, or someone who is too irresponsible and doesn’t pick up the slack … someone who ruins it. But with us four … we all were equals, hovering and managing and doing what needed to be done.

Most of the best friends I have made in my life – the ones that are still here in my life – are the ones I made between the ages of 10 and 18. Beth, Betsy, Meredith, Michele, Mitchell, Jackie, David, Liz … these are friends from grade school, high school and college. These are forever people. Once you become a true adult, it seems like it’s harder to make friends like that. I, however, have been very lucky. When in Chicago, as a woman in my 20s, I made friends with Ann Marie and Kate – and these women are truly DEAR to me, like they are two of my best friends … and I met them after I was already “formed”, if you will. It’s such a blessing. While in Chicago, I also befriended Ted – a man I am still close to, after all these years. I don’t know who I would be if I couldn’t get together with Ted every couple of months, and drink wine, and talk about … well … everything. I cherish all of my friends, and I know I am lucky to have such a great group of them. And the ones I made as an adult have a special place in my heart. Because it means the heart has not atrophied … it is still capable of letting someone in. You can see the opposite happen with many adults, and I feel very lucky that that has not happened to me. Or perhaps luck has nothing to do with it. I think it might be something I have actually chosen, I’m not sure.

And Allison, from that weekend in Block Island, became one of my closest and dearest friends. There have been times over the years when either she or I will consider leaving New York – and that still might happen – and I get a bolt of stress at the thought of not being able to see her whenever I want.

Our relationship runs the gamut. We love to talk about movies and Celebrity Rehab and Charles Manson and men. We have mentioned to each other that we would like to do more – meaning: read the New York Times, see that something interesting is going on, an exhibit, whatever – and go check it out. We want to go to The Cloisters. We have PLANS, as friends. I cherish that. We have these epic sleepovers at her house (accompanied by her dog Oscar and her cat Charlie) where we climb under the puff on her bed and watch … whatever … late into the night. We like to ‘show each other’ movies. It’s one of our favorite things to do. Like, she made me watch The Family Stone, a movie I really had no interest in seeing – but she had seen it and fell in love with it and KNEW I would love it too (she was totally right – Love that movie) so she wanted to see it with me. We are now in the middle of watching Slings & Arrows together – halfway through the third (and final) season. The second I saw the first damn episode, I could barely hold myself back from calling her up immediatley and inviting myself over. She HAD to see this. It’s exhilarating to share something you love with someone else – who has the same level of appreciation for things as you do, the same kind of humor.

In 2005, we went to Ireland together for 10 days, and our trip encompassed her birthday (we flew out of New York on her birthday) and mine. The adventures we had were without number, and it was reiterated to me again that we really travel WELL together. When I get serious or antsy, she laughs in my face, lightening the mood (the episode with the blue pen as we landed in Dublin comes to mind). We shared the driving, 50-50, and kind of just went where we wanted to go, and we lingered when we felt like lingering. We ended up sleeping over in Glendalough because it was late and we didn’t want to drive out of the mountains in the dark … we ended up lingering in Kinsale for three days because it was just so pretty there … we took the train up to Belfast to hang out with Carrie and her husband … and it all just worked out. We were excellent companions. You never know with travel.

She’s a beautiful person, a voracious reader, an intelligent critic (our discussions are awesome), and she’s a person where I always want to know what she thinks. Books I read, movies I see … what will Allison think?

But more than that: I cherish her friendship because when I am with her, I remember what it was like to be 10 years old again.

Happy birthday (belated), Allison.

I love you. You are essential to me.