We’re Just Friends
a
monologue
by Tim Westfield
With Special Thanks to Dan Delaporta, and Spalding Gray
(Lights up on a table with a single chair. On the table is a pitcher of water and a glass. TIM enters carrying a notebook with a pen in it. TIM sits at the table and opens the notebook. TIM speaks.)
We’re just friends. I’ve heard more variations on that statement than I would care to admit. There was the, “You’re like a brother to me.” And “I like us so much better as friends.” There’s the classic “ But we’re such good friends.” But I think that my personal favorite has to be “You’re like one of my girlfriends.”
That one hurt. I don’t think she realized what that sentence did to me. It killed a little piece of me. I felt something inside me. I don’t know I don’t think die, or break or anything like that is the appropriate word.
Flashback: I had been harboring a crush on her for a long time. And then I resolved to make my move. I resolved to say something to her. Resolve, resolve, resolve. I have no resolve. So I made up my mind that I was going to make my move.
That night my friends were throwing a party. And as I’m building up my courage, and/or my blood alcohol level. Things happen in the way that they always seem to happen to me. I turn around and what do I see but her making out with someone. I do the only natural thing a man can do. I run away and go drink. Drink until you can’t feel feelings.
I think that’s when I started giving up hope. “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can kill a man.” Stephen King, The Shawshank Redemption. And any hope I had left disappeared when she said those words to me. “You’re like one of my girlfriends.” And that was the death knell. So right now the hope is all but gone, and we’re just friends.
We’re just friends. It seems to be a mantra in my life. It works in different aspects. It works for different things. And not just about women, although that is the most common context.
Matt was my brother. Leukemia took him away from me. He was my brother. But a brother I never had. I never had an opportunity to know him. What would things have been like? What would our relationship have been? Would he have led the way for me? Or would I have chosen a different path than him, and the two of us respected each other’s decisions? Would we have gone to parties together? What would it have been like? You see, I never got a brother. I never had the chance to get anything more. I was only 5. And at age 5 there is really only one relationship you can have with anyone besides your parents. Matt and I, we were just friends.
Girl Number 2. You’re like my brother. That’s what I got from her. Happy hour one Friday afternoon. You’re like my brother. Not as simple as, we’re just friends, but still not as outlandish and painful as the aforementioned “You’re like a girlfriend.” I had walked into her room a few days before when she was in her bathrobe and she didn’t seem upset, she just laughed it off. I thought this was good, I thought we were getting closer, she no longer felt that awkward around me. I guess it wasn’t in the way I had hoped. “You’re like my brother.” Some may see this as progress. As my roommate so elegantly put it “At least now you have a penis.” But the way I see it, I don’t think that’s progress at all, it may even be regression. Take this perspective. Will a girl make out with her brother? Never. Never ever. Unless she’s one of those girls and I really don’t think that’s the kind of girl I want. Now will a girl make out with her girlfriend? Get enough drinks in her and she just might. Now I’m not advocating alcohol as a solution to problems but…. Let’s be honest, none of that will ever happen. But a man can dream. What if things change and no longer were we just friends.
Hope, Life Under Water, Moliere,
Hamlet, Proof, Good, La Bete, Crucible, Fantastiks, Foreigner,
Girl #3, “But we’re such good friends.” Now that sentence. I’ve analyzed it and thought about it, and I still don’t get it. Lower Dining Hall, in the days before Corcoran Commons. The second floor in a booth overlooking downstairs. This was the real deal. This was the huge one. I loved this girl. I really did. And all I could manage was a simple, but heartfelt. “Look, I like you, I really like you.” And her response, there was a look on her face, I don’t know how to describe it. I think… I think, maybe it was pity. She looked like she felt sorry for me. I had prepared myself for many different outcomes. I was prepared for stunned silence, for anger, I even held out hope that something good might happen. But I wasn’t prepared for pity. And then she said “But we’re such good friends.” Now I really and truly don’t understand that statement. (Getting steadily angrier.) Why does us being friends have to stop us from being something else? So what if we’re such good friends. Am I the only one who doesn’t understand this? Why does that have to prevent something else from happening? (At the angriest) Can’t we be friends and in a relationship? (PAUSE, calmly.) I thought that was the ideal? Isn’t that what girls always claim they are looking for? But what can I say, still, she and I, we’re just friends.
He’s special. My brother Chris. He’s special. He’s special needs. He has a disability. I love my brother. But he’s not my brother. I see a brother as someone whom you trust implicity. Someone you can talk to and can hear things from. That’s not to say that my brother can’t talk. He can, but there is a distinct difference between talking and talking.
We got into a fist fight once. And by fist fight I mean he slugged me once in the face. Now my brother is handicapped. His legs are weak, and he his has limited control of his right side. But his left arm, the left arm of fury, is a sight to behold. That arm is probably stronger than either of mine and I am not a small guy.
I was babysitting my siblings. It was a common occurrence throughout my middle school and high school years. My brother refused to go to bed. Also a common occurrence. So I started carrying him and dragging him along to make him go upstairs and too bed. We reach the refrigerator and then he screams for me to put him down. So I do, hoping that he’ll wise up and get upstairs. I set him down he leans against the door-frame. He looks at me with rage in his eyes. Then the left hook comes. It was a good one too, not much body behind it, but I told you about his arm. I didn’t go berserk, I just looked at him with shock and quietly told him to get to his room. He did.
Now that is the first and last time I have ever been hit in anger. I know people say that anger often comes out of love. And I’ve felt that before, but I don’t think this was like that. I love my brother, I really do, but we’re not really brothers, not brothers in the truest sense of the word. We’re not brothers, we’re just friends.
Girl #4. March 2005. A random weekend night, I get a phone call from a friend of mine. We’re definitely just friends. “Hey, it’s me, I was wondering if me, my roommate, and two friends of ours could stop by your place. We were at a party and it was kinda lame.” Sure I guess. Okay. See you guys in a bit. “See you.” So the four of them show up. I’ve met them all before. From class or other things. One of them, I’d hit it off with her before. At a party somewhere, but she was with a guy that night, or at least she seemed to be with him, I wasn’t really sure. So we hit it off that night. It was great. I was relaxed and having a good time. She seemed to be having a good time. It was fun and I didn’t worry about it. It just happened, my roommate would tell me later that I was in the zone. So things are going great and the end of the night comes. By that time she had given me her cell phone number at least five times to make sure I would call. And so I walk them to the door and then just as she’s about to leave she leans in and kisses me.
That was my first kiss. I was a twenty-one year old college junior and I just had my first kiss. Took me long enough. And things were going great.
Then I proceeded to fuck things up. I didn’t call, and then sporadically. I got nervous and scared, I didn’t know what to do or say, I had no experience. I got busy with my first show in the theatre, and so things just died. I still see her on campus a lot. We have a class together. So I see her at least twice a week depending on her attendance. And the best way I can describe things between us now is like this. We’re just friends.
I seem to be made for that. It must be my lot in life. 22 years later and me and every girl I know, every girl I’ve ever known, we’re just friends. There have been other girls and other experiences too. But I don’t feel comfortable talking about it, maybe I’ve said too much after all, I mean, after all, we’re just friends.