FORTY-FOUR

Image © Jose & MidJourney

I have a friend who own a boat. And you know what they say, never buy a boat, get a friend who owns a boat. But this post is not about the boat, but about the friend, I hope you see this as an ode to friendship.

This friend is fairly new, about 8 years old friendship, depending on what you compare it to. My oldest friends are 40 years old, when I moved from Africa to Portugal, and I don’t have many that go that far back. This friendship started when we moved to Boston, it seems my friend are connected to places I moved to, every time I move there are a few that remain friends, forever. Except from Africa, where the age and moves in the continent disbanded all the friendships I had until I was 16. I have friends in Leiria, in Lisbon, In Barcelona, In London, In Chicago, and so on. This friend is a friend from Boston, we met through a Chicago acquaintance, and he just reminded me I was on his first time taking out his sailing boat.

This friend is forty something, blond, blue eyes, to all accounts and based on generalizations, a white American born in Chicago. This friend grew up in a working-class part of the city, sharing the suburb with many others that were not like him, his father was busy making a living, and his mother working as well, he and his brother grew up free to explore the city, and he did. His brother became a policeman, my friend followed the arts, and then into art collections and art exhibitions, he went abroad to places like Afghanistan, Turkey and Egypt, and now works in a prestigious museum. This friend is knowledgeable on many different topics, above all anything that is related to doing things with his hands, he is great at building and fixing anything, he is detailed and likes process and planning. He is not rich, he owns a small but fast sailing boat that he bought old, and he maintains and upgrades incessantly but not obsessively. When I am on his boat, he inspires confidence and he likes to be in charge, and I love being told what to do. I love the ocean, but I am not a sailor wanna be, he spends time explaining how to do things and why. I appreciate being in a situation where I am there to do what he thinks is best for the sail, the experience of a good sail is what matters, and he always delivers. I love seeing him in the yacht clubs he frequents, mainly populated by the older rough looking men that look the part, he knows them all by name, and he will sit with them and talk engines, spinnakers, and hull cleaning practices, he does this everywhere he goes, confidently but never imposing.

He will pick up the phone or send me a message, he will ask me how are things and he will listen, we have dinners that stretch into the wee hours of the night, and I may not agree with him on everything, but we will discuss it, and argue about what it means to each one of us, while we eat and drink, always in a good mood. When I turned 60, I did a small get together of friends in my beach in the south of Portugal, my friend travelled with his girlfriend, we went into the ocean mid-December and bonded over our love for the sea and the friendship we have.

When I was 18 years old, I came to the United States for the first time, I can on an exchange program from AFS America Field Service and went to San Diego CA to do my 12th grade, after that I returned to Portugal. When I went back, plenty of people approached me with their assumptions and biases about the US, and I had to explain to them that the US was a very large country, with many contradictions and differences in both place and people, and that I had found the best and the worst of human beings during my stay. This friend represents the best of America, a fine American that I happily call my friend.

P.S. The image is how Gen AI depicts my friend based on my description, this would make him laugh out loud…