My Forever Friend
On best friends
“Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.” — Richard Bach
It was the summer of 1983.
We met in the employee break room inside a seedy, downtown Las Vegas casino while on a 20-minute break. She was a blackjack dealer and I was crap dealer. She had long, almost blue-black hair. I wore a platinum pixie without sideburns. She wore a wedding ring set with a gigantic diamond. I wore no ring, and lived with the flavor of the month.
I pulled out a pack of cigarettes from my bag and asked Robin from New York—that’s what her name tag read—for a light.
“Here,” she said, pulling out her lighter and lighting the tip of my smoke; “Patti from Las Vegas? I didn’t know anyone was born and raised here.” She tapped out a cigarette from her own pack, held it loosely between her lips, lit it and deeply inhaled—and blew the smoke out away from my direction.
“I’m not really from Las Vegas, it’s fake. I’m from Michigan, but it’s easier to say Nevada,” I said, not bothering to elaborate further—that I hated admitting being from the midwest.
“Are you married?”
“I’m single but living with a guy who has suspect commitment issues. I see you’re married, do you have kids?” I asked, not really caring, but staying within the polite boundaries of first meetings.
“I have a son, his name is Robert. He’s four years old. How about you?”
“No, I don’t like kids,” I said blurting out another truth to this woman I didn’t know. What was wrong with me?
“That’s yuuge (huge), I don’t like kids either. My moth-ah (mother) wouldn’t let it go after I got married, so I had one. It’s a Jewish thing. Now I only have to have sex with my husband once a month” she said casually. “I love my son, but I never want another kid.”
“You don’t like sex and you’re Jewish?” I asked, bluntly.
“Yeah, but I’m not practicing. Being Jewish I mean. I sit shiva when I have to, and go to temple on high holies; oh, and I do go to bar and bat mitzvahs when I’m visiting family on Lawn-guy-land (Long Island). I don’t like sex with my husband—his name is Jake—he isn’t that great, either. I can’t stand the smell of Aqua Net hairspray. He wears it on his hair, yuh know, even in bed. I love putting up a Christmas tree and decorating. Hey, you wanna grab a drink afta (after) work?” Robin asked.
“I’d love to,” I said.
Professor Thomas Dixon puts it this way:“Friendship means being able to share secret things with someone you can completely trust. It’s about providing a kind of therapy and getting the same in return.” — The Friendship Report
I loved her, I truly loved her
Inside the next five years our friendship grew exponentially.
Robin divorced Jake and started dating Supervisor from work who taught her what real sex felt like.
I moved out from suspect commitment guy and moved in with Married Guy who had four (dependent, almost grown) kids, and was never divorcing his distance wife.
Did I mention he was 20 years older than me?
Through our successes and failures we stayed true to each other. I didn’t have to explain my sometimes insane actions, and she didn’t have to explain hers. The messes we made were accepted and stayed just that… insane messes.
Over the years Robin shared her NYC style and sophistication with me. She lent me gowns and jewelry for events, did my hair, and taught me how to polish my makeup. She loved Elvis and taught me to dance 50s style, and play Pai Gow Poker.
I taught her how to wear sneakers, tailor her résumé for big jobs, pawn jewelry, and hustle the streets of Las Vegas.
Later on over the years Robin taught me to shop on eBay, and love Persian cats. I showed her how to stay under-the-radar online and keep a low profile.
“I’ll always love you forever, we’re sis-tahs (sisters),” we would yell in unison, pointing our index fingers at one another, laughing with glee, always ending our celebrating or commiserating in a bear hug.
Dirty little secrets
We both lived secret lives away from our unsuspecting, respectable families who never caught on that we were caught up inside very different lifestyles than how we were brought up. Robin and I shared a lot of guilt and we weren’t proud of our secrets. It was part of the superglue that held our friendship together.
We viewed guilt, unconditional love, and acceptance, as true friendship—our friendship.
Supervisor was a (former) professional middleweight fighter. He was a black man almost 20 years older than Robin. He used crack cocaine as an aphrodisiac. He was a gambler who loved to play poker machines and drink Hennessy from a tea cup with a saucer.
Married Guy was an illegal bookmaker who also sold and distributed marijuana. He held a respectable day job, wore expensive suits and highly polished Gucci horse bit loafers. He used cocaine and various recreational drugs as aphrodisiacs and lived and breathed sports, mostly football.
In 1988 Robin announced she was marrying Supervisor and asked if I’d be her maid-of-honor. The ceremony and honeymoon were being held in Hawaii, the furthest away point she could get from her family inside the 50 states.
And it was time for Robin to tell her family the truth about Supervisor. She decided to wait until after they were married. Mixed racial marriages weren’t yet accepted, especially in Las Vegas; and certainly not common in Long Island Jewish families.
She wasn’t certain she wouldn’t be ostracized from her family but bravely committed to telling them the truth.
Her mother and father did accept the marriage after the initial shock, but the rest of her large family did not. From then moving forward, she no longer had much contact with her family until much later on in life.
That same year my parents came to visit me in Las Vegas, and insisted on meeting my friend I’d been living with for the past few years.
They didn’t approve but were gracious enough to not make me feel badly about making my own decisions and living my life the way I chose,—so long as we (as a family) stayed close, and in communication.
I hadn’t perfected the art of honestly communicating with my parents who were two generations removed, military strict, and midwest conservative. Meeting their approval kept me away from being honest with them for most of my life.
Deep down I knew they’d disapprove and didn’t think I could handle that self-inflicted shame… until later on when I was a broken adult and my opportunity to have courage and be honest held up.
It was the year of reckoning.
They didn’t let me down.
We all got through it.
“…if our 30s are “the decade where friendship goes to die,” as the science journalist Lydia Denworth notes in her book Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond, then it’s no wonder that making friends at 40 is more akin to dating than I had anticipated...” Why Making Friends in Midlife is so Hard — Katharine Smyth
Saying goodbye, but not forever
Over the years Robin and I made it through addiction and recovery, losing parents, multiple geographical relocation(s), financial crisis, being in business together, traveling, and our ever but always present relationship woes.
Our lives always stayed connected through a mosaic of pleasure and pain.
Life slowly grew us apart over the years for many reasons. We (always) still kept in close contact but adulting blurred our friendship into mostly checking in and comparing notes as we went in different directions.
In 2001 we both lost our fathers, months apart.
Robin and I were long separated geographically at the time but both (still) managed to help each other during our first-shared real crisis moment—losing a first parent. She provided a magnificent buffet for my father repast, and I sat shiva inside the family compound with her for 10 days, after helping bury her father at sundown.
Less than a year later, weeks before the unveiling of the her father’s headstone, Robin insisted I be there for emotional support. My friend was battling yet another addiction to sleeping pills, the kind where you walked in your sleep and did crazy things without remembering. She needed me.
I couldn’t be there for her.
My own family and work obligations couldn’t be abandoned. And she didn’t understand. She’d grown impatient with my still smoldering dysfunctional relationships, and I’d grown tired of her neediness.
The rift lasted for 18 years.
“Friendship is not about whom you know the longest. It is about who came and never left.” — Paulo Coelho
One day in the early summer of 2019 I woke up crying and alone. I was out of sorts, living back in the midwest, and doing a reset from another part of my life that ended badly.
I wanted my best friend back.
Through a series of searches I found Robin and reconnected with her over the phone. True to our life paths we were in two different parts of the country, as far away as possible, 2,173 miles apart to be exact.
It took us (only) a few weeks of spending hours on the phone to catch up 18 lost years spent away from each other.
At 62 I was getting married for the first time. At 65 Robin was no longer with Supervisor, he was in a memory care facility, and she was living alone in a small community in Southern California.
On our last phone call I was getting ready to go to the gym. Robin was waiting for her home-healthcare nurse to stop by for the daily visit.
“Don’t give up on me. I’m sick but I promise not to keep complaining about my awe-ful (awful) life…” she said tearfully. “I loved, you, I lawst (lost) you, what-eva (whatever) happens, I betta (better) never lose you again, for shore (sure).”
Robin passed away in her sleep, hours after our last talk.
“If you have one true friend you have more than your share.” — Thomas Fuller
See you next week.
This was a great story, Patti, and what a journey you and Robin shared! I loved that both of you were able to reconnect after 18 years apart and before Robin died. 💗💗
I love your meeting scene with Robin!
So much of what made your friendship is in that one scene.
And I love how your words convey so much of your love for Robin.
It's beautiful and moving.
Glad that you were able to reconnect before Robin died.