With A Little Help from My Friends

In a little over two weeks, my blog will (under ideal circumstances) see some renewed activity as I travel to Japan with my best friend, Paresh. For years, we have discussed the idea of international travel together, but for a multitude of reasons have been repeatedly stymied. But, earlier this year, we laid the plans for it to finally happen. To say that I am excited to spend these two weeks with my best friend is an understatement. With the wisdom of age, I have learned to treasure the infrequent but always special time when we get to be together.

Paresh and I met each other in third grade at age 8, where we participated in the “stock market game”—the centerpiece of accelerated math programs in 1990s capitalist America—and battled over whether to support Coca Cola or PepsiCo. (We found a rare moment of agreement over Kellogg’s.) In many ways, we have always been a case of opposites attracting. I was loud, chaotic, and impulsive; recently diagnosed with ADHD in 1993, I frequently felt out of control of my own thoughts, and my friends often suffered the collateral damage. Paresh was calm, quiet, and introspective even from an early age, and I constantly envied his unflappability. Where I was guided by hedonism and instant gratification, he lived with an irritating level of discipline and an eye toward long-term goals. I have never admired someone quite the way I did him.

In middle school, via coincidence that only a new school year’s randomized seating chart can provide, I met Lee, who would become the newest member of our friend squad. His long hair asymmetrically swooped down one side of his face before emo had solidified its place in the cultural zeitgeist, Lee was unapologetically expressive in an environment where that was decidedly not part of the social survival playbook. We bonded immediately over a shared penchant for non-sequitur conversation, quick-witted humor, and, perhaps most importantly, our willingness to find any available reason or method to annoy Paresh. (In adolescence, admiration manifests in strange ways.) Lee remains the other of my two best friends to this day.

Things changed—especially for me—in October of 2004. As the three of us navigated the new and unfamiliar challenges of college life, I arrived at a personal breaking point. Paresh would become my first chosen confidant to whom I came out of the closet. My selecting him was not as simple as mere best friend privileges: I trusted that his reaction would be a distinctive measuring stick. If it went well, I knew I could live with any amount of blowback from the remaining audience; if the opposite, it would have been enough to know my greatest fears were realized. I’ve recounted this story dozens of times over the years and Paresh knows by now how singularly important, critically pivotal, and trajectory-altering this moment was in my life. I will never let him forget it.

Many people can tell you that lasting friendship over the course of a lifetime is never guaranteed. It takes motivation, intention, and persistence to a degree that contemporary adulthood often precludes. And while Paresh and I have had natural fluctuations in our frequency of contact, I am grateful that we have remained close all 32 of these years. I know how lucky I am to feel so safe with and understood by someone who has known me at my highest and lowest points, and I have at least tried to redeem some of my childhood misfires by playing that role in his life, too. I am ecstatic to (soon) add this next adventure to our storied history together, and I’m looking forward to documenting it here.

The journey starts August 17 (well, the travel journey actually starts on August 16) in Tokyo, and time will tell how we fare in what promises to be intense levels of summer heat. Our travels will meander through Nikko, Hakone, Kyoto & Osaka, Himeji, Kanazawa, and back to Tokyo for the finale. As I always mentioned when documenting my Norway travels, this blog is ultimately for me: it is both an outlet to remind me of my love of writing and a memento to which I can return in the future. But I am grateful to any and all who follow along and find some level of entertainment in these writings.

Until Japan!