How Good It Is

Let me tell you how good it is to be alive.

You're wondering what it is that's happened, right? "Joey's won the lottery," you're thinking, right? Well, much as I'd like to tell you that you're right, you're not. No lottery, except that I've had the profound good luck to have been born into the country in which I've been born, into the time in which I've been born, into the life into which I've been born. And with the friends I've been given.

I know I spend plenty of time bitching about the things that are wrong in my life - sometimes I think I spend so much time focused on that shit that I let the really important stuff slip by... the really important stuff like the precious gemstones that are my friends. A bad metaphor, and sappy to boot, I'll grant you, but it's the truth.

I wish I were better at remembering how good these people are to me. Look, I know that I'm never going to be rich. I'm never going to be famous. Hell, I'm not sure I'd want to be famous, even if I were given the chance... I mean, how many of those hollywood starlet are really happy?

But why do I seem to have such a hard time remembering that these people, who are unbeholden to me by ties of blood are utterly unselfish in giving their trust, their love, their kindness. How can you not be knocked breathless by the goodness of your friends?

So that's where my head is today, on the first day of the last quarter of 2002. I'm thinking a lot about my friends, and how much I love them - and how grateful I am that they love me. I've been thinking a lot about just how much Toni helped me through this past summer by letting me stay with her while I was scrambling for work. Or, for that matter, how her moral support got me through the break-up with Gavan and the financial disaster that hit me at the same time.

I've been thinking about what I love about my friends; Toni's kindness, her acerbity. Or Kenny Bolden's embarrassment that he might enjoy being a sexual being - the way he rolls his eyes at the thought of all the perverts in the steam room at his gym. Or that Doug Rees is completely unafraid to show me his warts, knowing that his silliest fears will be met with a serious demeanor... 'cuz I know that that trust works in reverse. Or the way the Jay O'Berski zeroes in on me, recognizing a kindred spirit, a fellow traveler, a lost soul. Or the stunning awe in which I hold Kevin Lageman when I think of him on stage, or the way that - without ever acknowledging it - Kirsten Lageman and I are helping each other get settled into our New York skins. Or of Tom Langdon and his incredible persistence; how I can have a hero who never really needs to know that he's my hero. Or the way Janet Dickinson thinks first about the people around her - understanding that selflessness is the purest and only acceptable form of selfishness; the returns are vast, and they benefit others too - and the quiet, stolid Midwestern way in which she'd shrug off that compliment. Or the fact that Amy Hartman's going to make up some silly name for me. I love that shit about my friends.

And thinking of all this, I have to ask myself: How the fuck did I get so lucky?

I don't have an answer, though there's a part of me that hopes I'm ½ the friend to these people that they are to me, that I'm somehow deserving of their friendship. Friendship is a contract, of sorts, but it's more than that... it entails a sacrifice of something essential to you; to being you. But the return on that investment makes you, I think, something so much more than you are alone.

So that's what I've been thinking a lot about the past few days - which has led me to a different sort of place in my head. Maybe optimism really is learned; or is something inevitable when one considers the life one has, and the alternative. Remember that quote by Sydney Harris: "When I hear someone say, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"