friends and air fresheners

i bought an air freshener yesterday. on it is written: i don't have many friends. all i have is this air freshener. i thought it was fucking hilarious. so did my friend T.

i have lots of acquaintances. but friends? i have two. eh, maybe three, but two that i see and speak with on a regular basis. today i'm going to tell you about one.

i'll call her T, because she's shy and whatnot. T was just accepted into Johns Hopkins Medical School. fucking A. she's brilliant and has not yet dismissed my suggestion that i shadow her during her first year of classes in an effort to find myself a husband. that makes her even doubly fantastic.

she's currently living in Long-guy-land with her grandmother. the gramma is beginning to get mildly dillusional and T is there to help when the aides go home for the evening. it's got to be one of the most depressing situations to be in. she's in the Hamptons, which are desolate now that the summer is gone. and to see a city out of its skin is unsettling in a very calm and quiet way. like people are running from something that you should've been informed of. the trees and the road and the empty sand are your only reassurance that perhaps you aren't insane for lingering. she has no one out there except for this relative, whom she has to witness deteriorate. but she's doing it to help. she's doing it because she cares. she loves. she is incredibly strong.

so we (the three of us friends) all hung out last night and got drunk. T was in town from the island. we all met up at L's apartment in Rockland and then today, T and I went on a nice hike. it was great spending time with her again. we just act so completely dumb and giddy. the kind of behavior that usually makes me scoff when i see it enacted by others. but with us, it's just completely acceptable. primarily because i'm a bitch.

as we began our ascent of Break Neck, we were singing one line--actually, one word--from this early 90s pop song in such an exaggerated manner of emulation that we could not stop laughing. it was the kind of laughter that leaves you light headed and yearning for breath. and we were doing this while rock scrambling. which, for us, was enough to leave us dizzy and breathless. but it was fantastic because our laughter was contagious. at a stop light before the trail head, we got a young woman in a silver two-door mercedes to smile brilliantly. and fellow climbers on the descent did the same. we were loving life and they were loving that we were.

i live in such a beautiful area. and it pains me to look at it from afar, knowing i can no longer afford to buy a house within its limits. and knowing that there are people out there who have never looked at the valley from above. who have no desire to even consider looking.

today it was mine. ours. the sun and the dirt and the turning foliage and the boats skimming the hudson below all moved, blinked, fluttered, sailed for us.