Today is My Best Friend’s Birthday. I Haven’t Spoken to Him in Ten Years.

 We met way back in middle school. He was an awkward, gay, diplomat’s kid with a name Americans couldn’t pronounce. I was an equally awkward, too-tall misfit with red, flaky skin all over my face. 

Only a few months into sixth grade we were so attached at the hip that we were mistaken for siblings - both fair haired, green eyed, pale. 

Having a flair for the theatric, he would bring cake and balloons to school for my birthday. On those mornings, when he saw me he’d yell and run up to hug me. He’d tell people that we were twins and we’d act like those two creepy twins in the Shining, holding hands, blank stares, tilted heads. We went to the mall, the movies, all the typical hang outs for kids in the late 2000s. We were such frequent fixtures at each other’s homes that he and my parents used to joke that they loved him more than they loved me. 

I had never had a friend that was so ecstatic to be friends with me. Who I was so close to, who I saw so frequently, who my parents approved of. It felt intoxicating, exciting. 

Through the awkwardness of middle school and into the self discovery of high school, we remained close even as the winds of our adolescent development blew us farther apart. 

We saw each other less but I was still there for the big things - when he got his first boyfriend, when we snuck into our first drag show, and when his mother died in 9th grade. 

He was a social butterfly with friendships that spanned school districts and I was often allowed to exist at the periphery of these large social circles where he held court. He would even tell his new friends that I was his best friend. 

When we got to the age where “going out” carried more social weight, he’d insist that one of his friends do my hair and makeup before we went to birthday parties, quinceañeras or snuck into drag shows in DC. I was instructed to borrow clothes, to change my outfit - we had to be “cool”. 

His favorite phrase at this time was “fugly slut”. I wanted to avoid it being directed at me. 

When his dad made the decision to retire from the diplomatic service and move back to Brazil, I was devastated. He was one of my only consistent friends. I remember clinging to each other on his last day in the US and crying. 

When he left, all those connections I made through him shriveled. A solitary child, I had relied on him to water that garden and didn’t keep up the maintenance when he left. My social life became notably quieter, smaller, darker.  I made new friends, but had lots of falling out, lots of bad decisions, and lots of putting myself in dangerous situations. 

For the last two years of high school, he would fly back to the States annually for a couple weeks. He’d visit his friends and his older brother, who had married an American and still lived nearby. He’d always show up unannounced on my parent’s doorstep, and I would have to skip field hockey practice or whatever to spend time with him. 

I was always so excited to see him, to catch up on the school drama he had missed, on what it was like going to school in Brazil. 

Then I graduated and went off to college in a different city. I hadn’t seen him for a long while but a stream of WhatsApp messages and photo dumps kept us at least nominally connected. 

I had a hard time at the start of college - made friends with people who didn’t value me and were quite mean to me. After a few years, I got the hang of things and found “my people” in the anthropology and Spanish lit departments. I had internships and social justice work to keep me engaged and connected to people with similar values. 

Junior year of college, for my birthday my parents bought me plane tickets to Rio de Janeiro. I’d spend the entirety of my winter break in Rio visiting him. I was so excited. I started learning Portuguese on DuoLingo, started planning what I would bring, the places I wanted to see in Rio. 

On the day of my flight, I left my damp basement apartment in Baltimore to meet my parents at the airport. It was snowing and icy and as I drove down I-95, and on the other side of the highway, I passed what was left of a 40 car pile-up that had taken place the night before. Crushed cars, trucks, and jackknifed tractor trailers sat silent and still in a uniform layer of ice and snow. 

At airport security, I hugged my parents goodbye and let out a sob - yes, from happiness at going to see my friend, but also because this was my first time traveling outside the US and I was nervous. 

The trip started out really fun. We were excited to see each other and there was plenty to do. 

In the frenzy of catching up, I learned that he had graduated college but wasn’t working and didn’t know what he wanted to do next. His dad was paying his way while he was trying to break into the art scene as a gallery curator. He wasn’t having much luck but was optimistic that he’d “make it”. I didn’t get a chance to tell him much about college, or Baltimore, or all the stuff I was doing there. 

When we first got to his apartment in Niteroi, he wanted to go through my suitcases to see what clothing I had brought. I proudly held  up the hot pink swim suit I had bought from Victoria’s Secret just for this trip and he wrinkled his nose. 

He demanded that I buy a new swimsuit because the ones I brought from the US would give me a “diaper butt” and the color would make me look too pale. He wouldn’t want to be seen with me like that in front of his friends. On the walk to the store to buy a more suitable swim suit, I told myself it was fine and I’d have a fun souvenir. 

However, once we started looking, I realized that Brazilian swimsuits are uniformly thongs. I had never worn this type of swim suit, nor did I really want to - in the early 2010s, this was not a swimsuit style you would commonly see in the US. I dreaded having to wear it but told myself to try new things while I was in a new place, to push outside my comfort zone. With a new suit acquired, we could get on with the adventures. 

The trip continued to be great fun. We went to trendy neighborhoods and restaurants, lounged on the beach, made epic New Year’s Eve plans, and visited the rainforest town modeled after a village in Switzerland where his dad lived. 

Several days later back in Rio, walking to the beach with his friends and eating pastéis - an empanada-like fast food - one of his friends was asking me about life in the US and asked if there were pastéis in the US. My friend answered before I could that there weren’t. I responded that besides hispanic empanadas there are pasties, which are the English version of meat in a dough pocket. 

He started screaming at me that, no, that was not true, and that he speaks both languages better than I do and knows more than I do. His friends looked away, and I stood silently and stared at the black and white patterned bricks of the Calçadão de Copacabana.

After this, we didn’t speak for a few days. I was sleeping on the couch in the living room of his apartment and often I laid facing the wall to silently cry. He stayed in his room and marijuana smoke curled out from under his door. I would ask through the door if he wanted to go to museums and galleries with me, or to Sugar Loaf mountain, or any of the other local attractions, and he wouldn’t respond. I guessed the answer was ‘no’. 

I remember wishing so badly that I was back in snowy Baltimore in my dingy apartment, because I felt so abandoned and sad in paradise. I texted my dad and he assured me there was no way to change my flight itinerary. My parents asked me if everything was alright and I told them we weren’t getting along. They had plenty of excuses for him. 

I received the silent treatment for my final ten days in Brazil. 

When I finally left Rio de Janeiro, I also left behind our decade-long friendship. 

What happened there was an abrasion that opened old wounds I had made myself forget.

I had forgotten how small he made me feel, how he made me feel like I should be lucky to hang out with him, that everything was always on his terms, what he wanted when he wanted it. Our entire friendship, I was made to feel like I wasn’t enough. 

I blocked his phone number, his WhatsApp, his social media profiles. 

I never spoke to him about how I felt because how could I possibly sum up an entire adolescence of hurt into something he could understand? I knew that telling him these things wouldn’t change anything. 

Most of that trip was quite fun. My memories of Candomblé spirit possessions, dancing on the beach on New Years Eve, or snorkeling with a sea turtle are things I will remember forever. I’ll also remember the lessons that trip taught me about bad friends. 

***

Ten years on, when this time of year rolls around, I think about him. I remember my time in Brazil, and I wonder how he is and if he’s finally happy. I don’t want to reach out. I don’t want to know in any concrete way, but the misfit preteen girl in me hopes he’s doing okay.