Beve's British Invasion

"C'est mon frère, mon plus bel ami de coeur
C'est mon air, mon oxygène, mes heures
C'est mon frère, mon plus bel ami de coeur
C'est mon air, mon âme soeur"

Ame Soeur (2010) by Jena Lee

My French is bad non-existent but I think this chanson is about friendship. is it not?

This post was sitting in my drafts folder since early August because I have no idea how to write it - so I'll just stop trying. Beve flew down from London sometime at the end of July, stayed over for one night and ate more meals than anyone can safely consume over the course of 24 hours. I took her up St Paul's hill in the evening and down Jonker Walk at night because she never really did the whole tourist routine when she was here the year before. Then, we went and caught a midnight screening of Inception because she hadn't seen it and I hadn't seen it a second time. That's was what happened, more or less.

Beve is short for Beverly and it's supposedly pronounced like "bevy" but it's been "beef" in my mind from the very start so that's not something I can ever change now. It's not my fault. It should have been spelt Bevë to indicate that the last vowel isn't silent.

This is she, drinking something which sounded nice but tasted meh.

We met almost 4 years ago over the internet when I was working out my traumatic breakup with the Ex-Grrrfriend™ and talking to a random 18 year old teenage girl seemed like the most natural thing to do at the time. Maybe I was just picking up from the time I disappeared into a 3-year-long socially sequestered, dangerously obsessive relationship of mutually assured destruction when I was 18, I don't know. Teenage girls are neither known for the sophistication of their thoughts nor the coherence of their speech, but I lucked out with Beve - even though she wasn't particularly coherent. She was my confidante, my psychotherapist, and my nonsense-conversation-haver during the multiple manic episodes I had. Above all, she was a friend. She was a friend not in the we-hang-out-and-do-stuff sense of the word. She was a friend who helped me carry the weight of life in the wake of a heartbreak so I could live again.

I never really thanked her so I guess this is as good a time as any to do that. Thanks, Beve. Thanks for saving me from myself and thanks for being someone I could trust completely. Thanks for all the long distance calls and impromptu webcam piano recitals you performed for me. Thanks for everything. I'm sorry it took me this long to say this. I'm also sorry I told you that your sister is cute.

Oh wow, that was actually pretty mushy but y'know, in a platonic kind of way.

The roofless ruin of St Paul's Church.

We spoke last week over MSN and she said how we are really acquaintances now rather than proper friends. We haven't been talking in any meaningful sense of the word for a long while now after I got together with Phoebs and she with Nikhil. It's only natural for us to drift apart when so much of our worlds have been taken over by the passage of time, adulthood and other-halves. I regard the gains and losses of friends as necessary evils of life and I'm not someone who would work to maintain them like some sort of friendship janitor - never bothered since my high school years, personally. I am a bit emotionally aloof that way.

Dreadlocked man and the street musician.

That's also one of the reasons why I appreciate Beve so much; I feel I can just say almost anything to her. I once told her it wouldn't matter terribly to me if we stop being friends someday - probably because I'm just a terrible person. For some reason, the thought of those words sickens me a little now.

I understand that sometimes I can be a difficult person to reach, as anyone who has ever been close to me can attest. I always appreciate it when anyone tries, and I'm certainly glad on the rare occasions they succeed.

Beve reminds me of cats. No idea why.

I like to think that the fact we can still be so frank about the state of our friendship means that we are still pals, sort of. Isn't that what friends are for? The bad weather, the meteor showers and the storms at sea? Okay, I know I suck at expressing myself but I have a story. Once a girl (we'll call her Girl #1) complained to me about her best friend (Girl #2) who practically ditched her after she got a boyfriend, but after that fell apart, Girl #2 decided to crawl back to Girl #1 to look for post-breakup sisterly support. Girl #1 asked me if she should take her back. She asked indignantly, "What sort of friend would forget about you once she got together with some guy?".

I said, "What sort of friend are you then, if you aren't there when she needs you most?"

An antique Baba-Nyonya house slash dessert shop.

I'm sure Beve and I don't need each other now, and I'm not sure if she would ever need me - but I would be a real shitty friend indeed if I can't promise that I'll always be there for her. Just in case.

So, that's my promise to you, kiddo.

Some British poseur.

P.S. Happy 21st birthday, by the way. And I do know that that's next week, you twit.



Your friend,
Po