These roommates, now both engaged, I no longer speak to. I wish I did though. I wish I would hear from them sometimes. I have occasionally dreamt up ridiculous scenarios involving these long lost college friends. In these dreams, I envision myself as a ghostly member of my friends' social circles. I follow them around and make up stories about them. I hover above and between them, in a misty cloud of smoke, as we travel to a college party. I pretend to know what they are thinking, to attempt to understand the motives behind their actions.
Kirt does not make appearances in my dreams. I would never have met Kirt without some luck. I consider my meeting him as being sort of lucky. He may never have existed in my life if I had not met him awkwardly one fall afternoon 4 years ago. On that day, my car was broken down. My car was parked outside my apartment, a few blocks away from Kirt's house. I was condescendingly looking at my car when Kirt walked right up behind me and asked me what had happened to my car. He scared the hell out of me. I was so confused. I was 19 at the time, and was at a loss for words. I wanted to get rid of him. I was angry about my car and I thought he for sure was going to talk my ear off and then probably ask me for money. Kirt is a 38 year old black guy that has lived his entire life under his parents roof.
A good friend of mine, whose closeness in my life has varied, described Kirt in a way that I've always thought fit him best. My friend said to me, "He's a symbol of how cruel and selfish this world is." All Kirt wants is a friend, and the only frustrating part of that to me is that he is always trying. He doesn't understand what it means to be a friend. Our friendship grew over time. Sometimes I remember wishing I could yell at him "I'm your friend damnit!" I got more and more comfortable with him. I got in the habit of calling him "my really good friend". It made him feel good. It was probably about 3 months after I first met Kirt that I started inviting him over. Before that, I would talk to him at the park across from my apartment or in the streets. My roommates, whose inferiority complex is rooted in their hatred towards people they don't understand, immediately disregarded Kirt. They started to talk to and treat me differently and would make snide remarks at me. "Who is that guy and why do you keep bringing him over here." It would be a more honest series of questions if I had asked them the same questions about the dickheads they would bring over.
I can sound like a condescending world despising bigot from time to time. Not only can I sound like one, I most surely am one. You should always be taking steps to understand yourself, and for a long time, I didn't want to. In some ways, I was just as much of an immature prick as my roommates were. My friendship with Kirt helped me combat my feelings of low self worth. After becoming close to Kirt and seeing him almost everyday, I realized how much I enjoyed his company. Although it's wrong, I started to take pleasure in the fact that my peers thought I was "A really strange guy". I would bring Kirt along to my various intramural games and he was happy. I made it a personal goal of mine to try and reveal the hypocrisy in others. People would glare at me and I would rejoice in the hate. People would stare at Kirt and he would look back at them with what he calls his "Rose colored glasses."
I wish my life was as simple as his. Wake up, walk around the neighborhood, go to work in the mall, come home. His mind is so simple, and he's so honest to a point where he could bring out the best in me. He is treated so unfairly by people and he is somehow unaffected by so much of it. Not all the time though. I've seen him at a low point, a time he told me he'd never had a friend like me "to talk to about this stuff."
I was in my bed watching tv and shuffling my poker chips, when I noticed Kirt's mood change. He was sitting next to me in my leather chair and started to ask me work related questions. I was giving him halfassed answers, I wasn't really listening. I had never seen Kirt get emotional and I felt guilty afterwards for not listening to him right away. He was trying to get me to settle down and listen to him, which I wasn't doing this night. My mind would occasionally drift off when he came over to my house, and I felt infinitely more relaxed when he was around. After he had asked me an unusual amount of questions, I turned off the tv and gave him the proper attention.
He started to talk to me about the new position he was getting pushed into at work. I'd heard him talk about it before. After some 15 years spent working as a shoe salesman at an athletic store, management was attempting to give Kirt more responsibility. Earlier that week, he had told me how much he didn't want the new job because of the responsibility he would have towards his other employees. I've met his manager. At first glance she appeared to be a complete bitch, an opinion I further developed after speaking with her. She hurt Kirt in a way I would have never known until this random night. She wouldn't listen to Kirt. Kirt didn't want the added responsibility, but this bitch decided she was going to put him through the management training process anyway. Kirt told me that an employee, a guy he considered his friend, yelled at him because Kirt informed on him for attempting to steal a pair of Jordan's.
Kirt struggled to talk to me about a staff meeting that had occurred earlier at his work that day. Kirt was made a fool of by this employee, a thief who was surely using Kirt and doesn't want to be his friend. Fuck him. I cried for Kirt. Although he didn't explain the meeting to me very well, I knew Kirt was being honest with me. His tears were real, and so were mine. He was slouched over crying in my leather chair. This middle aged black man was crying his eyes out in front of me. His large black hands were making attempts at hiding his face. He was embarrassed and confused to be sharing his emotions. I felt like shit because I wish I had been more ready to hear his thoughts. I wanted to walk into his work and punch that guy in the face.
.
At one point he said, "It's not you, stop thinking that". I thought about this for awhile. In tears, I was thinking about how I could make it all better for him. I felt incredibly strange all the sudden. His life is not mine, I reminded myself. How stupid is it to have to remind yourself of something like that? I can't give Kirt a sort of stubbornness to just dismiss people. He never talks to his parents about anything. If I wasn't there for him, who was going to be? Nobody.
I love Kirt. I love to entertain him with some bullshit and he makes me feel like a person. The jokes I come up with make him smile and that makes me feel good. He can frustrate the fuck out of me sometimes though, this if for sure. I don't see him everyday anymore, and I don't want to text him constantly. I have to convince myself that I don't have to talk to him everyday if I don't want to. It used to be easy to see Kirt because he lived a few blocks away from me, which is no longer the case. If he had some issue that really required my attention then I of course would give it to him.
There was one time that I was laying on my bedroom's carpet and he came up behind me. He wanted to know if I wanted a back massage. He proceeded to step on my back. I felt powerfully bonded to him by this experience. He was stepping on me and it felt good. My back wasn't sore from the basketball I had played earlier that day, and the pleasure I received from this experience was entirely mental.
He texts me sometimes and conjures up some pretty crazy bullshit. He asked me once if I was bragging while playing basketball. "O were you bragging?" Another time he texted me and asked if he was doing anything wrong. He was somehow convinced that he was doing wrong. I don't remember what we were talking about. Doesn't matter. I had to convince my good friend that he wasn't doing anything wrong. His blatant honesty is valuable.. a soothing addiction. I don't think he has ever been comfortable being alone with someone before he met me.
Simply put, Kirt is a gangsta. An honest person. A friend I desperately needed and was fortunate to find.
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