everywhere in the world has different words for “friend”
i’ve given a side-wards glance to the word “buddy”
resigning it to comic books, novels… vernacular from the past.
quaint.
but always with humour
if not completely contrived.
BUT
i’ve been changing my mind in the last year…
last September, while i was in New York (go see: i didn’t journal at all)
i was hanging out with a friend who grew up in this town
— and i laughed
how he used the word “buddy”
not because the word is absurd
but the idea of such a friend…
a Pal…
.. it’s a concept that’s nearly alien to me
a casual friend
a circumstantial friend
but a friend with intimate care and concern…
is this for real?
i grew up a lonely kid in a cornfield
no friend i trusted as a friend
for fear he’d turn on me and beat me up
or that he was only friendly with me
coz everyone else beat him up too..
i look through the city for clues…
When i arrived in the city two months ago
i noticed an ad on the subway to promote quiting smoking
“My Buddy’s a Quitter!”
two chubby men on a construction site
arms over eachother’s shoulders
big smiles
Buddy.
maybe i thought it odd from his mouth
because of the Straight connotations i give it…
that
“we don’t fuck, but we care about eachother”
is almost rare to me these days…
though, admittedly, it is something i often crave
last night
at the More Gardens meeting
a girl here…
a Native New Yorker
talks about her new Beau…
“he’s been a buddy of mine for a long time… then we started smooching a week ago…”
then he comes over
and they’re hanging out
Buddies.
Ah…
the intimacy that comes from knowing people
being with them
loving them
then? where does it go?
does the tongue pass the lips?
hand slide down the back to grip the butt?
wake up in bed in the morning
still laughing and smiling
and handing eachother a cup of coffee?
this type of casual intimacy has always seemed false to me
… only because of its foreignness…
0 thoughts on “buddy”
beastbriskett
I can see how buddy could seem artificial to you. It’s one of those vague words, and therefore either very useful, or very aggravating.
It’s a very common term here in the west, that is, until Dude came into use.
I call my intimate friends buddies, whether that entails sex or not. Then comes Friends, aquaintences, what was your name again, and who-the-fuck-are-you?
clarkelane
I have a friend who lives in Newfoundland who uses “buddy” much in the way that I would use the word “guy.” It’s disconcerting to hear her say, “How’s buddy we met down the bar,” when she’s inquiring about a friend of mine whose name she can’t recall.
My ex called me buddy in an affectionate way… I always thought it was cute.
dominicvine in reply to clarkelane
well, it’s certainly used here like that too
“hey buddy, get outta da way!”
and yeah.. i remember having friends who refered to eachother in a pet way as “buddy”
but they said it like clowns
… once again
it was a comic word…