We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

by Samantha Irby

I mourned that relationship with Fred. I mourned it hard. Wrote a eulogy, had a funeral, shed a few tears, put flowers on its grave. When you break up with an asshole, it’s easy to just set fire to the shit and move on. But no one talks to you about ending a relationship that never sucked kinda amicably with your homie whom you still love to a degree and for whom you sort of want the best. No, you actually want him to be prosperous and happy. Not more prosperous or happy than you are, for sure, or all up in your face with it, but you aren’t actively wishing for homeboy to wind up homeless or hit by a city bus. I felt robbed, cheated of my silly daydreams of scribbling manuscript notes in a Moleskine as Fred stood in front of a nearby easel painting while listening to Kind of Blue on vinyl, but I wasn’t really mad at him. And I found myself wondering what he was doing. A lot. I’d hear a Quadron song and have to resist the urge to text him about it, or I’d throw my phone across the room like a grenade to keep from calling him to talk about a hilarious episode of Black Dynamite. I wanted to see Hiatus Kaiyote at the Double Door with him; I wanted to take him to this Afghani spot I had found in the suburbs with the most delicious mantoo and murgh chalau; I wanted to get his opinion on holistic remedies for my shitty, failing knees: I wanted my fucking friend back.