Reply #63: My best brainy, witty, silly, friendly, slightly twisted, endlessly amusing, always liberal friend. [View All]

[WritingIsMyReligion]

Basically I want someone who will do more than "keep up" with me; I want someone who will walk right alongside, a friend at least as much as a lover. So intelligence--yes, in the "snooty," traditional sense--is key: I want to be able to have long, terrifically geeky discussions over history, computers, math, science, books, music, philosophy, religion, politics, anything. I want to be able to read out random passages from books and be listened to, no matter how weird. I want to sit up late at night listening to old records and being enthusiastic together over "that stunner of a bassline" or "that odd turn-around right there" or "how his voice pitches up right there--how sweet!," anything like that.

I want to trade cheerful obscenities like old pals in a bar and make dirty jokes. I want to make obscure references and be understood--and given an awesome reference back!--immediately. I want to laugh insanely over the same inside jokes from 5 years before, just as if we had just discovered them at that moment. I want to be able to reminisce endlessly and tease. I want to be able to sit right next to this person, each of us totally immersed in something different from the other, yet have no awkwardness whatsoever. I want to stay up late talking, about anything and everything, like high school girls.

I want to know that this person distrusts war and distrusts authority and distrusts most of organized religion. I want to know that this person doesn't give a hoot about gay people marrying or abortion or any other gallywagging wedge issue. I want to know that this person cares about civil liberties and other cultures. I want to know that this person is eternally curious, about anything and everything.

I want my best friend. Why should you have a lover and a best friend, separately? Make 'em into one person and be done with it. :)