I asked a man to lunch today, I’ve known him for years, but we’ve only talked in passing, saying hello in restaurants and as we pass on the street. He’s a musician, a creative, and also has taught school in different places.

He also loves to take pictures.

I’d like for us to be friends.

He’s my age and plays with musicians from all over the country. He’s talented and respected.

He’s nice, with a bit of an edge. I know about edges.

He’s creative. He didn’t play music to share his suffering; he plays music to play music. Like me, he doesn’t talk politics. He’d rather play his music.

As I’ve written, friendships have been difficult for me, and I’m just beginning to understand some of the reasons why.

One reason is that I make people uncomfortable. I can’t really say why.

I do know when you have the psychological problems I had,  you are not available to people, not for love or friendship. You cannot have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person,  especially if you are an unhealthy person.

I have come to understand that my blog is also a major impediment to friendship, especially around here. People who read my blog think they know all about me, but people are more complicated than that, the blog is just one part of me, other parts never make it there.

You can know a lot about a person from his or her blog, but you cant get the whole story there.

People who read my blog faithfully sometimes make for uncomfortable friends in person; they know everything I have to say before I say it. That was not the case at lunch today. My new friend knew nothing about me. It was great.

Sometimes people get taken with their idea of my life in a way that is unhealthy and false. There is no perfect life, and I certainly don’t have one or want one.

Online friends are more comfortable with making, and I have made some good ones.

But we are careful not to try to see each other in the material world. We seem to instinctively know the dangers in that, a hard-earned lesson for me.

The blog makes people nervous.

They’re afraid I’m going to write about them, or in some cases, are afraid I’m not going to write about them. People are twitchy about my proclaimed openness and search for authenticity.

I have been surprised to learn over the years that the idea of living an open life spooks people; they find it disquieting and unsettling.

People are always telling me they could never be as open as I am, but if I were writing book memoirs instead of blog posts, the critics would chew me up for being boring and predictable. People are afraid to be open.

They don’t know that not having secrets is the safest thing in the whole world to do. It’s being found out that frightens people. Nobody can say anything about me that I have not written myself.

Openness makes many people uncomfortable; I sometimes feel as if I have a big firecracker strapped to my belt. One friend stopped talking with me because I suggested he start a blog to sell his work. He was offended.

Some people think I’m famous and fall into that trap. You can’t be famous with a famous person if you are not famous.

Several people have become obsessed with me in an unhealthy way because of the blog; it can work the same way as a movie on certain people; they confuse productivity with fame.

Some people seem to be friends but aren’t. Some friends use me and flee, or need to be pushed away.

I am not famous, not in any way. Jeff Bridges, who played me in an HBO movie, is legendary. I am not.

I asked this man, this possible friend,  to lunch.

We met at Jean’s Place, which he also loves and appreciates. We both ordered breakfast for lunch. I was pleased to learn my new friend didn’t look at my blog and knew nothing about the Army Of Good or the Mansion or Bishop Maginn High School.

He knew very little about me, except that I wrote books which he never read.

He didn’t know of any of the stories I had to tell, so they were attractive to him.  And funny. He didn’t know I have a cute puppy, or that I dog therapy work.

And I am a storyteller; I like telling stories about the interesting elements of my life.

Stories – telling and listening – are how I connect with people. I am ravenous for their stories.

As since my friend has no blog, I didn’t know his stories either, and the stories he told me were fresh and exciting to me

My lunch friend also is very busy, thus very bounded. He’s not on fire to see the farmhouse, meet the animals, or take my writing classes.

Since he knows little to nothing about me, I know he wants nothing from me, and I want nothing from him other than to have lunch once in a while and talk about the world,  the creative life, which we did today for two hours.

We talked, for example, about the ironies of Jean’s Place. We are confident that every single person who eats there have radically different political views than we do. Yet we feel more comfortable at Jean’s Place than any other place we go.

How could this be?

Perhaps, I said, the answer is that at Jean’s Place, everyone is treated equally: as a hungry human looking to be made welcome.

We talked for a long time about the cultural complexity of rural life, people like us,  people like them, outlanders, refugees who will always be apart. In the country, you need your neighbors, so we tolerate one another, but we spend very little time with each other.

I love conversations like that.

I’ve shed the stereotypes and fantasized notions of friendship. I don’t need or want to talk with my new friend every day, or every other day, or even every week. There’s no drama, no giving of expensive gifts, not intruding on each other’s lives.

I have no interest in saving him; he has no interest in saving me.

I don’t want friends the way most people wish to friends; I’m not good at conventional friendships, I’m too tied up in the things I do. My new friend loved to hear about the Army Of Good and the work we are doing at the Mansion and Bishop Maginn High School.

He said what he heard about the Army Of Good made him less cynical and suspicious of life. He made me feel good about the work I am doing, and I told him he was helping people all the time by playing some beautiful music.

I think we both appreciated this conversation.

I wanted to hear about his music and the bands he plays in and the music he writes and plays on his instrument. I wanted to hear about the poor pay musicians get, and the difficult people they encounter at their gigs.

We had a good time. We talked quickly and openly; we laughed a lot and had a lot in common. We saw the world in pretty much the same way gossiped about the same people, had the same reactions.

I leaned over at the end and said, “Hey, let’s be friends,” and he said sure, “I’d like that,” and we agreed to get together again after the holidays, we’re both pretty busy until the New Year. I’ve never asked anyone in my life to be friends; this is either a great leap forward or a regression.

I don’t have high expectations for this friendship or any other friendship. That’s important. If we have lunch once in a while, that would be a great friendship for me.

Talking to him like that today, I realized I am lonely for friends to talk to like that, I miss conversations like the one we had today. It’s brain food for me, nourishing and stimulating.

For now, that’s all I want. And that maybe all I ever wish to; I am pretty content with the structure of my life right now.

I can’t have everything I want, but I do have most of the things I’ve always wanted. So I don’t need to push friendship beyond where it naturally wants to go.

I think real friendship has come late in my life because I was so messed up for so long. I accept this. If friendship comes to me at all, it will come in its way and its own time.

That’s the deal for me, that’s the life I choose. I have no complaints about it at all.