The last three months led up to this night.

After attending Opus 01, I knew I wanted to be a part of this.

John, as a true friend, flew from Toronto to be there for the night. Alex, who was doing a medical internship at a family practice in a nearby city, drove there. Even Pearl also dropped by and I got to meet her.

I was so busy talking with my guests that I didn’t even have time to go into the other rooms to see how the other artists were doing. The house was packed with people again, young and old.

Performances

Jacqueline’s second piece was Sonata in A Minor, by Franz Schubert (unfortunately, her first piece was over ten minutes long, which isn’t allowed on YouTube). I found it to be a rather masculine piece, beginning like a sombre funeral march, leading to a journey of bubbling emotion, so it was mesmerizing to see a girl play it with such conviction. Pay special attention to the burning trill at 5:28, which leads back to the main theme.

Misun told me that when she handed Jacqueline a rose after the performance, it looked like she had run a marathon.

Afterwards, Jacqueline told me after she couldn’t stop looking at my penis through her performance, then quickly corrected herself and said the penis picture, which was hung across from her.

Louise plays the harp by feeling only. She doesn’t have formal any musical training, so she doesn’t write any of her compositions down. It just flows from her fingers, and quite well I might add. As a result, her music is semi-improvised.

John kept telling us how not drunk he was, even though you can clearly seeing him downing glasses of wine in this video.

The after party

When the people left and the doors closed, the real party began for the artists, their guests, and the volunteers. Frédéric and Misun broke out the cold cuts, the fresh and fancy bread, the wine, the cheese and we celebrated a successful night. We had been standing for five hours, so it was time to take a break.

When Dan gave me a reading two years ago, and said that I would be making money off my art within the next 15 years, I never would have believed him.

The rite of passage for the males of our generation — the generation of the metrosexual and hairless pornstar — is getting waxed. As an act of true love for Sheila in enduring the pain, John asked me if I would clean up the hair on his back and arms. I agreed, as long as I could film it.

I suppose that near the end of the video my sadistic side comes out when I start to laugh, or dare I say, enjoy hearing him scream.

“This is like true friendship”, he says, “Waxing your best friends back when you’ve got a Y chromosome”.

Beth. Mysterions. Scratches, beats, drum rolls.

It’s funny. Sometimes I read confessions on group hug and someone will be going on about how they have this problem, but they can’t tell anyone because no one would understand. Almost every time, no matter what it is, my first reaction is to roll my eyes and think to myself, “Trust me, you probably know someone who understands”.

And then I realize that this isn’t true, because it isn’t true for me. There are quite a few things that I feel like I can’t tell my friends. Not because I’d be afraid of losing them over it, but because none of them have had the same experiences as me, thus rendering unable to help.

John is usually the first person I’ll tell my problems to because I’m most comfortable with him. I’ve known him for more than half my life, and he’s as fallible as me. I also have a lot more shit on him than he does on me (how do I keep John loyal…blackmail, hah). But generally I don’t want to tell him about my problems because he doesn’t think like me at all.

Pat is the person I’d most want to tell things to, simply because he has too much good in his heart and knows me well enough that I couldn’t possibly say or do anything to make him angry. Yet he’s the last person I end up going to for help or advice, just because he’s so busy. Sometimes I’ll tell Aaron and Trolley, but I don’t linger on things too long for fear of boring them.

I mean, what’s the point of telling someone who doesn’t think the same way or hasn’t been in the same situation? It’s not like they don’t care, they just actually don’t understand, so what could they possibly do to help (aside from direct involvement if the option is there, but if the option is there it wouldn’t be a problem). Sometimes, the most that a friend can do is lend an ear.

Sometimes it’s enough. Otherwise, there’s this.

My own, personal group hug.

If there was ever a time for John to put a contract on me, it would be now. Due to an unfortunate incident, he’s had to liquidate everything he has, take out tuition insurance, and assume a non-managerial position at Canadian Tire so that he doesn’t have too much money.

This is the guy who got accepted to UCC, got accepted to University College at the University of Toronto, finished his LSATs, and is waiting to get accepted to a law school. I also put his name down as the beneficiary on my assurance plan at work, so he’ll be receiving roughly $__k in the event of my death. I wasn’t sure if I was going to tell him, since I wouldn’t put a contract murder past him, but I figured that I couldn’t trust ANYONE in the world if I couldn’t trust him.

“I won’t whack you, no matter how much sense it seems to make”, he reassures me.

I don’t know why I didn’t figure this out before, but I guess the good thing is that I know better now. Maybe it was all too simple to see.

Friendship is all or nothing. Friends are the all, the ones I’d give my life for, the ones that I unconditionally accept. Non-friends are the nothing, the ones I couldn’t care less about. The ones that don’t fit in either category, due to insufficient information to make such a decision, are acquaintances (and some remain acquaintances forever).

Unconditional acceptance is the toughest part of friendship, because it’s the biggest commitment. It’s the biggest reason that I consider such few people to be my friends. It’s so easy to walk away when people change, when people grow apart. It’s not so easy to accept and understand, especially for someone as selfish and with as little tolerance as me. A friend is a friend for life.

I love you, Aaron.

I love you, Darren.

I love you, John.

I love you, Pat.