Last night I made a special appearance at the bar I used to work at to fill in a few empty spots on one of the busiest bar days of the year: Halloween weekend and Day Light Savings Day. (You'd actually be surprised how excited people get with this whole "We have an extra hour to be at the bar!" Really excited. Which I'm sure is awesome when you're on the other side of the bar and not tired and still exhausted from your night before Halloween party that may or may not had included dirty dancing with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.).
Anyway, also working the bar with me as a "one time only" bartender was my good friend Josh. We work together often. At coffee shops. Not at gay bars. But there we were with loud dance music screaming through the bar speakers and bottles sliding in and out of our hands.
See he's just cool like that. He's straight. He's got a fiance at home. He's all Josh and stuff who also doesn't mind crawling behind a bar and slinging drinks to help out a friend. That's just the type of guy he is. A good friend. A good person.
You will meet a lot of people. Tons. All the time. Some of those people are people you happy just to have a quick conversation with while in line at Starbuck's. Some people you only need to have around occasionally. Then there are others that you finally realize have defined you and will continue in aiding that definition as your friendship grows. They are the ones you owe forever "Thank Yous" to not for helping you hang picture frames or listen to you whine about that really really really bad date, but for just being there and rubbing off that high-end quality person vibe they radiate so naturally. They don't come around often.
"You guys are like a duo! You're like an act! You work well together!" says one of the guys that Josh and I had been serving for a few hours as I hand him back his change. "You get each other. You can just tell. You should do this more often!" He sways his arms around the bar to signify 'bartend together'.
And as I look at Josh handing a beer to a girl that probably doesn't really need another beer, I totally agree with the guy. Not with bartending. We both(yes, I'm going to say this at the risk of being moaned at by everyone older than me) are getting to old to stay out past our bedtimes. But I agree that I should do this more often: have moments when you realize you are a better person for the good friends in life.
It's funny. Some people spend their lives looking for that one love. The core shaker. The type of love that you see in movies with Richard Gere or Meg Ryan. But, in life, you are more lucky if you meet a friend that makes you look across a gay bar in the mist of coasters and drinks and drunk people and Madonna remixes and say to yourself: Dang, he rules.