Ashleigh Young reflects on the nature of friendship: online, offline and old school
I receive a strange, formal message request on Facebook. "I am seeking someone of your name who once resided at this address in New Zealand." The address is in my home town, and the message is from someone named Ben. I know him immediately. As a kid, I posted a "Pen pal wanted" ad on an internet message board. Ben and I began to email each other. I didn't know he was a divorced man in his 50s in California and, he says, he didn't know that I was a 12-year-old girl in New Zealand. "When I realised, it was too late," he writes. We became friends.
Looking back, I think surely there was some sinister intent on Ben's part? There had to be. This was the internet in the 90s. But he seemed conservative, even a bit square. He wrote to me about tennis (doubles), his tennis injuries and his work as a radiologist. He liked sentimental poetry and had a strong faith in online IQ tests. He critiqued a poem of mine, saying that the line "people swarming like ants" was a cliche. I didn't send him any more poems after that. He talked a lot about a film called Il Postino and his love of Barbra Streisand. He sent me a Barbra mixtape, which was unbearable. In return I sent him a mixtape of the Smashing Pumpkins and the Muttonbirds, both of which he seemed a bit lukewarm about. He rang me up once and his accent evoked tennis whites and legal dramas. I asked if he'd received my email that day. He said, wearily, "Aww, you know . . . I've had emails flying around." It sounded impossibly grown-up, to have emails flying around.
As I grew older, I became impatient with our correspondence. I had lost patience for Barbra Streisand and tennis injuries. One day, after we'd been writing for three years, I wrote a curt message to say I didn't want to write anymore. Ben said that although he was sorry, it was fine. He wished me well. Then we didn't talk for more than 20 years.
I keep reading articles where a person in their 30s begins to worry that they have no friends. Old friendships have slipped away, succumbing to the pressure of families and careers. In these articles the writer tries to make new friends – night classes, apps, whisky tastings – and they come away feeling optimistic or they realise that, in fact, they do have lots of friends after all. They just needed to talk to them. Like the "I've discovered wild swimming" article, the "I don't know how to make friends in my 30s" article suggests that if you make yourself momentarily uncomfortable, you will be rewarded. I love these articles and cheer on the writer as they zero in on a new friend, while also secretly hoping that they fail and the article takes an odd turn as the writer gives up on human friends and opens an animal sanctuary to enjoy the company of chickens, ducks, and sheep.
