4

Discovering Their "Things"

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Every clique of friends has a list of "things" they identify themselves with. Maybe you and your friends' list of things includes dry humor and comic books, or maybe it's excessive drinking followed by groveling apologies, or maybe it's rampant, unapologetic racism. This can also be thought of as a collective quirk, a particular thing this new group of people seems to be all about. The first I noticed with this new group was hummus. I had never known people for whom hummus was a thing to get hard over. Then I inherited friends who so ferociously ate the stuff at gatherings that my life became a reality show sponsored by Sabra.

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"I'll tell ya, when life gets me down and I want a creamy pick-me-up, I dip pita chips in paste."

I had never thought much of the khaki-colored chickpea mush. I always felt like it was better suited as an industrial adhesive. But I had to learn to accept this as an official "thing" of theirs. "Things" are a shortcut into good graces. They can just as easily be a sink hole to Hell. Their "things" are the greatest hits of who they are. Don't like one? That's a huge chunk of their long-standing group dynamic you recoil from like it's a pungent fart.

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"No! Please! No more Star Trek references!"

3

Comparing And Contrasting Our Cliques

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It wasn't until I gained dual citizenship in two circles of friends that I realized my friends, the ones I've had for years, are assholes. That's the way we like it. We're not gift-givers. We're not even ones to acknowledge each other's birthdays beyond a belated happy birthday text a few days later. My friendships burn low but far, like an ion thruster.

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"Friendship Thrusters, Engage!"

Being in that friend-scape for so long, I assumed every group of friends was that way. My circle and our antics became my definition of how friendships are and should be. We are a stereotypical group of men: Empathy and sentimentality toward each other is inversely proportional to our high levels of cynicism and sarcasm. We've come to view that as a trademark of our crew. If we had a secret handshake that perfectly expressed who we are, it would be a series of mumbles and stern middle fingers. That's how I assumed everyone else was.

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"Greetings!"

2

Finding A Place In Their Nostalgic Conversations

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If you've never navigated through long-standing friendships you've been thrown into by association and not choice, imagine showing up a decade late to a raging party. You show up to the address on the Facebook invite page, but now there's a Korean family eating dinner where your party should have been.

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"So ... you're not down to get fucked up?"

The only thing left is to reminisce about all the crazy shit that used to happen. One guy swung from a chandelier. Another shat in a piano and then played it immaculately. Someone else fucked everyone in attendance to completion in seven minutes and all agreed he was a decent lay for four of them. By all accounts, this was the friendship to end all friendships, and you're showing up right around when everyone's starting to look back with fondness for the days when they really had fun.

Tossing around names of people I'll never meet, but maybe that's good because, according to everyone, they were a stupid cunt who should die. Tales of the time they'd waste after school, the teachers they hated, the adventures they had, the weirdos they knew. It's like sitting in on a bunch of World War II vets shooting the shit about the war years, but instead of a war it's sixth-period English.

1

Fake Laughing Until You Get Their Jokes

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When it comes to a shared sense of humor, I lucked out. I have never in my life clicked with a group's sense of humor more quickly and thoroughly than I did with my friends. With everyone else in life, I'm not so fortunate; my inherited circle of friends included.

I would often find myself in a room full of people, wondering why the hell everyone was laughing at something someone said. It was beyond not getting the joke; I didn't get the perspective. I didn't get who they were and why this particular string of words would be funny to this particular group. They had their own definition of funny, and their own set of references and language that triggered laughs. All that shit led to falling back on a tried-and-true evolutionary mechanism as basic to human survival as eating and sleeping: fake laughing.

Faking it is a placeholder. It's saying, "This noise supplants understanding what the hell is going on right now." If I don't do it, the actual look on my face would be the same one people make when they're trying to solve the murder in Clue.

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"One -- or all -- of you are actively trying to murder this conversation with shitty jokes."

It's through this that I finally learned what it means when people say laughter is subjective. If you laugh at something and I don't, getting to know you can eventually broaden my perspective to the point of maybe, possibly, one day understanding why you laughed, maybe even laughing at it too. But until that day of enlightenment arrives, keep fake laughing until you're wondering if you have enough humanity left in you to experience real laughter anymore.

Luis is currently living as one of many stolen identities as he infiltrates cliques across America. Meanwhile, you can find him on Twitter and Tumblr.

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