52 New Friends

I met Rachel through a sorority sister.   We agreed to have our first meeting at a coffee shop late one afternoon.   Five minutes before I arrived, Rachel called to say that the coffee shop was getting ready to close.   Rachel, who lives downtown, had walked there so I pulled up alongside the curb and Rachel jumped in my car, ready to look for another location. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you not to get in the car with strangers?” I teased. “You aren’t a stranger.   We’re sisters.” And that’s just how trusting Rachel is.   She is a sensitive soul, a 6’1” blond Amazon.   She doesn’t drive because when she was fifteen she watched a friend get hit by car.   She’s been afraid to operate a vehicle ever since.   If she needs to go anywhere of any distance, she calls a Lyft or an Uber so she’s used to jumping into strange people’s cars.   I wasn’t even the first strange car she’d jumped into that day! Part of the reason Rachel may be so trusting is because she is learning disa

Four months ago, Nancy got laid off from her job.   She had been dealing with an abnormal mammogram for months and finally had surgery to remove her lymph nodes to solve the problem.   Her boss called her two days after her surgery to let her know that she had been let go.   Nancy had spent years at that company working as a recruiter in the financial industry, ensuring new recruits that it was a great company to work for, yet all the while knowing that those who were rude, malicious and back-stabbing where the ones who were most likely to get promoted.   It was a toxic environment.   Nancy admitted she probably should have left long ago.   Over the past few years, changes in the financial industry had caused lay-offs at her company.   Only they weren’t massive layoffs that caused hysteria.   It was sneaky.   Once, Nancy talked to Fred on Monday and by Thursday she was getting bounce back emails.   The layoffs were seemingly random.   They even took those who were good at

When Isaac was in college, a friend mentioned that they had another friend who attended the same university.   “You should meet up,” Dez said, in passing.   Of course, this was before the advent of Facebook so the introduction was conducted via myspace.   In the grand scheme of things, it should have been an insignificant meeting, a moment hardly worth mentioning in a life full of moments.   But Isaac and Amber had a remarkable number of things in common.   They had quite a few mutual friends and their lives in Florida seemed to have just missed each other right up to the point of their first interaction.   It was natural.   It was easy.   And Isaac and Amber fell deeply in love. But as time went on, feelings Isaac always had began to surface.   You see, when Isaac and Amber met, Isaac identified as a gay woman.   After college, Isaac began the process of transitioning into living as a man.   Amber and Isaac, who had made a career in social work, found themselves living in a sm

Brandon is onto something big.   He can feel it in his bones…as if his dreams are finally coming to fruition. He is an artist, a multimedia body artist.   What is that?   We met through friends so before our meeting, Brandon sent me an extraordinary image of a person dressed as a demigod, who seemed like they would fit in the Marvel universe.   But the image was remarkably life-like, as if they had walked out of a movie.   My first reaction was that it was cool, but I thought it to be rather large to be tattooed on someone.   That shows you how much I know!   The image Brandon sent me was of an actual person Brandon had visually transformed through the use of body paint and other elements you’d find at a craft shop.   He then poses his models and photographs them to create works of art that are simply amazing. He’s always been a creator.   In fact, at this point in his life, he is more comfortable creating than not creating.   He never wants to retire.   And he’s worked in virt