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...

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...

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 ...

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...

One of the joys of Mark’s life is the high rise condo he owns overlooking Tempe Town Lake.   It’s a small, one bedroom dwelling with clean lines, unbefitting to any clutter.   The building residents are friendly and familiar, making the tower a community.   The views are incredible, and if Mark leaves for an international traveling adventure, the space is virtually unchanged from the moment he closes the door to the moment he returns.   Mark loves the simplicity it gives his life.   It is his sanctuary. And for Mark, he finds genius in simplicity.   He likes to walk places when he has the opportunity.   He loves riding his bike and dining in quaint, local restaurants.   He loves music and cars.   A sticker to put on his wheels might be the thing that brings him an enormous amount of joy that day.   And he does feel a lot of joy in his life.   His motto is “Enjoy Life Daily” and often, he does.   Of course, no one can be ...

Ashton is a twin.   The pair couldn’t be more identical.   In fact, they are so identical one twin usually doesn’t survive.   The babies were taken from their mother’s womb at thirty-two weeks and the only differences between the two are the hormonal ones after birth…yet Ashton’s sister always knew there was something different about Ashton.   Ashton knew it too. The pair had a cookie-cutter childhood in Ahwatukee, Arizona, where the homes were new and the neighborhoods were filled with white, middle-class families.   The twins were honor students.   They went to church every Sunday.   Ashton had a particular affinity for art.   The twins chose to go to a Christian college in Spokane, Washington and it was during those years where this story gets really interesting.   Ashton’s sister identifies as a lesbian woman.   Ashton identifies as non-binary, which means that on a gender line where male is on one side and female is on ...

In celebration of making twenty-six new friends in six months, I decided to release a video on social media that a local news station had produced back in January featuring my ‘52 new friends’ project.   As I expected, I received messages from people who wanted to stick their hands up in support of the project.   Fred was one of the first to jump on board. I met him in a quaint little coffee shop in downtown Gilbert.   The shop, itself, was small but just outside was a yard full of mismatched seating and greenery.   It reminded me a bit of the time I had spent in Portland, Oregon.   And Fred seemed to blend right in with his walking shorts and his t-shirt featuring a local band.   We ordered our coffee and found a seat with some shade, in front of the misters.   It was still early in the day but certainly warm, as Arizona mornings tend to be.   Fred grew up in Vancouver, Washington, which is just on the other side of Portland making the amb...

Confession:   I’ve always wanted to be an actress.   I think it started in the high school drama club, the endorphins you get performing in front of a crowd that is fixated on your every movement and emotion.   I wasn’t particularly good at it.   I have a difficult time controlling my eyes and facial movements that react honestly, in the moment and often can’t be duplicated.   But I am fascinated by those who have that gift. So when a friend suggested I sit down with a real life actress, I leapt at the opportunity.   There were so many questions I had about people who live their lives portraying others.   I’d always had a notion that great actors must have, at some point in their lives, developed a skill for putting on a façade in their real life in order to escape that reality.   Debbie told me that wasn’t really the case.   Great acting is about putting on a coat of someone else’s back story to wear during the duration of the perform...

Do you affect the world?   Or does the world affect you? Last Saturday, Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Arizona hosted a LGBTQ Awareness seminar.   Since I’m a Big Sister, I was invited.   I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting but when I arrived, the majority of the attendees were men.   At the very beginning of the seminar, a man behind me asked, “Isn’t this all just a choice?”   I could immediately feel tensions rise around the room like an earthquake.   The facilitators and the audience had a lot to say, but there was one man at the far end of the table where I was sitting who calmly waited until everyone else said their peace.   When finally he was called on to speak, he turned to the man behind me and said, “I am biracial.   So in school when they passed out forms for you to check a box beside your ethnicity, I could neither check the box that said ‘white’ nor the box that said ‘black’ without denying some part of myself. ...

Mary grew up as the only girl in a household with five boys.   She was largely sheltered as a child.   So when she was of the age to go to college, she wanted to break out and spread her wings.   That’s why she left her home in New York to attend Arizona State University.   It was far enough away that she felt like she was on her own but she did have a brother who was also attending ASU, just in case she ever needed anything.   She never did. Once when she was home on summer break, she was with a friend at local hangout when the most handsome man she’d ever seen came up to talk to her.   He was 6’4” and gorgeous.   He also lived in the area.   They went on a date the next night and continued the relationship even when she went back to ASU.   She was wild about him!   They talked about a future together, getting married.   And then, he missed a phone call he normally would have made.   At first, Mary made excuses for him....

A long time friend, who is the general manager of an assisted living facility, suggested that since I was making new friends, I should come and visit some of the residents at her facility…and I thought, “What a great idea!”   When I was a kid, my church group regularly visited a nursing home just up the street.   Where had that habit gone?   I couldn’t remember.   But it’s been years since I’ve heard of anyone visiting the elderly. It took a while to coordinate on my part but I finally found a time that would work.   My friend, Amey, greeted me, took me on a tour of the facility and told me she knew just who I should meet.   Eventually, she stood in the doorway of one of the rooms, introduced me to Betty and then she was gone.   I walked into the dimly lit room and smiled at the woman sitting in a wheelchair.   She asked me to pardon the mess.   She’d just moved in.   She told me that she’d apparently had a stroke.   “You ...

Sometimes a girl just wants to see a movie.   And sometimes, particularly if you are single, no one is available to go with you.   This was my plight a few weeks ago.   So what did I do?   I went by myself!   Only I arrived WAY too early and found myself sitting on the bench outside the theater.   The hallway was virtually empty.   I tried playing on my phone but the wifi connection was bad.   So I sighed, leaned back into the wall and entertained myself by watching people passing by. I’d been sitting there for about fifteen minutes when I saw an older woman, in her seventies, coming towards me in a bright pink tshirt that said, “Be Happy”.   As she was walking past the recycling bin, she read the sign aloud:   “Recycle your glasses”.   She then moved her hand to the spectacles on her face and said, “But I like mine!”   I giggled and she smiled at me.   “I know what they meant,” she said.   “I know…but...

Having to find a date for my friend, Katie’s wedding launched me right back onto the hamster wheel that we all know as online dating.   To be honest, I don’t agree to go out with many guys.   There are just so many that you must have sorting criteria and you have no idea if you are weeding out someone you might actually get along with…or not.   Either way, it hasn’t been an entirely successful endeavor for me…and yet, I’m still drawn to it like a moth to a flame. A few weeks ago, I got a message from a guy so I checked out his profile…and as I was reading through it, I started to laugh.   He was a handsome guy but he was literally twice my size, solid muscle, covered in tattoos with a long black beard and gauges in his ears.   The thought of this Jason Momoa-look-alike sitting next to me, the conservative-looking, tattooless girl, somehow tickled my funny bone.   So much so that I actually responded back by saying, “Thanks for the laugh!   We wo...

I’d been lured across the breezeway at the Mesa Arts Center with the promise of cupcakes.   A decorated table displaying a full array of decadent cupcakes sat at the bottom of the stairway.   I slowly stalked the full length of the table, eyeing the cupcakes, each one more delicious-looking than the next and finally settled on a chocolate-on-chocolate number that made me salivate.   I picked it up and immediately realized how difficult it was going to be to eat a cupcake gracefully.   Strategically thinking that I needed some type of support, I meandered over to an area of tables, slowly dismembering the paper from around the bottom of the cupcake.   I had no sooner taken a bite when I was suddenly sharing my table with a couple.   Another couple came up right behind them.   We all engaged in small talk but I was very consciously aware of the woman to my left.   She was older than me, but confident and elegant in a way that I’ve always asp...