Cronyism

My freshman year of college, I fell for this uniquely insane woman in my philosophy class largely because she could argue like a drunk, angry sonuvabitch and fought with me tooth and nail on everything from Plato’s innate ideas to Kant’s moral philosophy, agreeing with me only on the opinion that everyone else in our reading group was a complete and utter dolt. (Cue the Gilbert Gottfried voice: “Oh there’s a big surprise! I think I’m going to have a heart attack and die because of that surprise.”) But this pale, mousy vixen, on top of being completely mad, had a boyfriend.

And then she didn’t have a boyfriend, or at least not really, well it’s hard to explain, You see we just started dating so quickly after we got here as freshmen and bla bla bla college bla bla bla other people bla bla bla take me to your dance already. And I don’t think that ever ended up meaning I was her boyfriend, but I was tangled up enough in the whole bamboozle to suffer a massive sphincter-clench when her erstwhile and future boyfriend shot me an email inviting me to a party in his dorm a couple weeks later. For some reason, I actually went, even though I could not rule out the possibility that there would be Roofies in my Natty Light and the gang of five suitemates would weigh my body down to the bottom of St. Mary’s lake with chains and dumbbells.

About 9 months later, I was moving into their dorm, having put it at the top of my list of hopeful new homes when the onslaught of female enrollment resulted in the castration of the finest men’s hall on campus and the diaspora of all its noble residents. Over the following two years — during which the erstwhile and future boyfriend became the eventual and erstwhile fiancé — I would live with said boyfriend Kevin and associate suitemate Todd. It couldn’t have happened a better way.

The first couple years after we wandered apart were a bit spotty on the communication. (I say that like we talk on the phone every weekend like girls today, when nothing could be further from the truth. Even the one who’s finally joined the Mac-users community, complete with built-in iSight camera, has yet to successfully negotiate a videochat for a beer, and I haven’t the faintest idea what our lawyer is doing these days.) But in 1999, with one in med school, another in law school, and the third making more money than he could spend in a podunk desert town, we decided a reunion was in order. We convened on the mean streets of Washington, D.C. — okay, technically, Alexandria, VA, though the “mean streets” part is totally accurate, complete with a dead hooker in our motel the month before we got there — and, well, as giddy 25-year-olds are wont to do, drank and cavorted like Prince & the Revolution weren’t kidding, party over oops out of time.

See, looky there: at some point in the adventure, some fine native ladies took us on a 2am tour of Alexandria architecture, indulging us with group photographs in front of million-dollar townhomes that were no wider than a malnourished rock-climber. How many square Todds is your townhome? Oh, only 8.5 upstairs and downstairs, but the back yard is an entire Kevin! There was also something with a motorcycle, an exchange of jewelry, maybe a stripper, lost keys, lesbians in traffic, childbearing Asians, climbing a photolab, many Bloody Marys, and at least one totally unnecessary photograph of someone’s private parts when I left my camera unattended thanks a lot you asshole.

And then it was another four years of bobkes. With the exception of a Thanksgiving dinner in Atlanta (where one set of in-laws lives) after I moved out here for grad school, we returned to our typical Christmas-card-frequency communication (save for when either of them surf on over to this site, which is one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place eight years ago, before I knew we were called something so unsightly as bloggers). Next up: Summer 2003, when both of those bastards got married one weekend right after the other. See, looky there, we even come with our own priest, Father Dave, who has been known to violently overthrow the DJ at Senior Bar after his second pitcher of beer. I know it’s cliché, but you’ve all got those kinds of friends: after untold months of separation and silence, it’s like bang-zoom, pick right up like it was no time at all.

I’m really glad those guys are a lot smarter than they look, too, because what with all the disastrous managerial decisions the Bush administration has made over the years, suddenly “cronyism” has become this big nasty awful bad word. Cronyism. Yeah, it sure don’t sound none too pleasant. But here’s the thing: if my political ambitions, as modest as they are, ever amount to anything, those rapscallions are the first two people I am going to think of if I ever need a legal counsel and a…whatever the hell it is that other one does, something about making sure the International Space Station doesn’t come falling out of the sky (yeah, med school, whatever, and I thought I was the goddamn rocket scientist around here). I’m sorry George W. Bush doesn’t have more competent friends to call upon, for our nation’s sake, but I can’t be 100% critical of this so-called cronyism, because sometimes I think there are just some positions I wouldn’t want to open up to equal opportunity employment, not when it comes to who’s standing right next to me when the fit hits the shan. Some things you just need to know in your gut. So thank God for those goofy so-and-so’s.