Friendship is always an inconvenience.

 

There. I’ve put it out there. I’ve already tackled people who hate early hot cross buns and present giving, so I’m going to move right on up to friendship and slap it so hard on its bare thigh that a welt of my open hand immediately begins to redden. Dannielle’s personal crusade against things that should be considered pleasant has set out again, riding on the noble steed of overthinking and powered by an artillery of wingeing weaponry (the arrows are tipped with general distain for happy people for added efficiency!).

 

That’s right, I’m pointing my blasphemous blade buttons (explanation: the pen may be mightier than the sword, but a keyboard is much more efficient and a well-timed sarcastic emoticon can cut deeper than any dagger) at one of the most sacred unions of all, more powerful than matrimony or family ties as these people don’t share bank accounts with you or may need to borrow a hunk of your liver down the track. There’s no tangible bond to this group of humanoids, who either hang around you because they genuinely like you or because they’re jealous of your Mary Kate and Ashley memorabilia collection and want to take control over your twin-themed empire when you meet your untimely end. They pass you toilet paper in public bathrooms when your stall is out, they watch you messily eat fajitas without live tweeting how long it takes you to realise you have guacamole in your eyebrow and they take care to only tag you in photos where your arms are at their skinniest.

 

But there’s a certain darkness to friendship that isn’t present in pre-teen Hilary Duff lyrics: the expectation that you’re a nice person back to these people.

 

Sure, your gleaming grin and pert butt might have won them over to begin with, but there’s only so many times you can bring up that time they pooed on their hand and didn’t notice.

 

The other day, the Youth of the Office were planning A Night on the Tiles, and Our Blue-Shirt-and-Black-Pant-Wearing Counterpart requested he stay on My Golden-Haired Sidekick’s couch.

 

Our Blue-Shirt-and-Black-Pant-Wearing Counterpart: *makes some comment about not wanting to be a hassle.

 

Me: Friendship is never an inconvenience!

 

Our Blue-Shirt-and-Black-Pant-Wearing Counterpart: *exits, sneering at my naivety.

 

Me: Actually, friendship is a massive inconvenience.

 

And I was right. Because while they may kindly feed you with vodka and help you prepare a roadie “water bottle” filled with the sickly nectar of alcoholic peach for a bus ride on a Monday morning, there’s always going to be a catch.

 

Take, for example, the time I went to The Cricket with My Curly-Haired Friend. She let me roll out a swag on her tiny apartment lounge room floor and warmly encouraged the guzzling of spirits before 10.30am. And everything was wonderful. We sipped at our questionably-coloured beverages on the back of a city bus and hurtled into the promise of live viewings of The Cricket.

 

Sure, we only sat there for less than an hour before the game was over and clearly annoyed the diehard fans with our delirious banter about wickets, but there was fun had by all (read: just us – everyone else was as serious as you could imagine people taking a Monday off work to pay actual currency to sit in a ghost town stadium would be). When the game had finished, we made plans to visit a tropical fruit themed pub and quickly broke ranks to toilet ourselves ready for the next adventure.

 

But it wasn’t to be.

 

After splitting up, My Curly-Haired Friend got lost in the parents’ room and had to be taken out to the nearby grassy area for a nap. Thankfully, I was a quick-witted enough to march her right to the nearest fast food restaurant, which we’ll call Schmack Shonnald’s. This was quite a task, as it was up a gentle slope and I was only mildly less-hydrated than she. I dumped her in a chair outside and purchased us chips, nuggets and a cheeseburger – the true golden trio.

 

So there we were, at roughly 1pm on a Monday morning trying to avoid the longing gazes of office employees who wished their lives were also going nowhere so they could be stinking drunk on a weekday. But then, I don’t have excellent eyesight, so there is a small chance I misread their expressions – judgement and jealousy look pretty similar when you are constantly squinting.

 

As if this wasn’t bad enough, my Curly-Haired Friend was leaning over the seat, occasionally dry retching between letting her saliva drain out of her mouth and on to the floor. To the untrained eye, she looked like she was dying, and I looked like a callous bitch sitting next to her completely unaffected, chomping at a cheeseburger like I hadn’t a care in the world. My lifelong companion was trying to vomit right next to me, and I wasn’t trying back her hair so it wouldn’t be matted with chucks of her half-digested breakfast. I didn’t even appear to vaguely attempt to be a decent human being by rushing to fetch her a bowl to empty her stomach into so some down-trodden teenager wasn’t forced to deal with the violent, and probably milky, excrement. It was a hot day, and that puddle of vomit would have dried and hardened like the paper mache of nightmares. And yet I didn’t intervene in any way. I simply occasionally attempted to shove a nugget in her mouth and carried on about my business.

 

This is not one of my behaviours that can be attributed to dry-ice cold heart (touch it and you’ll get excruciating frostbite of the fingers!). The thing is that my Curly-Haired Friend can’t actually vomit. She’s one a few Australians who won’t chuck up after a particularly long stint with her mouth around the hose of a beer bong. Not only because she is a legend, but because it’s physically impossible for her to do so.

 

My knowledge of her anatomical makeup stems from tit bits I was told/overheard while eavesdropping as a plucky youngster tainted by the shaky foundations of my childhood understanding of the human body. Essentially, as a baby she kept vomiting up everything and so the hospital staff, no doubt having had an absolute bloody gutful of cleaning up her breast milk vom, cut open her stomach and inverted the reflux valve thing in her stomach (in my mind, this process was somewhat similar to the tying of a balloon). The cheeky trick meant whatever does down her hatch only comes out one way, and left her with a scar that probably sparked a few rumours about a secret caesarean section at the age of 14. It’s just one of many little quirks my Curly-Haired Friend possesses.

 

But that’s enough about the rare and magical innards of My Curly-Haired Friend**. We’re sitting at outdoor table, with a puddle of saliva sizzling on the cement and a stack of nuggets going uneaten. Despite my assurances to her that shovelling crispy chunks of chicken essence down her throat would dilute the spirit concentrate in her gut, she wouldn’t eat past a single bite of a nugget. Like that weedy brother from Beethoven’s second limply trying to get a St Bernard puppy to drink milk off his finger, “it was no use”. So, obviously, I ate the rest of the nuggets myself. As did I with the chips. And the cheese burger. And because I had kind-heartedly called us a taxi to get her safely home, all that was waiting for me was the removal of my pants and a solid nap.

 

Looking back, I can say this: My Curly-Haired Friend was spot of bother that day. Because of her selfish inability to regurgitate, I was forced to drag her around. But, because of her selfish inability to regurgitate, I was also able to eat enough deep fried matter for two, and her appalling posture and slobbery lip made me look like the put together person in comparison. And that’s a beautiful thing. Friendship may be inconvenient at times, but often it’s the best kind of inconvenience there is*.

 

 

*Note: this model of friendship is built on nearly two decades of familiarity based on being forced to be by each other’s sides by comically-small class sizes and a shared enthusiasm for telephone farts and birthday faxes. Replicate it at your own risk.

 

** She really does have fantastic innards. She used to do this really cool belly button/umbilical chord trick which was a real hoot in Year 7.