Going the (Social) Distance

Keeping apart from friends these days is easier than you might think

- BILL HEAVEY

THIS MAY COME as a shock to some readers, but I’m not the breezy ray of sunshine you might imagine from reading this column. I’m actually a prickly, antisocial loner who won’t answer your call if I don’t recognize your number. (Once the male-supplements people get your digits, everybody has them.) Being socially distant was never a personal aspiration. But if normal people frighten you and you feel most like yourself in the company of outsiders and whack jobs, it happens. In fact, some of my best friends have been stunned to learn that they are my best friends. A few have been made visibly uncomfortable by the news, as if learning that Mitt Romney’s wife has a crush on them. In such situations, I quickly explain that I don’t even like many of my closest friends. They’re just guys I’ve resented for so long that I’ve gotten kind of attached to them. I suspect this characterizes a great many more male friendships than is commonly thought, because more than a few of them seemed to get it.