Pretty Good Friends

by Carrie Frye

My hairdresser has beautiful manners and big brown eyes. He was a model for a while in New York then returned a couple years ago to his hometown just outside Asheville, North Carolina. 

Back in high school, he had an after-school job for a florist and when it was time for prom, his boss made him a boutonniere as a gift. But it was more installation than boutonniere, featuring several birds of paradise—huge, orange, outer-space-looking—that pronged from his rented tux “like a second head.” He wished fervently that it had been a carnation or rose instead but felt it would be disloyal or rude to take it off. And so there he was, a Hummel-eyed teen wearing a floral billboard: “All night, everyone kept walking up and asking, ‘What is that?’”

This is a species of story I enjoy very much, and I associate it with a certain tier of friendship—the level where there’s affection and inside jokes but you also don’t know one another especially well. It’s a lovely category of association. Mat buddies at yoga; people at your local or at the dog park. When I was a kid my dad would hit the Mister Donut every Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m. to drink coffee with a group of guys he called The Liar’s Club. It was an unmissable date, but there was never any contact between them, outside that Saturday morning context.