Day 26

A picture of something that means a lot to me:

ca. 2007

So, here we are.  The Four Horsemen, as we sometimes refer to ourselves - named not so much after the forerunners of the Apocalypse as for Ric Flair's wrestling squad (two of us have an ongoing love affair with the now-WWE).

I've already introduced you to myself, to Ian and to D; the fourth Horseman is my brother Freddy.  I often think of him as a little brother - this is less because of the fact that he's two years younger than me, and more because of the difference in our life experiences and our perceptions.  Fred has, on the surface, an easygoing nature that belies the serious consideration he gives to much of his life; he just doesn't trouble himself with too many things that don't affect him directly.  He also often sees black and white where the other three here pictured see only shades of gray.  It makes for some interesting exchanges, this diversity of point-of-view.  It's also worth noting, though what it means we aren't yet sure, that Freddy is the only one of us who's been able to find and secure any real long-term committed relationship.  In November, he'll be married to his girlfriend of nearly four years.

What means so much to me is the friendship that sprung up between the four of us.  I met Ian in first grade, D in tenth; I met Fred the next year (also tenth grade; long story), on the basketball courts at lunchtime.  Freddy met D a few weeks later, and they bonded over their aforementioned love of wrestling.  When Ian moved into my house in the Summer of '98 - a dubious and storied move with still-echoing repercussions - the circle was complete.  The bond between the four of us survived all sorts of melodrama (shared equally, I believe) and Machiavellian manipulation (mostly Ian's, he'd admit); unsurprisingly, girls were at the center of it all - less surprisingly, the same girl in a few different cases.  I won't cheapen this bond or myself by evoking that tired and misogynistic rhymed couplet, nor would I so devalue the friendships I had with those young women - nevertheless, it was this bond of bros that passed the tests of time, distance, and conflict.

Now, these men are my touchstones to my adolescence, my compatriots forging forward into adulthood, my support system when I'm sick, and my comedic partners in sickness and in health.  This is a friendship without which I don't think I'd understand myself or my life half as well as I do; certainly, I'd be diminished, and that life would be much more difficult to live.