Good Bad People

It’s a beautiful day in the Queen of Her Majesty's Angels in the Porciuncula River. Los Angeles for short. The sky is blue rather than gray with smog for once. The Griffith Park is full as always. There is a mom playing with her two sons by the fountain. A loose dog and their owner who isn’t paying attention. Two lovebirds wanting to ask each other what to do tomorrow.

Frets MeKay is a good man. He was born with all his fingers and toes. He never had a problem growing up. Never had a tragedy greater than maybe the occasional timeout or even the rarer sternly talking to. Yet, for some reason, Frets always stood alone. He was never well liked. Frets manage to do the impossible, go through life without one friend to talk to. His only friends were his parents, he doesn’t talk to them anymore. In all sense of the word, Frets was a loner. He had one true desire in his heart, to be talked to. Frets looks around. He scouts the area for persons unbothered by the rest of the people surrounding them. Why would anyone talk to themselves out in public? Frets found him. His soon to be best friend in the world. But before he could approach the stammering man, he had to make sure he could calculate his cold and collective plan.

So for the past month, Frets staked out the park, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The summer turned to winter, then to spring. What would happen made Frets the happiest man in Los Angeles.

“Hello there.”

“Hello.” said S’Todd

Now the two had been entwined into a web of life. Their names were known to one another as were their hobbies and interests. Of course they were only S’Todd’s interests. Emotionless and apathetic. Calm and predetermined. Frets’s ambitions are slowly fading from him. He was slowly becoming his best friend, sensing that he was losing himself the longer the conversation went on. S’Todd opened up about his habit of frequenting the Coastal Bar on Vine Street. Another clue to jot down for Frets.

Frets returned home that day, an apartment he called headquarters. He feverishly wrote notes and measured his chances out on a visual board as if hunting down a killer. On the board were stock pictures and outlines where Frets put down S’Todd as a title and Coastal Bar on Vine Street as a note. Frets was beyond the point of no return. He could feel himself slipping more.

After a couple more long arduous days of waiting, it was finally time to go to the bar. The pool table and beer glass clatter present and low and behold, S’Todd was there, almost as if he was waiting for him, though it was the other way around.“Frets?”

“Hey man. Funny seeing you here.”

“Yeah I told you I come here often.”

Frets began to sweat. If he had waited a little longer maybe he could have forgotten. Luckily for him, S’Todd didn’t think much of it and even stranger still, he liked Frets.

Soon the two became closer friends, knowing more about each other. The method was working. Frets was making a friend. The doomed friendship seemed to be working too smoothly. They went places. The fair of LA County. The concerts of various artists, movie after movie after play production. The two were close, inseparable. Then the fall came and of course, inevitable, all things must end.

After a day of hanging out, S’Todd asked Frets if he wanted to come along for a get together at his house with his other friends. All Frets heard was other friends. He began to panic. So much so that he said yes. He went home and drew furiously on the drawing boards. He couldn’t compete with more people. How many more people? Were they like S’Todd? What will they think of him? All great questions Frets could not answer. He dreaded the solution but he had no other choice. It was time to improvise.

The day of S’Todd’s get together fell into today, and Frets arrived twenty minutes earlier than early. S’Todd at first mistook this as a simple mistake, but soon realized this was no accident.

“You’re here early” S’Todd puzzled.

“Am I? Sorry I thought there would be other people.” Frets answered

“Not two hours before. But whatever, have a seat.”

The cracks were starting to show. Frets started scanning the cushions for more and more information, the pictures hanging on the walls. What did they mean for S’Todd? Why was there a carpet leading to nowhere? Was that intentional?

“Find everything alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. I’m just. You know. Making myself home.”

It was one more odd mannerism that truly sealed their faith. It came in form of a question.

“So what time will the others be here?”

“In an hour.” S’Todd groaned.

“And what does that mean for us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you have other friends S’Todd?”

“Why do I have other friends?”

“We are supposed to be best friends. You are my only friend.”

He finally connected the dots and told Frets to leave. Frets tried to defend himself, but the damage was done. There was no recovering from such an awkward conversation, however that didn’t keep Frets from trying.

Feverishly, Frets began to plan the moment to strike back. He would follow S’Todd everywhere. Who would like this guy enough to be his other friend? Naturally, S’Todd would eventually turn around and call him crazy. What could motivate a man so desperate for friendship?

While it was true that Frets had a normal upbringing, it is untrue that Frets was a loner by nature. Frets was an outcast by choice. He saw the dangers of friendship and how it distracted him from important homework assignments. Although menial inane schoolwork was not enough to destern Frets from having a friend. Rather it was the relationship with his parents that truly sealed his fate. His mom and dad were constant bickers. They loved Frets with all their heart, but equally could not stand each other when in the same room. This had a major impact on Frets and would eventually give him the erroneous idea that people were not meant to be together for any reason.

However one could only stay in isolation for so long until they have to realise the human is a social creature. Frets after working so many years as a remote coder saved enough money to move out of his parents house and never see them again. He may have been coddled but his final exit from mom and dad’s house was a bitter feeling. All throughout grade school, Frets would only focus on work. After grade school, all Frets would care about was surviving. Other people never came to his aid. Why would they? Frets never cared about them back. His parents were the only source of the outside world he had. And now they were gone. Never to be called again.

Frets did not go home that day. He was out at Griffth park with the homeless bums that would sneak into the cold comfort of a place to sleep. There Frets saw them all from up close.

“You are my best friend, you are my only friend.”

The homeless did not react. But Frets persisted. It would be the very last thing he would do. Frets was always a loner but it never really bothered him until coming to adulthood where it really started. Crazy is not nonsense, it’s the lack of sense. With Frets's new found home out on Griffth benches, he was no longer a person in the park, he was a hidden piece of frozen meat waiting to spoil. Homeless amongst the night sky.

S’Todd was driving home from work one day into his home in the suburbs. His wife greeted him and told him on their tenth anniversary. “Your son had a bad day.”

S’Todd got out of his rented, used car and rushed home. Being a father was not cheap.

Crying and pouting, the child asked his daddy. “Dad? How do I make friends?”

S’Todd replied. “Why do you ask this son?”

“Everyone hates me”

S’Todd then told his son a story he would never forget.

“Son, when I was your age, I would talk to myself all the time. Let me tell you about a person I once met…”