I’m sorry to again be writing because of Death, but I guess I’m of an age where it shows up more regularly. And the fact is, between disease, war, and murders, it’s the unwelcome guest at all our houses. But this isn’t about death, it’s about one of the most unique characters I’ve ever known and who I wish had shared himself with many more people. He was a pure delight and merits this moment.

He was funny, subtle, generally on a quiet high even when he wasn’t actually so. I knew his fears and limits, and I think that I was as good a friend to him as he was to me.

Robert Raines was one of my dearest friends. He was my family’s paperboy for a brief time when we were about 11, and we learned our Catechism together, although only one of us was actually Catholic. But we really became besties in high school, sharing trips to the Village and our love of music. He was always avant garde in his reading and music, and it was he who turned me on to Hendrix, long before he was known in the States. Robert was quietly brilliant- the first person I knew to discuss the importance and underlying problems of belief systems. It was he who introduced me to yoga and changed my life. He hosted what can only be called a salon in his basement while we were in high school, built his own speakers, and later studied engineering at RCA. Our friends would gather to smoke and listen to the early greats, and the night he debuted Jesus Christ Superstar, I think we all felt like participants in something monumental. We went to rock concerts and art shows, and discussed everything from politics to physics. He was an actual boyfriend for a period, an intermittent lover, and always the faithful friend who encouraged me to take risks and go beyond what was the norm for young Black kids in Jersey City at the time. When I hesitated to take a particular journey in life, he did something to give me a sense of security and let me know that I’d always have a safe place to land. That allowed me to leave my first unhappy marriage and later, go to UVA rather than stay at Rutgers

It is deeply painful to have had my inner knowledge confirmed recently. I knew that he had to be dead or completely incapacitated when my last letter was returned and I didn’t hear from him. We were never out of touch for too long and everyone who knows me well was aware of him even if they never met my most reclusive bud. My husband knew that he was family even though they met only once. Occasionally he would ask if I’d heard from him and he shared my concern when the letter came back that year. He helped me do the fruitless online search. As long as his house remained in his name, I had hopes that perhaps he’d met someone special and was somewhere in Hawaii, living his best life. But this past Sunday, another high school friend confirmed for me that he had died the year that the mail was returned, and I am again, bereft. Grateful that I had such a brilliant and abiding friend, sad that I won’t hear his distinctive voice and jokes. Sorry that I never got to introduce him to Dr. Roy Wagner at UVA- they would have understood each other perfectly and “tripped out” in conversations I can only imagine. Sorry that I didn’t get to honor his life and pay my respects. Saddened that I wasn’t there, but buoyed knowing that he would tell me in his sometimes whispery voice to find the next path and follow my light, and to listen for the laughter along with the music. He would simply say, “Well…you know, Anjana…” then laugh and take on a stern and parent-like voice, and repeat, “Anjana! You KNOW what you need to do!! Get to it and fix your soundtrack- the pop is overriding your own sound. Get back to the groove.” He’d end it with one of the childhood names we had for each other and I’d know that despite my numerous doubts and fears, that in fact, all will be well.

My dear friend- presente.

Seeing a UVA alum headline that Ronde Barber has been elected to the Football Hall of Fame took me back to my early days at UVA. I was walking up Main Street from my Fifeville digs, having moved out of grad student housing a few years earlier, with my teenaged son. While this was my regular route to Brooks Hall, I was heading up at a different time for me, and on this afternoon there was a small, growing line of women, most standing, a couple with folding chairs. Being curious, I asked what was going on and a giggling, middle aged woman explained that they were there to “watch the Barbers when they come by.”
I, of course had no idea what she was talking about and couldn’t fathom a town with what I thought were “barber parades.” I was already bemused by some of the local rituals, including the hubbub surrounding horse races and football. During my first semester, I’d written an ethnographic style paper about the annual painting of blue and orange stripes along University Avenue, as I’d never witnessed an entire city given over to so much sports related pageantry. I was a Northern raised girl and had attended a small, formerly all-women’s college, where the sports were tennis and equestrian, and not primarily featured. Although my original grad school was comparable to UVA in many ways, as a fellow in philosophy, we were away from the bustle, and decidedly unconcerned with what went on in the larger campus areas.

In what I think was an attempt to shush me, the nearest seated woman quickly explained by saying “Just give it two minutes and you’ll see,” while the standing lady said “They’re brothers- Tiki and Ronde- and we come out to cheer them on and get a look. They run here on certain days.” (She actually named their running days, but I didn’t pay attention to the schedule she’d memorized.)

Ooo-kaay, I thought with a shrug. That’s nice, I guess, but I wondered what made these brothers special, and what were the names she called them. I started to move on, but just then the seated women rose, and on both sides of the street, eyes turned as a line of young men appeared, obviously part of a team. They didn’t run in military formation and while they were clearly training, most seemed casual and friendly, acknowledging the people on the street with a glance or nod. One playful young man laughingly waved and did a graceful pirouette, but it was clear that he was not the object of their attention, even though a few people smiled and politely waved him on.

But then the brothers appeared: two brown, beautifully sculpted bodies, one after the other, aware of their fans, but focused on their runs. Both had on t shirts, an apparently disappointing occurrence for a few followers. The men smiled and one waved, but they kept on jogging towards downtown, and in that flash, the excitement was over. The chair ladies rose, folding their chairs in a swift movement, a few chatting, most making their way back to their lives, leaving me more confused than ever.

All of the men were attractive athletes, but in a hundred years I would never have imagined women lining up only to watch two men jogging. I had a mix of reactions that included surprise, concern about the possible racial undertones, and downright amusement at the silliness of the entire “event.” I decided that I was either in the most liberated and fun loving town or the most desperate, but any way you sliced it, I knew I wasn’t in New York anymore.

Everybody and their mothers have written about Love and maybe all of it is true, certainly much of it is recognizable to me. We write/talk about Love as we know or understand it, and even when we don’t have a single clue. It is a subject both ephemeral and concrete and one of which we seem never to tire. (I have a theory about why that is, but it’s for another chapter.)

In the here and now, what I find most central to Love and relationships (they are not always mutual) is simply being known in very specific ways. When you’re with your besties or a long term lover, what gives it life are the shared contexts, the easy familiarity. That you know each other’s foibles but don’t hold them against each other unless it’s agreed upon by both. That they can tease you and it’s ok because you know that they hold no malice and always have your highest good in their hearts. It doesn’t sting and you can laugh along, maybe even augmenting the remembered offense/embarrassment. They mirror you in a way that allows you to see yourself with the love they have for you. There is trust that comes only through time and experience. Your friends are those whose food you can taste and gently say “Yeah- no, man, this is not it” and they either go back to rework the recipe or shrug and tell you “ok, but you don’t know what you’re missing!” They’re the people with whom honesty (not cruelty in disguise!) is helpful and not hurtful.

One of my criteria for considering someone a friend is that we can belly laugh with each other, because again, there’s a level of intimacy that allows for the ugly crying or the snorting laugh that I certainly don’t have with everyone I might like or enjoy. A long term lover/partner has that extra level of physical intimacy, not only for sex, but in knowing your body as well as your minor habits that are learned only in close daily proximity (and maybe shared bathrooms!) These are different relationships, but all are important and work together to create a dialectic and language of love.

It may be a painful process that gets you there, because the processes of risk, vulnerability, exposure, and shedding previous beliefs-even about yourself- are the fires in which love may be forged. Childhood criticisms and hurts are often in the skins that we grow, and allowing ourselves to be loved and eventually see, recognize, and accept what the beloved knows to be true and real about us is just plain hard. Many reject it, even become angry at the beloved for seeing the vulnerable hurt child they’ve worked so hard to protect, hide, or even destroy for years. And you know why? Because at the bottom of that pain is the belief that it’s true and that anyone who truly sees you cannot love you, and if they do, there is something very wrong with them. At best, the beloved is seen as weak and despised, and the sweetness of possibility is salted down and infused with bitter herbs into an unpalatable mess.

All your people know you in various ways, and that’s a great joy in life. But the few people with whom we choose intimacy and with whom we might consciously struggle to understand and accept more of each other are a special group and of necessity, few. It requires a balance of love and honesty that cuts through all illusions, and it requires complete awareness and surgical skill to know what instrument to use at any given time: scalpel, serrated or butter knife, blunt instrument. And it cannot be done with ego, a savior’s complex, parental complexes, or anything other than a selfless love for that person. We need people who will tell us when our noses need wiping and that our clothes can only highlight certain features and you have to choose whether or not “looking fat”negates your beauty: to remind us of our beauty and why we are loved and lovable.

Such relationships are not always pretty on the outside. People have the idea that true love/soul mates are straight out of Disney or the romcom ending: that once they have recognized and accepted the other, there’s never another argument or their annoying habits will now be cute or just go away. That’s not how this works, my loves, because between our screwed up social expectations and training, the complexities of life in general, and sharing space and growth with another already-made human- if you’re really about intimacy, spiritual development/growth, and long term love, I can assure you that it will be messy and maybe gut wrenching as well as deeply beautiful, because if you were already seriously “enlightened”you would no longer need or have any desire- and where’s the fun in that?

The beautiful friendship between Rev. Tutu and the Dali Lama was one of soul recognition and delight, but those great masters weren’t living together and sharing their daily lives. There was no need at that stage of development. That is not where most of us live. We’re in the struggle- with ourselves, our work, families, and intimate partners. We’re wiping children’s butts and picking up the dog poo, trying to stay on schedule, and watching the clock at work, and maybe all at the same time if you work from home. We are in the trenches of the mundane, often alternating between gratefulness and resentment towards those closest to us, wishing for more time while wondering why everything takes so long. We are humans with all the contradictions and complications that come with the territory, and we live in societies that seldom value or reward the qualities that lead to deeply loving relationships.

So that’s all I came here to say. Just some musings, maybe a couple of clues. Y’all have to work out the rest in and amongst yourselves. It’s in the living of it all.

But you knew that, right?