My girlfriends SML and Rose haven’t spoken to each other in over 10 years. All because one of them said the stupidest thing anyone’s ever said in the history of mankind.

They’re both good-time girls who like bourbon because when the light hits it, it reminds them of the hair color they’ve both been trying to get for years. SML dyes hers from its original dishwater blond, using a different shade of bottled red every time. It has recently turned out Bozo orange, which happens to be the natural color of Rose’s hair.

I’ve known Rose as long as I have known SML, and they’ve known each other even longer. They became friends working in a restaurant together while SML was in college and Rose was… working in a restaurant.

They had fun being drunk together after work. That’s essentially all they ever did together as friends. I don’t think they talked much, they just sang songs and got naked and danced.

Those college friendships are the strongest of your life. I remember not wanting to let go of my social system, being terrified to graduate because I would lose all these people. I wisht that we could all just give up on our geographically separated job searches in the stink-o early ’90s recessionary economy and just say “Forget you, adulthood. Forget you, extramural world!” and all move into a big farmhouse together and just have a long, old happy life. That was an actual dream of mine at one time. Kept it to myself, though.

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Dr. Freud wrote about the “narcissism of small differences”—how it’s the most-similar-to-each-other people who resent each other most fiercely. How right he was. Facts:

• SML (Sandi Meadows-Lott)* has an M.D. and a master’s degree in public health focused on eating-disorder epidemics.
• Rose dropped out of high school, with her parents’ encouragement.
• SML has been an epidemiologist for 15 years.
• Rose was, is, and probably always will be a waitress.

Round-faced beauty SML travels constantly to exotic locales for her high-powered job. Yet she can’t master foreign languages, and English is not her thing either. She does speak her own pidgin English — with words that just aren’t quite right, and unfamiliar syntax that, after 20 years of friendship, I am able to understand with near-native proficiency.

“Hey,” she said one day while I was trying to take a nap. “Did you see that Margaret Cho video? ‘The Notorious Cho’?”

“You mean C.H.O.?” I answered, saying each letter individually. Cee. Aych. Oh.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“But… I… think the title has periods in it, you know, like…”

“So? Just ignore ’em!” she laughed.

_____

Wan, ivory-skinned Rose stays in her own solitary-confinement cell of reality. Her version of events always sounds foreign and wrong if you were there and saw things yourself. Based on what she told me about her substance abuse when she was just 10 years old, I think she might have suffered some brain damage.

One time Rose and I were watching a documentary on TV about brain function in dolphins and humans. She got glassy-eyed, then inhaled loudly, like people do sometimes when they are about to die. She whispered, “You know… I’ve never thought about that before! … What is the desire of man?” She spoke the last sentence slowly and contemplatively.

It gave me a cringe-shiver that someone in her late 20s could have never thought about human purpose or the meaning of life before. I also found the word choice odd and dumb-sounding. Like something SML would say.

_____

We were drinking bourbon after returning from a gambling trip during which Rose’s vapid statements (“Why is it illegal to drink beer when you’re a kid?! Or dogs? Why can’t they drink it legally?”) had become increasingly irritating to SML. A rift had been opening slowly for some time, I could sense it.

Sitting on the floor in my apartment, Rose tried to get back on SML’s good side, which wasn’t easy to do. “I wish I could travel somewhere far away like you guys always do,” Rose said wistfully. SML responded coldly: “Then why don’t you?” “Because I don’t know how to do it,” Rose said, like a little girl. SML: “What do you mean ‘know how’? You just call a travel agent! Anybody can know how for… that much.”

SML trudged into the kitchen. That’s when Rose, in an excited “eureka” tone, came up with this:

“You guys, you know what we should do? We should start a university together!”

Her sentence bounced off the hard white walls of my undecorated apartment, creating a tiny echo effect. I was stunned, and mortified for Rose. SML didn’t hear her out in the kitchen, so I quickly changed the subject in a gesture of protectiveness toward Rose. “Do you guys like this bourbon?” I offered. “I think it’s subpar. What kind of bourbon should I buy next time?”

Rose overrode my subject change and continued with her idea, excitedly. “Don’t you think we should? Like, all of our friends could teach there. Every one of us is good at something. I mean, Scott, you could teach German…”

“Should what?” asked SML, wearily, as she walked back into the room and returned her attention to us.

“I was saying we should start a university together!” Rose answered. She was completely earnest about this. A couple of long moments followed with no one talking. SML peered sideways at Rose through slitted eyes, suspiciously, as though Rose was trying to steal something from her purse.

Sourly, SML said: “I already have a job.”

Rose continued brightly, hopefully. “So? That’s okay. You could… teach after work!”

SML’s expression had turned to disbelief mixed with derisiveness. I said nothing, just looked at my pretty orange bourbon and waited this out.

“Why not, Sandi?” Rose kept on badgering. “Why? Why can’t we?”

In a loud, contemptuous brat voice SML answered her: “Because I don’t want to!”

Breathing and ice clinkings filled the empty aural space around us in my apartment. There seemed no way of making, no point in trying to make Rose understand why it isn’t possible to just “start a university” “with your friends.”

The utter asininity of the would-be Rose University (University of Friends? University of Rose?) so offended SML that she stopped speaking to Rose altogether after that. We never started a university together. Rose is still a waitress. I’m still friends with her, and with SML— separately.

Technically, I guess, they were never truly college friends, because Rose didn’t go to college. So the bond could be broken.

_____

* All names and identifying features have been changed.

Tags: Margaret Cho, Narcissism of Small Differences, SIgmund Freud