Friends etc.

“We hadn't really ever believed that the long awaited friends reunion would ever take place. The prospect, ten years and more after the plot device of divorce, of  them getting together to gather up the loose ends or develop the lifelong storyline and tale  telling was just too remote. We'd allowed them into our lives, those contrived but lovable characters, them with their crazy and unrealistic behaviour, all those shared moments of comedy, pathos and irony, the parade of in-jokes and clever quips, the procession of completely unlikely situations and funny coincidences played out before an audience ever ready to laugh and lap up each well rehearsed and performed set piece. It was a lifestyle choice, we saw them and mirrored all we could, hairstyles and mannerisms, endless coffee mugs, polystyrene cups, cookies and muffins, cliches and appreciation. We built our own little tributes and tableaux, we lived vicariously through these characters, uptown, downtown, adopted into that dysfunctional and unlikely combination of families as they walked around in wide open dramatic spaces holding loud two person conversations whilst the the rest of the room ignored them as it rolled on. Realism was conveniently suspended for so long and in so many locations. None of that,  either in production values or in belief really mattered, we were spellbound and addicted. We were all in there as willing victims bought into spending time in this ideal world were happy endings eventually came round after soft struggles, foot stomping petulance or romantic happenstance. There were no nasty people, just jerks and little bullies, things to be brushed off and dealt with and money and bills and the big bad world are alluded to but never really part of the spoiling of plot as we bathed in the warm escapism of each unlikely episode. For a while I loved the mythology, the sense of being part of something but I also was uncomfortable, like I'd been taken over or violated. You felt it too, I'm sure you said as much, perhaps I misheard. So it's over, it's gone, life in a modern day  religious cult has ended and we're excommunicated, hardly fair on you I know. It was me all along, I brought the house down on us brick by brick, you were as much of a victim as they were but I didn't really mean any of it, I didn't intend to poison the communion wine or taint that bread but I did. What's done is done. I'll make a clean and clear confession to the authorities, you'll be fine, they'll be here some and so will the Sunday papers. Friends? Who needs them?”