today i got a call from gail, who is an old friend that stopped talking to me for no good reason. i should be upset about her lack of communicado. instead, i am thrilled to bits. gail is the kind of friend you can drink with during the day. two martinis for lunch, that's gail. she likes buying hats. she smokes and gambles and owes mastercard about 60,000 dollars. she always orders a steak. she has a purse for every pair of shoes, and a pair of shoes for every purse. her bedroom is like a warzone; the piles of toys and clothes and hamburger wrappers and wax statues of robin williams are like little foothills you can hide behind during periods of rapid gunfire. or, you know, whatever. she loses things easily. she knows about sales ahead of time. she's passionate about tv shows, could care less about politics. she likes cheese and monkeys. she buys things off of the home shopping network. she likes going to baseball games, but only for the food. she doesn't get pissy about paying for parking. she'll go to vegas on a whim with a bunch of lesbians. no, really. she likes things really big or really small. she has no concept of time. she gets passionately angry when friends miss her birthday, which is what i did when i said "for no good reason." i had a good excuse, though. anyhow, she'll stop talking to you for months at a time, and then call you out of the blue. that's gail.

oh, how i've missed her.