Platonic Love and Hummers

Last night I drove down to Santa Monica to go out to dinner with Debra. I made my way down the 405 freeway at half past six on a Friday evening with traffic going 70 miles per hour below a Getty Museum glowing with that luminescence peculiar to Los Angeles sunsets. Had a chorus of angels materialized in the sky over San Vicente Boulevard, I could not have been more charmed. Here are some things I saw on San Vicente on the way to Debra’s last night: a stalled caravan of film production vehicles outside the Brentwood Country Club accompanied by a pair of crewmen yelling at each other; a man road-skiing; a Hummer pick-up in camouflage colors. Once I witnessed a chicken walking down Sunset Boulevard, stopping occasionally to peck at the sidewalk. Los Angeles slips out of reach from the categorical grasp.

Everyone needs a friend like Debra: a specimen of humankind, preferably attractive, whose temper fits yours like the fine dovetailed joinery of an old writing table. This person is not just a versatile non-date for the socially active crowd, as vital a function as that may be. Friendship isn’t just a matter of contingency; it’s the silent, smiling acceptance of another’s flaws, sins and heresies that marks the terrain just south of love. Friendship is a conspiracy against convention.

As a snob searching for the best of everything, I am lucky to start off having found the best of friends. Spread across the nation, I have a dozen friends like Debra and most people would be blessed to find even one.

Friendship requires a state of nuance that Hummers--even camouflaged ones--can not approximate. With the Hummer we no longer need to develop road rage. We can purchase it. Its stance is the stance of offense and its design intentionally presumes hostility. But highway despotism is too unrefined for the hauteur elitist who prefers technology evocative of sensuality rather than raw penetration. The Hummer is an FUV not an SUV, and friends don’t let friends drive them. They are for shrews and unrepentant husbands.

And judging from the Hummer population, LA must have plenty of both.