Today’s outing is an apology disguised as a boast – or maybe vice versa.

It’s about friends. I count on my friends. I count them. Do I have many, too many, not enough? Am I serving them well?

I’m a latecomer to friendship. We lived on a big farm far from my classmates. I envied classmates who lived on a street close to one another, who could play and tell secrets together. Only one classmate lived near but he was a thalidomide baby with a shriveled leg so wasn’t popular. When we were together I made him take off his fake leg and show me the weird toe where his calf should have been. He didn’t want to but he did because he needed friends even more than I did and nobody likes a cripple who can’t play sports. I would take off the little sock and feel his weird toe. I treated him with haughty disdain but he let me because without me he’d have had no friends at all. I wouldn’t let him speak to me in school because the association didn’t flatter me. Friends are supposed to flatter one’s self-esteem. When I heard Hank had died of drug overdose in his twenties I wasn’t surprised. (I changed his name to Hank.)

In prep school I had friends, but I only learned that later. It surprised me in midlife to learn I hadn’t been disliked. As a child you get things in your head that become your truth. Having had no creditable friend as a small boy I figured I never would and that was that, no use crying about it. A friend became my fantasy. When it came time to have girlfriends, I tried too hard, often spoiling promising beginnings (ask Jane). In college I had chums, but only one close guy friend.

During my career it was hard to make friends because either I was alone writing or the boss. It’s hard being a friend with someone you can – and maybe one day should – fire. You can pretend but you both know it. My tennis friends were real friends but when it’s only that it makes you sad. I once wrote a poem called “In tennis love means zero.”

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI distrust sports friendships: the slappedback hope of excellence in play,before the slipped disc, the stoppedvalve one day.

I distrust friends who call me whenthe weather’s tennissy or friendswho let a Christmas slight stingtill spring amend.

The inevitable cheer: how the hellhave you been? A mentionof the warmth, a held smile:time to begin?

Yes, let’s, I say, glad to be phonedand angry at being glad.A friend is a friend. My backhandseems something bad

like a whore’s scent to attractdelight. I want to be needednot for being who is lackedbut for being

– what? Bald? Morose? Obtuse? Dullat a dinner? At a dance off-balance?Wit, grace, and looks are allacquired talents,

decor. People though should carenot for excellence but some inner core:quiet, worthless, unsaid, unsure,one’s need and store.

But are these loveable or Iwithout what I have made?Is man not whole: door, hearth,lamp and shade?

I now see this poem, which I hadn’t read for a decade, arises from an aching avidity for friendship. Today, half a life after its pining composition, I find myself – miraculously – with more friends than I can do justice to. That was going to be theme of this outing but now I’ve run out of space.