“Tis better to have had
‘friendship’ and lost
than never to have had
‘friendship’ at all” to
paraphrase a phrase —
except when it happens
that the condition of
friendship is no apolog-
ies for misbehavior, at
which point he realized
there had been no friend-
ship at all — just two
guys yucking it up for
fifty years about this,
that and essentially no-
thing. “Why,” he now asks
himself, “did it take me
so very, very long to catch
on?”