9 Buddies came linked, like accessories, to one activity or another. People have

golf buddies and business buddies, college buddies and club buddies. Men often keep their buddies in these categories, while women keep a special category for friends.

10 A man once told her that men weren’t real buddies until they had been

―through the wars‖ together – corporate or athletic or military. They had to soldier together, he said. Women, on the other hand, didn’t count themselves as friends until they had shared three loathsome confidences.

11

12 Buddies hang tough together; friends hang onto each other. It probably had something to do with pride. You don’t show off to a friend;

you show need. Buddies try to keep the worst from each other; friends confess it. 13 A friend of hers once telephoned her lover, just to find out if he was home. She

hung up without a hello when he picked up the phone. Later, wretched with embarrassment, the friend moaned, ―Can you believe me? A thirty-five-year-old lawyer, making a chicken call?‖ Together they laughed and made it better.

14

15 Buddies seek approval. But friends seek acceptance. She knew so many men who had been trained in restraint, afraid of each

other’s judgment or awkward with each other’s affection. She wasn’t sure which. Like buddies in the movies, they would die for each other, but never hug each other. 16 She had reread Babbitt recently, that extraordinary catalogue of male

grievances. The only relationship that gave meaning to the claustrophobic life of George Babbitt had been with Paul Riesling. But not once in the tragedy of their lives had one been able to say to the other: You make a difference.

17 Even now men shocked her at times with their description of friendship. Does

this one have a best friend? ―Why, of course, we see each other every February.‖ Does that one call his most intimate pal long distance? ―Why, certainly, whenever there’s a real reason.‖ Do those two old chums ever have dinner together? ―You mean alone? Without our wives?‖

18 Yet, things were changing. The ideal of intimacy wasn’t this parallel playmate,

this teammate, this trenchmate. Not even in Hollywood. In the double standard of friendship, for once the female version was becoming accepted as the general ideal. 19 After all, a buddy is a fine life-companion. But one’s friends, as Santayana

once wrote, ―are that part of the race with which one can be human.‖