Friend of the Night

I have this friend. You probably know someone like him. You might even have met him, or at least someone a lot like him. He's the sort of person who turns up halfway through parties, usually staying until the
end, or at least turns up for long enough to cause a scene and you end up having to cart them home even though you can barely stand up yourself, let alone try and smoke a cigarette without wanting to jab it straight in his eyesockets for ruining your evening. He's the sort of person who drinks too much, and makes it impossible to start conversations with other people at the party or in a club, because he's so embarrassing. It's OK when you're in the pub or out dancing because he doesn't usually stumble in until quite late on, by which time it doesn't matter, it's just matters how quickly you can cart him out of there I've known him for years, probably longer than anyone I know. He's a total idiot, although I've got an odd sort of respect of him.
He's also one of these people who likes to invite himself around when you don't really want him to. It's one of the reasons why I hate surprise visits from people, because usually he'll come round to the house and keep me up until stupid times of day asking me pointless questions about who I work with, or what I used to do during the summertimes in Winchester. More often than not, he'll want to run through tedious events involving ex girlfriends and doomed friendships and it's pretty tiresome, yet annoyingly it doesn't make me tired. Sometimes he'll just turn up at inopportune moments like in the supermarket. A few times, he's just turned up when I've been at work and just sat on one of the chairs near where I am, causing me to complete distraction when I'm trying to reorganise all the Richard Dawkins books so The Selfish Gene comes before Unweaving the Rainbow and not before. Usually I just want to go home at that point, because at least at home he's not going to stop me from doing my job to the best of my abilities, which is obviously difficult to do when you've got some idiot jabbering in your ear and trying to convince you to take 10 minutes out to buy a strawberries and cream fake coffee from Starbucks or to browse through the psychology books he insists will revolutionise my life.
Some of the time he's alright. I doubt I'd be listening to half the bands I do if I'd never met him, or at least, I wouldn't have the belief that it's more than OK to listen to music that nobody else really cares about, if anything, I like trying to get people into the music that he's got me into because an extra person liking the Red House Painters or The Blue Nile is a good thing, although I don't think I've met anyone else who likes The Blue Nile, not least to the extent of listening to them over the course of whole summers like he and I did in 2006, or are doing again at the moment since he found a link to a whole double albums worth of their b sides and demos. I still like the music that I find through endless searching, or that I hear on the radio, but for some reason the music he's got me into has a different resonance, so I owe him a lot for that. He's not that good with television though, he's one of those bellends who watches Judge Judy, and Jeremy Kyle, and The Paul O' Grady Show, just because they happen to be on, and he keeps telling me that in an ideal world, he'd just turn the TV off during the day and read a book, but he's just too lazy. I'm not sure he's ever made it to the end of a film, his concentration span is useless. I've tried taking him to the cinema but he ended up talking all the way through it, and I can't remember much about the film afterwards. I've pretty much given up on going to the cinema altogether, since it seems I run into him almost every time I go into town now.
He doesn't have a girlfriend, at least, not as far as I know. He seems pretty detached from all that, although he's always saying that he could easily get a girlfriend if he wanted to, but just doesn't want to, and I often wonder if that's actually a cover up. On the rare occasions, I've seen him out with other people; I saw him out once with someone I used to work with (who I found it ridiculous that he even knew) but it's usually just me he hangs around. I ofter wonder about his attitudes to relationships. He seems pretty distant from me whenever I'm in one, although he does occasionally drop round, and I wonder sometimes if he resents the fact I'm sharing my time between other people rather than him, Especially if I'm out in a big group, he tends to make even more of a deal out of it, and makes it more embarrassing. But I'm being fairly harsh to be honest, and it's probably only noticing him being a jerk.
Most people really like him though. When we're together, people often tell me I'm a lot funnier or a lot more talkative than I really am. If a linguist broke down our conversation carefully though, they'd probably notice straight away that I'm mostly overcompensating for the nonsense he'd probably come out with, and trying my hardest to talk over him. Sometimes though, I don't get a work in edge ways and people just get bored and talk to someone else. I think me and him are inherently different people, although quite a lot of each other rubs off on each other, and there's certainly a lot of him in the way I act and some of the things I say sometimes. I wish I hadn't know him when I wasn't a student though
He smokes, and drinks, and eats too much, but hilariously he tells me that all a cigarette is going to do is take 5 minutes of life away, and I'd only waste that 5 minutes anyway out in the sun getting hay fever, and I know I certainly have a lot more fun if he's had a couple of drinks because that's the only time really he seems to act like a normal person, but more often than not he's absolutely wasted, and his hangovers are the sort that aren't gone until very late the next day.
We argue a lot though. He's one of these annoying honest-to-a-fault guys who'll tell me that I've put on weight, or that my hair is falling out, or that my teeth look more crooked today even though they don't, and because he's so right about most other things, I stupidly believe him, and I probably wouldn't have ever noticed if he hadn't just told me. That's why we argue. It's one of the reasons why I don't really argue, or pick fights with, or try not to have any confrontations with other people because I know I can get a lot of the stresses out by arguing with him later in the day. We have had some serious fallings out though. One time we had this massive fight when I was really drunk and ended up quite badly hurt, although it was good in a way because I didn't see him for about a month afterwards, when he was hanging around this girl from my last place of work, and we ended up making friends again. Sometimes I secretly hope we have another really big fight and he fucks off for good, maybe back home. Often when we drink together he ends up crashing at mine, and because I usually fall asleep first, he ends up drawing crude pictures on my body whilst I sleep that I don't notice until the morning, a bit like that white Pokemon character that sings and for some reason carry a magic marker around. I wish he wouldn't do that, but I'm always too tired or too drunk to notice what he's doing. Usually the last drink is on him, which is clearly just a cynical ploy to make sure I fall asleep first.
Despite his faults though,he's a great guy. Not just for the music. You know when you've been friends with someone for such a long time, that they leave such an indelible mark on you, and some people find it hard to work out where you start and they begin? That's what we're like, I actually can't conceive what I'd be like or what I'd enjoy doing if I didn't do most of the stuff that he does. I mean, some of the places he takes me to are awful, like, some of the nightclubs we end up because he really likes the girl behind the bar, or he once went there and a girl talked to him whilst he was having a cigarette, are really bad places, and he spends the whole time moaning that she isn't there, even though she was never likely to be. I end up being his companion on those sorts of evenings, but then he's buying the rounds on those occasions. He doesn't really like going to see bands though, so usually I watch the bands and meet him afterwards. If he does come with me, it's usually quite annoying because he talks all the way through them, much like at the cinema. But a lot of the time he accompanies me wherever I'm going, and because he's got s slightly different outlook on life, I strangely enjoy it. I definitely can't imagine life without him, especially now we've been hanging out a lot more often lately.