by DREW BOWLING
For all the good value that comes with friendship, perhaps the most dubious quality is comfort. Someone who won’t judge you when you need to lean on them during difficult times, a companion who will have dinner or watch a movie with you, somebody willing to drive you to the airport: these are a few of the splendid benefits of having somebody in your corner.
This same level of comfort is also the point at which certain filters begin to dissolve, allowing us to speak candidly to each other in a way we might not in public. I will certainly attest that some of the things I say to my closest friends are so profane and ridiculous that I would never dare share it with unfamiliar company. While the comfort of being able to be yourself, as they say, around your familiars is something devoutly to be wished, it occasionally presents a quandary whenever a friend says something that troubles you.
I’ve been meditating on this dilemma lately because while I was among a group of friends recently, one member of the group, who happened to be Caucasian, shared a personal insight into why he is single: He desires to only date Asian women.
Sure not to miss their cue, other people attendant to the conversation mic-checked the requisite, “Uh-oh, you got the yellow fever!” I, however, did not reply, even though the admission exhumed a sociological problem that has perplexed and harassed me for years—the underlying implication of preferring to date a specific ethnicity that isn’t your own.