Growing up, a friendless life seemed perfectly normal to me. My own parents never socialized and neither did the Huxtables, Bradys or Seavers on TV.  Melodramatic after-school specials taught me all about the dangers of peer pressure while  Diff'rent Strokes further hammered home the point with their infamous pedophile episode. Imagine if Arnold had listened to his friend Dudley and spent the afternoon in the back of Gordon Jump's bicycle shop, drinking wine and watching pornographic cartoons?  Friends got you in trouble and got you molested was the lesson I took from that 'very special episode'.

Meanwhile, my mother was a Christian fundamentalist who taught me that people were evil and I found very little evidence to the contrary during my formative years.  When I accepted an award for cross country runner of the year, my teammates de-panted me before the entire student body. The principal laughed it off as a harmless prank then blamed me for failing to tie the drawstring on my warm-up pants.  Telling me to make friends with my peers back then would have been like telling a black man to make amends with the KKK.  At least the KKK hid behind hoods and operated at night. My peers, on the other hand, had no such inhibitions or sense of shame.

When I reached college in the mid-90s, a perfect storm of events caused me to reconsider my misanthropy and give this whole friendship thing a try. Loners had become public enemy #1: we were portrayed at best as asexual mama's boys holed up in our parent's basement and at worst as potential school shooters and Unabombers. To get anywhere in life you had to be a team player well-versed in the arts of corporate synergy and networking. Even Clint Eastwood--who made a career out of playing loners like Dirty Harry--began directing and starring in buddy flicks like Space Cowboys with his geriatric pals. The zeitgeist had clearly passed from a culture of independence to one of interdependence and those who refused to change would be left with few options aside from flipping burgers and asking "Would you like fries with that?".

So I tried to meet people. But I never quite got the hang of friendship. Too much bad '80s television permanently skewered my view of humanity. Even the child molester episode of Diff'rent Strokes had a laugh track so I assumed all real life situations followed the familiar  setup-beat-punchline rhythm of sitcoms. I never realized there was a right time and a wrong time to tell jokes.

In 1999, I moved to the East Coast to live with a sophisticated older woman.  Sex and the City convinced me middle-aged women did nothing but drink Cosmos, pine for Manolo Blahniks and discuss sex in explicit detail. To appear hip, I explicitly dished the dirt about one of their gay friends who had told me to "never wear a wool sweater to an orgy." Use your imagination as to what he meant and how my remarks were received over dinner.

After telling several more bad jokes (drunk guys watching bootleg celebrity sex tapes do not want to contemplate whether or not Pamela Anderson has had more work done to her than a '78 Impala with tricked out rims), I finally determined friendship was antithetical to basic human needs.

People need love yet friendship is about cutting others down to size, busting chops and bullshitting. Practically the only time it is considered appropriate to tell a friend you love them is at their funeral. Call me needy but I'd rather you say it when I'm alive to hear it.

Infants can die from lack of touch and as Bruce Springsteen reminded us even we adults need a little of that human touch.  Yet unless you happen to be an NBA Hall of Fame point guard from the '80s, the embrace and kiss on the cheek will get you a punch in the face here in the States.

While friendship puzzled me, dating I understood. Like a game of Super Mario Bros., there are stages through which you advance--first date, first embrace, first kiss, first time--to keep you motivated and a party at the end (ie a wedding) to celebrate your victory.

Friendship on the other hand struck me as pointless, like a game of Pac-Man. You're stuck in a maze, going around in circles and each stage is pretty much the same as the last. By the 256th time you head out to the Karaoke bar with your friends, your head feels about as scrambled as the impassable 256th stage of Pac-Man. Call me crazy but I'd rather kiss a girl at the end.  

Before I started blogging, I assumed friendship was just like any other capitalist enterprise: it was all about having more than the next guy. One of my ex-girlfriends had 106 contacts in her cell phone and it became my obsession to "out" friend her.  Friends were just another asset to accumulate, like property or junk bonds.

Fortunately I've had a few readers e-mail me and something strange happened. I discovered that I actually enjoyed exchanging quips and ideas with my fellow hairless apes.  Okay, at first I didn't. Initially my competitive zeal got the better of me and I wanted to be their bff. But after I exorcised my inner teenage girl, I came to realize that merely exchanging ideas to be worthwhile in and of itself, although I will admit there is a bittersweet element to these exchanges. Based on my past experiences, most people treat e-mail buddies the same way children treat their Christmas toys: once the novelty wears off and the toys cease to be fun diversions, it's off to the closet they go. 

I have yet to receive a proper good-bye from an e-mail friend and sometimes I wonder if it is worth the pain. Friendship is like the music business: both are cutthroat with no loyalty where you're only as good as your last record or e-mail.  Billy Joel put it best when he sang: "you don't know how fast your friends will forget you."