Technicolor Dreamcoats

Saturday marks t-minus ten weeks until Abbi and my wedding.

Tomorrow evening, we drive back to Abbi’s hometown for the second of three engagement parties. I still need to pick up a shirt and tie to go with my seersucker pants, blue blazer, and suede bucks. I’m thinking white oxford and pink tie. Pretty rockin’, huh?

One of my oldest, dearest friends swung by the office yesterday. I met Matt when I was fifteen-years-old. He helped me with chemistry. I helped him get a homecoming date. (Hey, we all have our skill sets.) Matt was a star student and athlete. In high school, he was most-likely-to-bail-because-he’s-doing-homework. He was All-American in lacrosse, and went on to Harvard where he majored in… art history.

If you’d asked me at eighteen-years-old who of my four closest friends — Sibby (“Sib”), James (“Deegs”), Jon (“Larks”), and Matt (“Tous”) — would go on to wealth and fame and blue blazers, I would have bet on Sib (U Penn) and Tous (Harvard). They were the guys who killed the SATs on two hours sleep. They were the guys in the Ivies.

Funny thing happened, though. Deegs and I are the guys in the blazers. Larkin’s in a lab coat. Sib and Tous are rockin’ cargo shorts and Tevas.

What’s in a man’s clothes?

In June ’05, Jon and I met in San Francisco and drove to Matt’s in Sonoma Valley wedding. It was a fantastic time, there in the mist-strewn, rolling hills of Northern California. Everyone was there but James. We had a lot of laughs, but we also stole a few moments of substantive conversation. Which is what I love about these four guys. Sure, I’ve seen them toss crab innards across a beach house kitchen. Yeah, we’ve cut school, turfed lawns, and ripped beer bongs. But at thirtyfive-years-old — just as fifteen — what I love most is our ability to let down our guards, put down our arms, and speak openly.

Matt and I did so for the first time in two years yesterday. We talked about life. We talked about wanting to be better men for our better halves. And we talked about compromise.

When he left, I was left wishing for my old pals to crowd around a table, knock back a few drinks, and talk a while. In a few weeks, many of us will do just that as we gather for my bachelor party in Breckenridge, Colorado — nearly 10,000 in the sky. But not for long. Soon enough, we’ll return to our disparate worlds — soccer coaches, agents, biologists, masseurs, and media executives — and slip back into our disparate lives, and disparate clothes.

Some days, I wear a blue blazer. Others, I wear a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Someday, I’d like to rock cargo shorts and Tevas.