Esther (Or, Why Owlmates Always Save the Day)

I love my little Esther. She knows me like no other, and if I were to pick one person who truly grasped my essence--understood it, innately, without questions--it's her. Who else can I: make out with on her ex-boyfriend's bed (I didn't know at the time), right in front of him (hah! I thought he was just a friend!), so that we could practice our college kissing techniques(while in our Halloween costumes); smoke a little and dress up in '80s garb and dance to Culture Club at the student union at UW-Madison and truly believe we were back in the '80s; get in mock-fights with on the phone over our faux-son, Richard, and how I'm being neglectful with child support payments (sometimes I send my imaginary son a real card on his birthday--Halloween--with a single dollar bill in it, saying, "It's all my bastard son deserves!".....then Esther replies with, "I don't want you to have contact with him! You'll turn him GAY!!!"); hold hands while walking down the street and play "Who's HE tryin' to fool?", a game we made up where people look at us, think we're a couple, and we giggle cuz we just KNOW they're shaking their heads and thinking, "Doesn't that ditz realize her boyfriend's a total homo?"; laugh about our camping trip where we met Al C.--who gave us one of his heavy metal CDs (picture: long-haired, chest-haired rocker with dangling gold chain standing on a cliff top holding a red electric guitar in his hands)--and where Esther turned into a Bitch by saying, "Um, can we try camping MY way?"; laugh some more about how she turned into Queen Bitch one day where she'd dropped her lipstick, turned around to me, and said in complete seriousness, "Pick up my lipstick!"; see ExistenZ at the theatre, smoke & eat mint chocolate chip ice cream while listening to all of Jesus Christ Superstar & then go see ExistenZ again the same day; send each other vulgar pictures of gay porn with comic book captions, thus turning them into new definitions of "graphic novels"; laugh yet again over how she sent me an ad for fertility treatments, where this man was hugging his pregnant wife, and the man looked eerily like me (if I did too many drugs in the '70s and got hair transplants) and Es wrote something to the effect of, "Nathan turns straight after successful electroshock therapy!"; call each other Bitch and Whore all the time without even pausing in our conversations or wondering what other people think if & when they overhear us.

Sigh.

Esther, you're the best. Stay true!