(I had gone into a little detail about Fraz a couple of weeks ago. I wrote about how we met and became friends. I just needed to get some basic information out of the way so that I could clearly write about the incident involving LocalSinger. There was certainly a lot more to Fraz' story and she'll be making several appearances in upcoming posts. I'm using today's and tomorrow's articles to give more background about her.)
I called Fraz up a couple of days after I got her number at El Campo Ruse. She seemed excited to hear from me and we talked a bit about our interests. She invited me to come over and hang out on Halloween 1997. (Wow, 20 years ago!) She wanted to go to "A Nightmare on Normal Street," an annual festival-style gathering in Hillcrest.
I showed up at her house and Lawd (whom I met the second time I saw Fraz) was there. I realized at this moment that I was being Friend-Zoned. (Whatever.) He was apparently being Friend-Zoned, too. We hung out and Fraz just kept futzing around. Lawd and I kept trying to get her to leave to go to the Nightmare, but she insisted on us putting on some form of makeup for Halloween. I allowed her to put a little black triangle on my nose and whiskers so I looked a little like a cat. Lawd also agreed to a minor amount of make up.
We got over to Normal Street, but the event was already over. There were a lot of people hanging around in the aftermath, but crews were already taking down the stage. Fraz kept going around asking if anything was happening, but everyone told her the same thing. That was it. We missed it. I know EXACTLY how Cartman felt. (WOOHOO! A recent cultural reference!)
I did get to hang out with Fraz on numerous other occasions. Sometimes Lawd was there, sometimes it was just the two of us. It was always a struggle to plan things. If I came over to see Fraz, she would need to run a bunch of errands first before we would do the thing we planned on doing. Then, we wouldn't spend very much time on the planned activity.
Early on in the friendship, she came over to hang out with me at my apartment (without having to run errands first). We were going to watch a few episodes of "Ellen." She brought some alcohol with her. Since I didn't have a couch, we were going to have to watch TV on the bed. I was hoping that the alcohol might help lead to something happening between us, but it didn't.
While we were getting to know each other, I wondered how she supported herself. She freelanced as a journalist for the alternative lifestyle weeklies, but she clearly didn't make enough to afford her own apartment. And she didn't seem to have a regular job. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me and I straight out asked her. She admitted that her father was wealthy and he had set up a trust fund for her. She got an allowance and it was enough to cover her rent and other expenses.
After a few months, I got to meet her father. As it turned out, he has the same first name as me (my real name). Fraz said that if she knew me by my real name first, she never would have been friends with me. He was British, but became an American citizen. He seemed to tolerate my presence. Her mother appeared to have suffered from a stroke at some point. She had some trouble getting around. Her father was rather fit for his age and enjoyed skiing on a regular basis, something her mother couldn't do.
Fraz' thing was that she wanted to make a living photographing birds. In the United States, everyone says you can do what you want to do, but the opportunity to make money at it is not guaranteed. She had taken some amazing photos and had been able to have them displayed at local galleries and coffeehouses, but she didn't get paid for this.
And she was REALLY into birds. Once we were watching a documentary about the mating rituals of birds in Africa and the look on her face was like she was watching porn.
Prior to meeting me, she'd experienced a couple of setbacks. The first was that she'd survived a heart attack. She was 31 when I met her, so this happened at a fairly young age for her. The other was that she had been mugged at gunpoint. This created an aversion to violence. If we were watching something on TV, and it looked like violence was about to occur, she wouldn't be able to watch it. This presented a problem when we watched "Some Like It Hot." I had to fast-forward through the scenes involving gunfire. This also meant we couldn't go out and see movies because we almost never knew when one of them might contain enough violence to trigger her anxiety.
So, our friendship was basically limited to running errands, eating, watching TV and experiencing live events. As will go into detail in tomorrow's post, even that presented a problem.
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