Swearing loyalty When it comes to old college buddies, unconditional love sometimes can sound a lot like ‘Try not to wet yourselves, assholes’ BY ALAN OLIFSON

I probably should have reread the whole e-mail chain before forwarding it to my girlfriend. My bad there. But even so, I probably wouldn’t have thought it was all that offensive. Phrases like "Fuck family! What about your obligation to the Coors Brewing Company?" and "pains me like an ass raping" are just standard-issue college-friend communication for me. So when I forwarded her the e-mail that began "GET YOUR ASS TO THE HOUSEBOAT, FUCKER!!", I was — unbelievably, in retrospect — actually trying to persuade her to go to the houseboat. Like I said, my bad.

College friends are an amazing thing. I had a great time in college — judging by what people tell me and pictures I’ve seen — but I never would have guessed that the guys who played drinking games with me while wearing Depend undergarments would become my friends for life, that I’d stand up at their weddings and hold their children in my arms. Though I guess once you’ve talked to someone and, midway through the conversation, seen his pee face, a certain level of intimacy has been established. So maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised.

My days of drinking in diapers are almost 15 years behind me — which I realize shouldn’t be a point of pride for a man in his 30s — but the friendships forged over such blatant misuse of alcohol have survived the years intact. A pretty impressive feat, considering we were randomly thrown together by the UC Santa Barbara Housing Department based on lies from our dorm applications. ("What, Mom, I checked smoker? No, I must have just colored out of the lines. Yeah, change that to nonsmoker. For sure. Thank God you caught that. Phew, could you imagine? Smoking? Eeeewww.")

We all live in different cities now, my college friends and I, so the cornerstone of our friendship has become a collection of annual trips, the aforementioned houseboat event being the oldest. For almost 15 years now, we’ve made a pilgrimage to a lake in central California, where we find a nice, isolated cove, anchor a houseboat, and proceed to drink ourselves into absolute oblivion.

I believe there are also water sports.

And possibly fishing. I’d have to check the pictures.

To the uninitiated, it may seem as though our relationships haven’t progressed much past the college level, that from the beginning the depth of these friendships could be measured entirely in fluid ounces. But it’s more than that. There is shared history here, and mutual respect, and the knowledge that any of these guys, without question, would bail me out of jail at three in the morning. Not, amazingly, that I’ve ever needed to be bailed out of jail at three in the morning. But meeting bail is the benchmark of true male friendship, the unspoken equivalent of unconditional love. (Actually speaking of unconditional love tends to get you hit. Or, at the very least, written on in permanent marker after you’ve passed out — and you’d better be drunk enough to pass out soon if you’re running around blathering about unconditional love.)

My girlfriend can talk on the phone for an hour to a friend she just had lunch with the same day. I can go six months without talking to one of my college friends and then have a five-minute phone conversation in which 90 percent of the sentences end with "... yeah, like your mom." Done. Friendship replenished. In fact, we rarely call each other just to chat. I’d say when I talk to my college friends on the phone it’s for one of two reasons: a) we are planning a trip, or b) they are currently on a trip, and calling to express the void in their hearts left by my absence. The latter call usually goes something like, "Dude, [unintelligible cell-phone static] pussy. Get your lazy ass [unintelligible due to bartender shouting drink-order confirmation] fucker." It brings a tear to my eye.

So when I forwarded the e-mail about the houseboat — itself a response to my e-mail backing out of this year’s trip — I thought I was passing on a message that said, in essence, "Alan, we really would miss your wit and conversation at this year’s vacation. Though we understand you might have scheduling problems, we really hope you can find a way to work around them so we get to see you and your wonderful girlfriend." Of course, what she read was more along the lines of, "You make me sick to my stomach and other major organs. This stupid decision shows a profound flaw in your ability to prioritize and a serious lack of the balls required to take charge of a situation and make good shit happen. I weep for you." But we can argue semantics all night.

Despite all their persuasive arguments and heartfelt pleas, we didn’t make the trip. But I can rest easy knowing there will be others. As the years go by, things are getting more difficult to organize. And the truth is, we have all drifted a bit. For example, I’m not entirely sure what some of these guys do for a living anymore. Diverging career paths, marriages, kids — these things all pull at old friendship ties. But I feel we’ve drifted to the point where the tether is now taut and we’re secured, anchored by our past and our love of regularly scheduled flagrant alcohol abuse. So I miss one trip. Our friendships will survive. Or, as I will probably e-mail my friends, "Sorry I missed the boat, but I’ll catch you fuck-nuts next time. And try not to wet yourselves, assholes."

Alan Olifson can be reached at alan@olifson.com