It's fun watching the friends you've known since grade school change over the years. It's also not fun, in a lot of cases, as you realize you have little in common with the people you've spent the majority of your life hanging out with. I hang out with a gang of people who went to the same high school I did, but since I dropped out after my freshman year I actually never knew them until a year or two ago. All my real high school friends have, well, I don't know, dissipated over the years. Evaporated away like the Salton Sea.

Since we went to the same school, we all know each other, and it leads to spirited discussion. One friend out of us gets discussed more than anyone else, and it's always in a negative way. It always starts with, "So-and-so is a douchebag," and then someone, like me, picks it up with, "Well that's just because he..." and then we all launch into our theories over why so-and-so is such a douchebag.

The reasons so-and-so is a douchebag are varied, especially depending on the values of the person speaking. Most people don't hang out with him any more because he doesn't like to do anything. "Hanging out" to him means that you go over to his house and while he does work or otherwise ignore you, you play his Xbox on his big expensive television in his uncomfortable room that lacks furniture with back support of any kind (seriously, his room: unusually high bed, and a bench) or otherwise ignore him.

Some say that it's because he's a constant flake. He's the type of guy who you can absolutely rely on not to do what he says he will. He'll tell you he'll be at your house in five minutes and then not call you for three hours. He's the guy who promises you he'll show up at your house on your birthday and then show up the next day all smiles with a familiar excuse. It's extra annoying because you know the guy never does anything, so you know that instead of hanging out with you, on your birthday, with all your guy's friends, he's probably just sitting at home with his head buried in his laptop. What's the deal with that?

Others say that it's because he's a poseur. He just latches on to what other people think are cool (like: he owns the same sort of computer equipment I do, which doesn't bother me, but others have called him a "copycat") but he never does it enough. He has no real interests, aside from buying useless bullshit, and every time he's tried to be active and healthy ("Let's go hiking!" "Let's lift weights!" "Let's lose this weight by not eating like an asshole!") he's never repeated anything past the second time.

For others it's because he's an asshole. One of my favorite things he's said that I like to repeat loudly to other people, is this "goal" of his that he had. We have another friend who spent the first 23 years of his life as a virgin, and this guy used to tell me (about three times), "My plan is that when he finally gets married, I am going to fuck his wife and impregnate her and have him raise my child without him knowing it." Why would anyone even say this? This guy has fucked several of this other guy's love interests and it just floors me. Who would do these things to a friend?

This has been my complaint: he has no creative or spiritual output. He claims he prays all the time and wears a gold cross, but if you pay attention to the way he treats others you can clearly tell that a camel will pass through the eye of a needle easier than this guy will get into Heaven. He told me once, "Just read the red text in the Bible and ignore the rest," and I wonder if he was simply repeating that, that he heard it from someone and always meant to, because he doesn't seem to have any idea about what Jesus taught. (Not that I believe but fuck, let's be ignorant about your own religion why don't you?) As close as the guy gets to art is playing video games, and maybe reading an Oprah's Book Club-class book or two. With no hobbies, I don't know what the guy spends his time doing. How does he not go mad?

Then a friend of mine stated the obvious and blew my mind: this guy isn't anybody. There's no "him" in him, and it's because of what he does. He's the wealthiest out of all of us, by a very wide margin, he could be married and have kids with his income but instead he lives with his parents and blows it all on expensive electronics and a Lexus (the most feminine looking Lexus you'll ever see, as well, which seems to be entirely lost on him but not lost to anyone else), because he sells AT&T mobile phones. The guy is the puppet master who tells the Best Buy goons how to best con people into buying an iPhone.

Salesmen aren't people, was his point, because all they do all day is shift personalities around in order to best sell people shit they don't need, or to manage to goons who sell shit all day and can't hold their own shit together.

In the shower, it dawned on me further: it makes perfect sense, as a salesman you have to believe in the need for the product. I wouldn't be able to shill things to other people because I would never be able to convince myself that people need the ridiculous things I am selling them. I wouldn't buy it, and I wouldn't try to gouge someone for it either. Our friend on the other hand is the epitome of a consumer: he relentlessly buys things, usually expensive electronics, something new every week (PSPs, personal video players, xbox, playstations, wii, televisions, new computers, netbooks, laptops, one of every ipod except for a touch, the newest cellphone, more video games, all things that keep you locked up in your house). He told me once, "All the things I buy are to replace the addictions I used to have," referencing his brief stint as a coke addict (as if being a coke addict for a few months and derailing your life is a unique experience only to him).

He's the perfect salesman, because he spends his days selling himself things in an attempt to make himself happy. "If I buy this thing, I will be happier than I was a moment before," and that's how he lives. There's no broad plan, no goal for self-improvement, he sells people things and tells people how to sell things all so that he can attempt to sell himself happiness... but you can't sell happiness. Not to yourself, and not to others.

Happiness comes from recognizing who you are, and allowing others to recognize who you are (and, hopefully, those other people kind of liking you still), but unfortunately for our friend: he isn't anybody. There's nobody for anyone to like. All there is is all the negatives to him: he's a flake, he's boring, he's disrespectful, he's a fake. Who is he? What are his interests? No one knows. Before long, no one is going to care.

I've tried in the past to convince him there is more to life than buying shit and sitting at home, but he's the type of guy who tries to adhere to random mantras, like, "I won't buy anything today and that will make me feel good!" without actually understanding or comprehending or having any real emotion about it at all, so they just fall apart after a day. I've tried to be mean, even, because sometimes that encourages people, but no, he just secludes further into his hermitage.

So, I'm giving up. The only thing that will make this guy change is if he loses all his money, but there's too much of it. He's going to spend the rest of his life being an absolute nobody. All his friends will find things that are interesting about themselves, find other people who are interesting in the same ways, and leave him behind. He's going to drive his Lexus around, with his overpriced shit-sounding stereo (if he heard how good my <$1000 system compared to his >$2000 system maybe he'd realize what a fucking idiot he is, to talk with my guy-ego for a moment), with his suit and his paunchy extra couple of pounds under it, and he's going to be lonely and trying to fill the hole with bullshit for the rest of his life and die utterly insignificant except to his grandchildren, looking forward to the inheritance.

What a sad fuckin' guy.

I guess that's another reason not to hang out with him: it's just so fuckin' sad, you know?