Male Baboons Benefit from Female Friends

We don’t talk on the phone anymore. We used to, when the sound of each other's voices was comforting. I was so proud, back then, of being a loner - a traveler - a woman who couldn’t be satisfied staying in one place. Have you stayed in the same place?  

I never told you that I had to say goodbye to a friend that I loved when I was too young to make sense of the loss. It followed me, haunting every friendship that came my way. Expecting bonds to break, I built no bridges. I was an island, shipwrecked by platonic despair. 

There was a fortune teller who lived on the block one street down from where I lived. I walked past her window almost every day. Most days no one sat in the empty chairs turned towards the small round table with a deck of cards and a crystal ball. Some days the fortune teller stood outside smoking a cigarette. One day I turned to look in the window expecting an empty room, I instead met her eyes. She stood up quickly walking to the door. I heard her yell from the window, “I've got something to tell you!” but I rushed across the street away from her. I imagined, if I sat with her, she’d have plenty to say, but she charged by the minute and, well, selectively spilling universal truths does not determine a fortune, I thought.

The first time I saw you was from across the room and I knew I had something to tell you, but I couldn’t even form words. You started frequenting my place of work often, the local restaurant in your neighborhood. I watched your life, your dates, and sporadically interrupted your dinners to tell you stories about the wine you were drinking. We met at jazz clubs or we met for tea. I left the city and fell in love. I once had a dream that your teeth fell out and a few weeks later you shared that you felt stressed at work. When my heart was broken I didn’t call you. I walked around the city looking for meaning and one day found my way back to the block with the fortune teller. I was lured in. She offered me a view of the universe as a hexagonal shape of reflective mirrors with the ability to contort like a rubix cube. She called it perception. By the time she ended the session I couldn’t feel my arms or legs and she used a rattle to drop my spirit back into my body. In the last moments before I left I thought of you and she spoke your name. She told me that male baboons live longer if they have female friends. 

I had bought you a plant for your birthday and you said you weren’t good at caring for things. You insisted I keep it, which made me feel rejected. You responded by admitting you don’t have many friends. 

When the fortune teller spoke your name I remembered a feeling of power that made me shiver. I remembered living as a cold and arrogant queen, cruel demands easily slipped from my tongue.

You don’t seem like a man lured by power, you’re more of a humble monk. You were the one who told me that desires can get in the way of humility, and not to measure my life in arbitrary milestones and that you trust in the wavelengths of life’s rhythms. I often wondered if I was in love with you. Could the dreams be steeped in something that I could trust? I wanted to tell you how I felt but we stopped talking on the phone. You’re terrible at keeping in touch and retreated more with every invitation. What was I left to do but let go? I thought of the male baboons and wondered of the years robbed from them.

Based on NYTimes Science article - Why Male Baboons Benefit from Female Friends, published October 1, 2020