Friends who jump to judge their friends sadden me, perhaps for the same reason Albee's new play saddened me. In the "Goat, or who is Sylvia?", Martin, a successful architect, falls in love with a goat. Or, to put in more crudely (as his son does), he is fucking a goat. Since this is perceived as an abomination, everyone, including his best friend of decades, abandons him. Only if we live a life that is perceived by others as good, Albee suggests, will our loved ones stand by us. And since what is perceived as good varies from friend to friend, aren’t we forever about to be abandoned by a friend?

And this of course leads one to the question: so what makes me like someone? Is it really their capacity to make seemingly right choices? Or can one like someone simply because they share with you an inclination for Scriabin? Or because they dance funky? Or because you made love to them ten years ago and the memory of that moment prompts you to keep on living? Or, at an even simpler level, as one of my friends did with me last Friday, because they were kind to you at that precise moment when you were dancing and yet worrying about whether you will be a good father?