On August 16th of this year, Beth and I will have known each other for eight years. August 16th was the day after the Austin Dave Matthews concert, and Beth and I had found our we were roommates at Sarah Lawrence, with friends in common, both living in Texas. So we made plans to meet for lunch in Austin. I was so nervous, I made Alex come along. I needn’t have. Beth and I started talking when the fajitas arrived and didn’t stop talking until we said goodbye at our cars, both of us suddenly much more excited for the start of college. Really, we haven’t stopped talking since.

Beth indulging in the world’s biggest tub of Cheez Balls, during our Senior Year. I swear, she ate that entire thing over the course of six months.
We got to college and all the things that happen to you in college, well, they happened to us. We changed our ideas about careers, we fell in love with inappropriate people (remember Dreadlock Guy?), we had inappropriate people fall in love with us, we excelled in class (Beth) and did not so well in class (me), we got drunk, we had hangovers, and we grew up. But for me, hands down, the best thing to come from the entire Sarah Lawrence experience was Beth. From the very first minute of my freshman year to the day I graduated, Beth was my best – and sometimes only – friend. We lived together for the first year, and the second year, and when Beth spent the first semester of my third year on break from college, it was one of the toughest three months I’ve ever endured at college. I made all kinds of stupid choices without my anchor to keep me grounded. Little did I know that in that first year, when it seemed like we had no other friends, we had the only friendship we needed. I was starting to learn why my father told me, “If you’ve got a few true friends in life, you’re lucky,” but I do, and Beth’s one of them.
I’ve always known why I’m friends with Beth. It’s because I’m not stupid. When you meet someone like her – someone as kind, generous, forgiving, intelligent as she is – you don’t let go for a minute. I know that she’s all those things because I’m not the only one who spotted it and promptly placed themselves next to her for eternity. So did her boyfriend, Josh. They met in that semester that she was away from school, and they’ve been together ever since. I’d never heard her talk about anyone the way she talked about Josh, and when I met him, I understood. Here was a guy who saw what I saw in Beth – that she’s sort of like an angel dropped in your life if you’re lucky enough. They’ve been together ever since, and there were times when they were my only inspiration when it came to love. “If you two don’t make it,” I used to joke, “I’m joining a convent.” They did. And when I found Stuart, the very first person I wanted him to meet was Beth. When he met her, that first week, and we had a moment alone at the bar, I looked at her and we both almost started crying. It felt just that good, and she felt like exactly the right person to share it with without having to say a word.

Beth, late February 2002, the day Josh arrived in New York City to live with her.
But before Josh (and then Stuart) came around, back in the sometimes-dark and always confusing college days, there were times when Beth and I were each other’s only knights in any kind of armor. I remember, during a particularly rough moment when she was taking a semesters’ leave in Dallas and sorting her life out, that she sat in the driveway of her building, on the phone with me, and didn’t say a word for all the silent crying she had to do, for at least ten minutes. I remember a time, right after September 11th, that for totally unrelated reasons I was very alone, and very scared, and I could only make my legs move insofar as it took me to walk them to where she was waiting to hold me from falling down. I am proud to say that Beth and I never faltered for each other, even as we faltered for ourselves.
I say all this because for one, friendship like this isn’t taken lightly, and I know that in twenty years, we’ll be watching our kids run around the lawn and talking about mortgages and getting older, just the way we sat on the North Lawn watching our classmates running around and talked about conference papers and boys. I also say all this by way of introducing you to the marvel that is Beth, because I want you to help her in her latest conquest for excellence. She’s joined a triathalon team to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She’s spending all spring training for a 32.1 mile triathalon and she’s raising at least three thousand dollars on her own. And she’s doing it because she knows she can, so I’m here doing this because I know she can too, and I’ll be there next to the river and next to the road, cheering her on with every loud Greek gene in my body. Stuart and I have donated as much as we can to help her but I’d be an idiot if I didn’t turn to you guys, my awesome internet, to point you here, to help her out too. I’ve told you all about Beth, and her kindness and gentleness and resilience and awesomely springy curly hair. There’s no way you don’t love her just a little bit, right? She really is that wonderful, and if I sound like I’m gushing, I am. But if you’ve got a few dollars, please throw them her way. For her, and for best friends everywhere, the kind of people that will really go thirty two point one miles out of their way to raise such an enormous sum of money for people who so desperately need it. That’s the kind of friend that Beth is, and now I’m sharing her with you.

Beth in the East Village, Winter 2003.
Help out. And when I’m cheering her on, you will be too.