what is a friend?

I recently asked a friend for help with some homemade 'storm windows' that I got last winter and never finished installing because I mis-measured the space they need to fit and they're just *that* much too big.

I left him a voicemail, hoping he might help - I need both a vehicle big enough to haul them to the hardware store to be re-cut (he's got a pickup truck and a station wagon), and an extra pair of hands, since the sheets are too big for me to physically handle alone.

I just got an email back that seemed calculated to make me feel guilty for asking, though he has a slightly flowery, archaic turn of phrase that makes it hard (for *me*) to tell whether he's joking or not.

I wrote a response back (that I sent to my*self*) that let me get out all the angry, frustrated, painful feelings I had when reading his email.

And now I'm trying to think of how to *really* respond.

First of all, I prefer the phone, because there can be some back-and-forth.

And also, I don't like being made responsible for someone else's guilt feelings!

I mean, why does he feel guilty in the first place? I don't know. I mean, *I* think he has far more resources than I do, from his family, to being male, etc. Privileges I'm quite sure he's blissfully unaware of.

I *do* know that he seems to have a certain kind of - puritanical? guilt, which he's exhibited repeatedly over the years.

I've never been sure how much our 'friendship' was based on that; how much was based on latent, unexpressed sexual attraction or other feeling; and how much he simply *likes* me and wanted to help.

Very confusing.

I've tried to talk about this before with him, when we were on a couple of long car journeys (just the two of us) to try to relieve the tension I'd always felt impeded us from being the kind of friends *I* thought we could be: Close, but not spending a lot of time together. Of like mind, on certain things. Kindred spirits, or something like that.

Exchanges like this make me question things - it's a bit of that Charlie-Brown-and-the-football, house of cards, quicksand feeling that I've had so often with my own family.

I wish I could TALK with him about it, openly and freely, and FIND OUT.

But he's married, and I'm not sure he even has conversations that candid with his own wife. I can't fathom how people do this - sleep, night after night, in close physical proximity to someone who might as well be living on Neptune for all the shared understanding they have of the other person's universe.