I dub thee...

Ram. That's the new name for the guy formerly known as 1L Guy Friend. For starters, he's now a law graduate, so being 1L Guy Friend is no longer descriptive. I've held off renaming him because nothing seemed adequate. But, as he's an Indian god (yes, with a lower 'g'), I figured Ram was an appropriate name for him. And yes, Ram, I will add you to my list of friends and characters as you've been nagging me to do for an extended period of time.

I've been thinking of Ram a lot lately as he has had to deal with a series of unfortunate things in his life. Since their his things, I'm not going to elaborate. Instead, I'm going to list my five favorite random facts about Ram (these aren't in any particular order:

1. He never tells me he loves me. He only tells me that he "can" love me. He has the capacity to love me. Whether he does or not may change on a daily basis, but he has that capacity and I appreciate it.

Okay, if I just left it there, everyone would start to think Ram's a bit of an a$$, so let me clarify: I say "I love you" kind of easily. I grew up with a lot of love and with the recognition that you need to say it as a regular part of your life because just saying it at tough times - like following a funeral - will always leave you worrying that you never said it enough when the inevitable last moments in a life come. So, I say I love you frequently to the people that I love. And since I don't think love is a finite thing, there are lots of people I love. I'm not in love with any of them - right now, anyway - but I don't think saying I love you to the people I love in that great agape sense of the word or in the filial sense undermines or will undermine the romantic love I will eventually express for one individual person. So, the point is, I say "I love you" a lot, particularly to my friends that I only talk to once in a while on the phone. It's second-nature to me.

Ram does not say "I love you." Ram doesn't say a lot of touchy-feely things. He doesn't like being touched. Or to feel. And he hates it when I say I love you and then expect him to respond. I try not to expect it too much, but after three years or so of constantly being in each others life, I harassed him once about his lack of love for me. Our phone conversation went something like this:

Me: I love you.
Ram: Rah-rah-rah-rah. (which, to me, often gets translated to "I love you" but not this time)
Me: Oh, come on, you love me. You know you did. Just admit it.
Ram: Rah-rah-rah-rah.
Me: Ohhh... you love me. You really looooovvvvvvve me.
Ram: Yeah, yeah, I guess I love you.

Except, what I heard was, "Yeah, yeah, I can love you."

I started laughing at him - kind of annoyed, all the same - for saying "I can love you." A five minute rant about how he only has the capacity to love but isn't willing to necessarily dedicate that capacity to me ended in complete silence from him. After a minute, I hear a hesitant, "Um, actually, I said I guess I love you, but... that was freaking awesome. I can love you." Since then, Ram has never said he loves me. Just that he can. And for me, and for where we're at, that's good enough.

2. One of his (other) best friends once made up an online girlfriend in order to get girls. Now any guy can go out and claim a girlfriend once or twice while at a bar, just to see if this works. But an occasional-use story wasn't good enough for this guy. Believing that women are always attracted to men they can't have (which is almost true), Ram's friend created an elaborate background story for this faux-girlfriend. Full name, AIM screen name, college graduation dates, etc., etc. Several years later, Ram and his (other) best friend can rattle these details off without thinking.

3. He once wanted to get both an M.D. and a J.D. I think he's fricking insane, but he wanted to do it. There's probably a big part of him that he doesn't acknowledge that still wishes he would've done it.

4. One of his proudest moments in life is his high school salutatorian speech. He denies it, but I think he could still recite it by memory. People talked about that speech for years afterwards. It's still legend in his hometown.

5. He's offered to beat up at least three guys for me. Joshua is one of them. I would never ask him to do it, obviously, but it's good to know someone will have my back no matter what.

Okay, two more, just because:

6. Ram taught me how to play poker. I have made Texas hold-em skills now and I owe them all to the Indian god I call my friend.

7. He can pronounce virtually any word backwards. Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious is nothing for him backwards. It's, obviously, suoicodilaepxecitsiligarfilarepus, but yeah, you go ahead and try to pronounce that aloud.

Yes, it's just a great big lovefest today. But, Ram deserves it. And it's unusual. I think I'll soon do some posts on guys I used to know and I can guarantee none of them will be overflowing on the love. Or the potential to love.

Muah, baby. Muah.