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WHEN I WAS YOUNG, my parents converted our basement into an indoor playground for the neighborhood kids.
My friends could listen to Elvis belt out Hound Dog or croon Love Me Tender on the Seeburg jukebox. Some chose instead to light up the Bally pinball machine. Others would challenge my father to a game of pool. Meanwhile, my mother would create mini-pizzas for everyone, with a slice of Swiss cheese drenched in tomato sauce on half an English muffin.
All this was done in the interest of jump-starting their son’s social development, but my parents underestimated my devotion to solitude. While all the mayhem raged below, I could often be found hiding out in my room, reading about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.
I’ve always felt more comfortable with others one-on-one than in a group, routinely flouting cocktail etiquette in favor of serious conversation at a corner table. I gravitated toward a profession that prioritizes relating in depth. I also married a woman who thrives on social contact, thus compensating for my more introverted nature.
But while I’ve largely overcome my shyness in groups, thanks to my own psychotherapy, my focus remains individual relationships. lndeed, I’ve been determined to nurture a few long-ago friendships, rather than letting them fall by the wayside, as many men do. That brings me to Charlie and Chernoff.
Charlie. Money has been front and center in Charlie’s life, as it sometimes has been in mine. We meet for a pancake breakfast weekly and talk freely about our marital dramas, kids and health. The most investment savvy of my friends, Charlie and his wife own a pair of duplexes, which—to my amazement as a mechanical know-nothing—they manage completely hands-on.
He has contributed religiously to a retirement account at Vanguard Group ever since I recommended Windsor Fund to him almost 50 years ago. Despite the similarity in our interests and background, Charlie and I reconnected only recently after a long hiatus. We needed time to heal after he was suspended from graduate school, an incident I described in an earlier article.
Like many of us, Charlie was unnerved by the 2008 financial crisis. When Lehman Brothers collapsed, he switched whole hog out of all his stock funds, except Windsor, and into intermediate-term Treasurys. He profited from bond interest and price appreciation as rates continued to decline, though he’d have fared far better if he’d stayed the course with his stock funds. Looking back, Charlie attributes his instinctive flight from the ravaged stock market to a reactivation of primitive fears, with those fears further exacerbated by his family’s trauma during the Holocaust.
Chernoff. At college, some guys were called by a nickname. Others were known by their surname, which was the case with Chernoff. Decked out in British Alan Paine sweaters and Cole Haan loafers, sensitive, and well-versed in the fine arts, he was popular with the prized shiksas on campus.
Meanwhile, I was dubbed Abe, beneficiary of a nouveau riche background, driving an unkempt silver Corvette with a loud rev. Chernoff and I bonded instantly the day he arrived at the fraternity, unknowingly drawn together by our mutual depression.
One day, not long after the semester began, Chernoff and I were sipping Dr. Brown’s cream sodas at the local deli when he startled me with a revelation: His persona was a sham. His father went bankrupt when he was in high school and the family compensated with pretense. There was no money, only a second mortgage and credit card debt. He couldn’t have afforded a private university without a scholarship.
Driven to suppress the shame, Charlie unconsciously adopted his parents’ playbook of deceit. He would later marry an Oscar-winning Hollywood actress for, as he now says, all the wrong reasons. When they divorced several years later, he missed the glamour he so craved and, with family and close friends all back East, he felt bereft.
Although my friend went on to produce several mainstream movies, only one was a box-office success and couldn’t, by itself, finance his grand lifestyle. Unlike me, Chernoff never hit the psychiatric medication jackpot, and has become unconsolably depressed. Now stricken with Parkinson’s, he feels his career merely recapitulated his father’s financial failure.
Charlie and Chernoff are my main guys. I love them and the depths to which they’ve allowed our relationship to go. Even good friends are often hesitant to share episodes of financial shame, and I feel blessed to have found two who are willing to confide in me.
Left unpeopled, retirement can be a stark and scary place. Close friendships are hard to cultivate, but they’re out there for those who dare to look. I’d encourage you to honor the friendships you have, and give them the attention they deserve.
Steve Abramowitz is a psychologist in Sacramento, California. Earlier in his career, Steve was a university professor, including serving as research director for the psychiatry department at the University of California, Davis. He also ran his own investment advisory firm. Check out Steve’s earlier articles.
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I’m calling my brother-in-law right now! Thanks for the reminder.
I agree. I am fortunate to have longtime friends, 40, 50, even 70+ years that I stay in contact with. It’s wonderful!
Great. I’m trying to get where you’ve already gotten.