Approximately 10 years ago, I met my BFF online.  We met through some communities dedicated to music fandoms, tv fandoms and writing.  She was an exceptional writer and I was, frankly, intimidated by that.  We could never remember how it was that we started talking but I believe someone sent her to me when she had some question about US legal issues for a story she was writing.  We began IM'ing back and forth and thus was the deepest friendship of my life ever born.

If you wrote down our beliefs and backgrounds on paper, you would assume we would loathe one another.  She was, more or less, a Communist.  I am, more or less, a libertarian.  She cared far more about the group than the individual.  I place individuals above all else.  She was First Nations, specifically Mohawk.  It may not be possible to be whiter than I am.  She was a social worker.  I have a very jaundiced view of social work.  She was on the side of Palestine (though very anti-Hamas).  I am nigh to a Zionist.  She advocated for gay marriage.  I do not believe that the state has any role in marriage at all.

We should have hated each other.  To say we didn't is an understatement of epic proportions.  Our lives were completely entwined.  As numerous of our mutual friends stated, if you thought of one of us, you thought of the other.  She was the family that I chose. 

It wasn't a matter of being friends despite our differences.  We were friends because of them.  The reason that our manifold political differences didn't matter is because we understood and respected the other's position.  She was a collectivist due to her culture and tradition and due to her concern for the less fortunate.  She understood that I was an individualist due to my religious upbringing and my intellectual interests as well as my own personality and my concern for freedom.  We each thought the other was wrong.  Neither of us thought the other was evil.  Our basic response to differences was "I support you in all your horrific wrongness".  We would argue and fight and then go and watch Human Target and flail at each other about the awesome that is Guerrero. 

She made me defend what I believe and think about the implications of my positions.  I did the same for her.  It helped that she did not believe in the perfectability of mankind.  It also helped that both of us weren't as far to the extremes as may first appear.  Both of us were quite practical about real world implications of our positions.  That tended to moderate some of the more extreme positions.

She also actually meant what she believed.  She knew there was no unicorn that would bring her utopia.  She was ticked at Harper's tax cuts because she was willing to pay for the health care benefits that she desired.  I didn't agree, but I did respect that position.  She was very realistic about how people would take advantage of a social safety net.  In short, she was a grown up and she made me be one too. 

When I hear people going on and on and on about how those on the Right and those on the Left cannot possibly be friends I want to scream. She and I were proof positive that this was not the case.  As I said, we each thought that the other was completely wrong about things.  We agreed to disagree about many things and there were issues we agreed to never, ever discuss.  That was the key.  Neither of us thought we had the moral high ground over the other.  Both of us knew that our respective positions had flaws.  We didn't treat politics as religion.  We didn't think that either of us had access to divine truth.  And, in the end, it was far, far more interesting to discuss movies and books and television and writing and hotassery of all kinds than to fight about issues on which we'd already made up our minds.

I've always been very smug that our friendship was the actual definition of tolerance.  Tolerance doesn't mean agreement.  It means rolling your eyes until they fall out of your head and then putting up with that person anyway.  That's what we did.  She called me a jackbooted Nazi and I called her pinko Commie scum and then we'd laugh and get back to the important business of watching movies where everything blows up. 

She made me an immeasurably better person.  I am going to miss her until the end of time. 




I am only posting this because I've had a few requests.  Any donations that anyone would like to make in her behalf may be made to the following:

Tsi Tyonnheht Onkwawenna Language Circle
314 Airport Road
Tyendinaga Territory, ON CANADA
K0K 1X0

This is a program that serves to teach the Mohawk language to adult learners.  This is a registered Canadian non-profit.  I know the woman who runs the program and she was one of Leslie's dearest friends as well as a family member.  The program is going to set up a scholarship in her name.  If you do donate, simply indicate that this is honor of Leslie Spencer.   Please, please do not feel obligated in any way.  I'm really only posting this here because I'm too lazy exhausted to reply individually. 

Posted by: alexthechick at 04:25 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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