friendship in the field

One thing I’ve noticed about “coming back” for the second time after fieldwork is “complete” is that the overall terrain of my friendships has shifted. My fieldwork friendships were perhaps out of the ordinary to begin with. Though I liked, respected, and enjoyed the company of the people with whom I was doing research, they were not my real friends in La Paz. They were not the people with whom I usually ate dinner, went to the movies, watched tv, danced or drank with on Saturday nights. I saw them often during training and attending lucha libre events. We would eat together after training or stop by the internet café for a few hours. I went to their birthday parties. But I did not call them when I was bored. I did not ask them to accompany me to the airport at strange hours. I did not stop by their workplaces just to say hello when I was bored.

good guys, but not my best friends

Those were different friends. And there were a lot of them. I think, to an extent during my fieldwork, I felt that accumulating friends strengthened my authenticity—as a non-gringa, as a kollita, as someone who was part of this social scene in La Paz. And I met some very interesting, smart, and dynamic people. And I wanted all of them to be my close personal friends.

I had a rich social life. As I wrote in my less-academicy blog (though that’s a shaky line to draw), In La Paz, I wear vintage, rockabilly dresses or ripped jeans and t shirts given to me by tattoo artist friends. I’m a live music junkie, a tattoo shop groupie, booze-slinging benefactor, restaurant aficionada, mural-painting sidekick, dj enthusiast, and a legitimate luchadora who rarely pays for a drink.

the old socialite days

But now, I have different priorities I guess. The people I used to be excited to see can be dreary at times. I lack enthusiasm for all the dining and boozing. I really would just rather hang out with the few close friends that I really care about than taxi around the city hopping from social scene to social scene.

I don’t know if this is what happens as you get older. Maybe it’s being a doctor (ha!). Maybe this is my form of “settling down.” But I just don’t have the energy that I once did. I don’t want to dance all night. I don’t want more than 3 glasses of wine. I want to be able to hear the conversation I’m participating in. I don’t want to impress anyone. I don’t want to prove myself. But maybe what this all means is that I’m more comfortable here now. Friends are no longer a superficial method of accounting my investment or my embeddedness. They are the people who make me smile and laugh and stop worrying about my (possibly non-existent academic) “future”. They are just my friends.