C.S. Lewis wrote once that a friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another: “What,  you too?”

As I’ve written many times, I’ve wary of friendship, even to the point that I often think I’m just not suited to close friendship with most people. I find I can rarely get to a trusting and comfortable place with it.

Most of my friendships have failed, for too many reasons to detail here. Sometimes my fault, sometimes not. Sometimes a suicide, sometimes a sudden death.

I’m gun shy about friendship, I like being by myself, and I doubt I will ever be closer to another human than I am to Maria. But she is my partner and lover. That is not the same thing, really as being a close friend, and I wouldn’t want it to be.

We each  have our independent lives, and we both cherish them. Somebody wrote a message to me today addressed to “Jon And Maria,” critiquing my radio show, and I thanked him for the critique, but i also pointed out that Maria is not on the radio show.

A woman wrote me suggesting that Maria come with me to WBTN and take videos of my two-hour show so I could put them up on my YouTube channel and pull in more subscriptions.

Thanks, I said, but Maria works, she is not my assistant, nor does she devote her days to my well-being.

She is in her studio where she belongs, making art. We do have independent lives, and we should. We are not one thing, but a number of different things.

Friendship is something else.

I think the quickest way to crush a friendship is to move too quickly or too deeply. Somebody wrote that friendship is like a great and rare wine, it takes a long time to cure and settle.

I am slowly getting to know Thomas Toscano, an interesting man, a conductor and composer, an iconoclast and fiercely independent individual, a  curious and sometimes angry and often funny man full of contrasts and complications and grievances and opinions and deep thoughts.

His eyes twinkle, they are full of irony.

He is also a brilliant man, and  a decent man, I admire him for both of those things.  He has worked as a conductor and music composer in New York City, and threw that relationship and live down when a relationship ended. His fantasy is to live by himself in a wood cabin with a dog or small coyote.

He is trying to save a struggling community radio station because he is a man of moral principle and great conviction. He believes ordinary people should have access to media, not just rich corporations and billionaires.

Thomas lives life almost completely on his own terms inso far as that is possible. He is the Executive Director of the radio station where I do my broadcasts, WBTNAM 1370. Thomas does the shows with me, jumping in when he wants, usually telling a jaw-dropping story.

We work well together.

His hours are so long he practically lives at the station, and he  runs almost every aspect of it, from production to administration to programming to engineering.

We seem to have a great chemistry on the air and off. I’ve taken to bringing takeout lunch from a nearby Asian restaurant before we go on the air on Wednesdays, he never asks for food but enjoys it, I think. I don’t think what he eats is very important to him.

I enjoy our lunches together, we talk about all sorts of things, life art, creativity, and yes, animals.

Today I mentioned that I loved watching British mysteries late at night after Maria and the dogs are all asleep, and I am still restless. The British mysteries soothe me and keep me up till 2 or 3 in the morning. Maria can never stay up that late. I can never go to sleep that early.

Thomas lit up when we started talking about the mysteries, the British ones – Vera especially, Inspector Lewis, and the goofy but safe Midsomer Murders. We like the dark ones like Shetland or Loch Ness, or the dark Scandinavian mysteries, Acorn  TV and Britbox, Miss Marple, Father Brown, Death in Paradise, Inspector Lynley, Inspector Morse, Hercule Poirot,  Sherlock Holmes, Shetland, The Last Detective, Wallender, Hinterland, The Investigator,  Inspector Maigret,  Dr. Blake, Miss Fisher. (I can’t name all the Scandinavian mysteries, Thomas watches them with the English translations turned off.)

Thomas has a remarkable memory for detail and dialogue. I’m good on plots.

We both loved Vera the best, Ann Cleeves’s fictional creation stars Brenda Blethyn  in the Vera Stanhope Mystery Series on Amazon Prime. it is my all time favorite. Thomas’s also.

He and I have watched each episode on the eight series a dozen times. We both could mimic her voice and talk about each episode in detail.

This is the one series, I told Thomas, where a great actor or actress plays the lead role,(maybe Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock is the other) and Brenda Blethyn is amazing as DCI Stanhope, waving her warrant card around, disheveled, broody, compassionate, grumpy, overweight, driven by her own demons.

Vera has a big heart, but she is tough as iron. Needless to say, she always gets her man or woman.

I watch those performances over and over again, deep into the night,  I know some of the dialogue by heart.

Thomas and I both did our imitations of Vera together as she arrests another hapless baddie: “Sorry, love, but you’re under arrest now.” There is no other mystery hero or heroine like her.

We were both excited, laughing, in the way friends who share a common experience. Our laughter filled up the small studio anteroom and echoed through the empty and musty building.

I could have talked with Thomas all day about the British mysteries, I suggested we do a one-hour show about them in the arts interview he does on weekends.

We just connected as we ate our Shrimp Teriyaki, the plastic plates spread over his insanely cluttered desk. Neither of us stands on much formality.

I love those mysteries, I’ve never really talked about them with anyone, I don’t know of anyone (except Patti Smith) who is as drawn to them as I am, and Thomas is.

Then I remembered C.S. Lewis’s “you too” moment.

I find these mysteries grounding, I can always go to sleep with they are over, I love watching them on my Iphone, streaming  up in the bedroom in the dark, the world still around me. My own secret world.

I felt the “you too? moment. I don’t really know what it means.

I don’t know if Thomas and I will be close friends, I have given up on predicting that sort of thing or expecting it. We are very different,  yet very much alike. I have a  habit of complicating things.

I am much drawn to taking Thomas’s portrait, and there are not many men who call to me in that way.

I love the character in his face, and the blaze of his eyes. My new (used) Zeiss lens liked him and caught the gentle spirit and sensitive creature beneath the occasional bluster and sense of outrage.

I see a good and decent man in those eyes.

I’m  eager to do that mystery show with Thomas one Sunday. He  really gets it. And we both had a lot more to say.