Last weekend Dude and I went up to Half Moon Bay to attend the wedding of one of his best friends from high school. As much as I love Los Angeles, it's always good to get out of the city. It's as if the stress of everyday life gathers into smog above the mountains and palm trees and freeways. You fly through it and, for a bit of time, put it behind you.

Half Moon Bay was gorgeous. Rolling green hills. Horses. Sailboats in the harbour. Grey shingled houses. Ocean. Like that.

"It's very...coastal," I said to Dude, as I watched it pass by outside the car window.

"What a profound observation, Justine."

Meeting friends from his hometown was like walking through a slice of time. I collected some stories from their youth. One involved tequila and a highly irritated possum. Another involved one friend chasing another friend down a road with a knife because "he started yelling "No, no, don't hurt me!" and running in a way that cracked me up. Just totally cracked me up. It was like he wanted to be chased by someone with a knife. So I felt morally obligated to do so."

I like this kind of logic.

One friend talked about a double date he and Dude went on when they were fifteen: "...that was a big night for me," the friend said, looking at Dude, "if par for the course for you."

"I love hearing how he was a player in high school," I said.

"Serial monogamist," Dude corrected.

The friend said, "Well, look at him, he's a good-looking guy."

Good looks in this society seem to be a kind of public property; people comment on Dude's looks all the time. (A close friend of mine once asked me, "Are you sure you want to date a guy who's that good-looking?" as if Dude was Dorian Gray with the painting of his true, hideous self stashed in a closet. Later, after he won her over, she referred to him as a "jazzcat"). If Dude was an attractive girlfriend of mine, I would take those remarks for granted -- ("Oh, she's pretty") -- and not think about it one way or the other, except to observe how the world makes itself a slightly nicer place for her. But because Dude is a guy, there's a bemusement and novelty. I'm not sure why. Dude himself is kind of careless about his looks, in the manner of a person who never has to worry about them.

Another thing that people who know him always say about him is that he is a good man with a big heart and I love to hear this.

He's one of the most non-materialist people I've ever met. He has taste and style and likes fine things, but is not compelled to own them. He believes in non-attachment. "You shouldn't get attached to a particular outcome," he has told me more than once, and if he sees me starting to do so will remind me, "Don't attach."

"Go for what you want with all your heart and soul," I said, "but if you get it, hold it lightly. Lightly." I was paraphrasing something from a book by Harriet Rubin.

"Exactly."

And this applies to people as much as anything else.