25 Red Flags in Friends You’re Probably Ignoring Right Now

Red Flags in “Friends” That Expose the Snakes Before They Strike

The first time I watched a man get paid back for betrayal, it took four seconds and a sharpened spork shiv.

His name was Dorsey. Tier C.

He flipped on his own bunkie for six months off a sentence,

signed the paper, and told himself the glass, the guards and the God he never prayed to would keep him breathing.

Word moves through a jail faster than blood through a cut wrist.

I was twenty feet out when the bunkie crossed the dayroom holding nothing, arms loose, smiling because he had already decided.

He hooked Dorsey by the collar like an old friend pulling him in for a photo. Then the shiv went into the soft meat under the ribcage. Fast fast fast in out in out Phik phik phik phik. It is truly amazing how fast and rapid a human can stab another. If you have never seen anyone get stabbed, you do not understand. By the 11th time deep yellow puss and red blood oozed out and Dorsey made a sound I still hear when a room goes too quiet.

Me and Bruce hit it running. Rained down ghost pepper napalm on those fuckers, screamed LOCKDOWN until our throats tore, radioed for backup. Amid all the chaos, I maced Dorsey too, square in his stab wound and his begging eyes, and I felt nothing but a smile tugging at the corners of my cheeks, because I have never had much love for a rat. Bruce drug the bunkie out cuffed, hauling him with a strength I did not know lived in a man that age, and the whole tier was up against the glass chanting it like a hymn.

RAT. RAT. RAT. RAT.

Somebody screamed HALE, let him fucking die.

SHUT THE FUCK UP. My brain hurts when I think back on this.

I have been backstabbed so many times I started checking my own back in the mirror like a paranoid stripper counting her tips.

The knife never comes from across the yard. It comes from the bunk. The stranger has nothing to sell. Only the man you let close enough to learn how you sleep can trade your life for a warm handshake on his way out the door.

Betrayal needs proximity. Always has.

I had a “friend” try to sleep with my girl while I was gone on a surf trip and then text me two weeks later asking for a loan. That level of stupid is almost a talent. (He literally hid from me upon return, pussy jealous rodent fuck)

Right now a million miles from the jail, I am on a balcony in Hanalei, the mountains behind the bay look like God dragged his fingers straight down the rock while it was still wet, and the rain comes through in warm sheets four times a day and leaves a rainbow behind every single time.

God’s constant reminder.

I have barely touched my phone in two days.

I feel lighter than I have in months, since maybe that first few months here after the jail cage.

It wasn’t just the euphoric brain clearing air of Kauai either believe it or not,

It was the silence.

It was every draining motherfucker I did not have to answer.

The men you let stand closest to you are the single biggest bet you will ever place, bigger than the job, bigger than the city, your friends mold you without your permission.

You do not rise or rot on your own. You rise or rot at the exact speed of the five guys around you. And most of you are circled up with men who would clap politely at your funeral and feel a quiet, guilty relief.

Everybody nods along to “you are the average of your five closest” and then strolls right back to a pack of broke, bitter, jealous fucking losers.

A wolf cannot run with sheep and stay a wolf. He slows down to keep them company. He starts apologizing for his own speed. And one morning he looks up grazing in the same field he swore he would die before entering, patting his soft mouth, wondering where the hell his teeth went.

So vet them like your life depends on it, because it does. The five closest either help you build the empire or burn it down while you sleep.

Send to your group chat. Watch who goes quiet.

1. The one who gets weird when you win. He could roll with you in the gutter, but the mountain makes him seasick, because every rung he watches you climb is a mirror he has to stare into. A man who only roots for you from the bottom was never a friend, he was a cellmate, and he liked the company.

2. The one who only texts when he needs something. Six months of silence, then his name lights up your screen and your gut knows. You are not his friend. You are his ATM, his Uber, and his unpaid therapist, and the second the favor clears, so does he. Cut the card up.

3. The coward who vanishes when it gets real. All summer he is the loudest dog in the yard. Then the moment the night turns dangerous you look around and he is half a block away pretending to take a phone call. Fear ate him alive and will shit him out later. Remove him from your life, he is a liability. The American Military punishes this by life in jail by the way. Going AWOL. . . .

4. The energy vampire. You leave dinner feeling like you donated blood at gunpoint. He is not heavy because life is hard on him. He is heavy because draining you is the only time the empty bastard ever feels full. Garlic. Holy water. Leave on read.

5. The one who trashes his woman to you. Sits across the table carving up the woman asleep in his bed, and you nod along and miss the obvious. A man who will gut the person closest to him will gut you before your chair gets cold. He is showing you, in advance, exactly what he does to people who trust him.

6. The professional victim. Never his fault. The entire planet conspired against him, personally, again, this week, on a fixed schedule. Stop loaning your shoulder to a man who took a blood oath never to stand on his own two feet.

7. The flake. Bails at the last second every time, always with a paragraph longer than the plans were. Your time is a rough draft to him, penciled in, erasable. A man who is always almost on his way is a man who is never coming. Stop saving him a seat.

8. The one-upper. You caught a fish, his was a marlin. You had a brutal week, he had a worse one. You cannot tell this man a story, you can only feed his. Every conversation is a pissing contest you did not enter and somehow keep losing with dry pants.

9. THE RAT Just watch how when even little pressure is applied, with his woman, or at work, or around others, he will say oh Day did that or Day’s idea . Pillow talking or side swiping rats reveal themselves many leagues ahead of when they truly will betray you. Just keep your eyes open and clock em.

10. Talks to, texts, likes her photos of any girl you have had a thing with. He is a starving man, and you can never trust a starving man in any arena of life, they will always betray you for a meal.

11. The friend who roots for your worst decisions. Always wants one more drink in you, one more bad idea, one more reason not to go home and become something. Your chaos is his entertainment and your discipline is his horror movie, because the day you level up he has to turn around and look at the wreckage of himself.

12. The gossip. Leave the gossip for the girls, any guy who does this will make you more like a woman. The faucet does not know how to shut off. It just knows your name now too.

13. The scorekeeper. Remembers every dollar, every ride to the airport, every beer, down to the cent, filed and stamped and dated. Friendship to him is a tab he is quietly waiting to cash. The real ones lost count a decade ago and would burn the receipt laughing. Worst types I tell ya

14. The dream killer. He calls it being realistic. It is a smaller man making damn sure you never grow tall enough to make him feel short. “Be careful” is the battle cry of men who already surrendered.

15. The secret competitor. Smiles to your face and races you in the dark. Your money, your woman, your name, all of it a scoreboard he never once told you was running. You thought it was a brotherhood. He has been in your corner taking notes for the other guy the entire time.

16. The hype man who disappears in the trenches. First to scream your name when the bottles are open. Then your life catches fire and his phone falls in the ocean, apparently, for a year. Any clown will stand next to you in the sun. Clock who is standing there in the dark, on the floor, at the funeral.

17. The man who never once asks about you. An hour on the phone and not a single question about your life, your woman, your war. Every call is a one man show and you have been cast as the folding chair he performs at. Stop clapping.

18. Becomes the funny guy at your expense around girls or new friends He is trying to impress others by stepping on you, did he ever care about you? Does he respect you? He should be there backing you up and you two wingman the world together. Notice everything this one slips by easily.

19. Makes you look bad to your girl. He shows some old photo of you with that one fat bitch you whaled and took home when you were down bad at closing time 3 years ago, he shows this photo to your new girl. Yea he just literally hates you.

20. The one who cannot stand that you found love. Sours every time your woman comes up, always the “must be nice,” always trying to drag you back down into the single and miserable swamp he is drowning in alone. Misery runs a recruitment office.

21. Won’t have a beer with you He values not being a bit tired in the morning over having a good time and talk with his friend. Loser.

22. The yes-man. Agrees with every word out of your mouth, which makes him about as useful as a screen door on a submarine the one day you really need a man to grab you by the collar and tell you the hard truth. He does not love you.

23. The one who turned on you the day you said no. Set a single boundary and he has been billing you for it ever since, the guilt trips, the silent treatment, the quiet punishments. A bond that snaps the first time you refuse to fold was a leash the whole time, and you just found the clasp.

24. The guy who is best friends with everyone you are at war with. No side, no spine, working the whole room at once. Call it neutral if it helps you sleep. He is just waiting to see who wins before he remembers, out loud, whose side he was on all along.

25. The ghost who rises from the dead the second you blow up. Silent for years, gone, presumed lost at sea, and then your name starts doing numbers and here he comes sliding into your DMs like a cockroach into warm bread. He did not miss you. He smelled the money and the spotlight and came to warm his hands.

Read that list again, slow. And somewhere in the basement of your chest a small voice is going to cop to the fact that you have been one of these to somebody.

The flake.

The one who went mute when your boy finally won.

The guy who only ever called when he needed the favor.

Good. Sit in it. Let it burn a hole.

Then go be a different man tomorrow, because the only circle you truly control is the one you are standing dead in the middle of.

And to every snake reading this who already did me dirty, relax. I am not coming for you. I do not have to. The best revenge ever invented is not a knife in the dark, it is becoming so undeniable that you have to watch the whole thing from the cheap seats, chewing your own liver, telling people at parties that you “used to know him.”

God takes care of my revenge.

Living loud and free and happy in full view of every man who bet against me. That is the Count of Monte Cristo move, and it costs them everything while I never lift a finger. I just keep winning where they are forced to watch.

I look back through the screen at Daisy, rain ticking soft on the roof, and I think about the two or three men in my life who are the real thing. You can count them on one hand and have fingers to spare, and that is not sad if you understand how rare a real friend in this life is.

So clean your circle out like your survival depends on it, because it does. Cut the vampires and the scorekeepers and the ghosts and every man who flinches when you fly. Keep the few who scream loudest from the front row when you win and show up first, sleeves already rolled, when you lose.

Then go to the island. Leave the phone in the room. And feel how quiet and how weightless a life gets the second you stop answering the people who were only ever taking.

GOD BLESS THE WOLVES.

-Day

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