Who Needs Friends

Andrew McCarthy was at his kitchen table in New York City when his twenty-one-year-old son, Sam, made an offhand remark: "You don't really have any friends, do you, Dad?" The comment stung because McCarthy suspected it was true. A former movie star who rose to fame in the 1980s, McCarthy had gradually let his closest friendships atrophy as marriage, children, and work consumed him. His wife had warned that his introversion was narrowing his life. His children had started calling him a curmudgeon. He identifies five close friends he had neglected: Seve, a surrogate big brother he met when he was barely twenty; Matthew, a show business confidant; Eddie, his oldest friend and former high school English teacher; John; and Don. He resolved to see them.

Every plan fell apart. Eddie needed to finish a construction project in Texas. Matthew canceled twice. John was climbing in the Himalayas. Don was in Japan. Seve, who lived in Baltimore and had severe spinal stenosis, a condition causing debilitating back pain, canceled twice, finally admitting he could barely walk and imploring McCarthy not to come. McCarthy heard fear in his friend's voice and, unable to sleep, drove to Baltimore unannounced.

He detoured through Atlantic City, a place the friends once frequented, now decrepit and abandoned. Arriving at Seve's condo, McCarthy found his friend in alarming isolation: the apartment buried under delivery boxes, Seve bent forward at the waist and barely mobile. McCarthy spent hours clearing the space while they talked, then coaxed Seve out to dinner. Seve laughed in McCarthy's face when McCarthy vented about his life, restoring their familiar dynamic. McCarthy felt he was "coming home to himself." He returned twice more over the following weeks. On the second visit, Seve declared his determination "not to succumb" to his circumstances, a phrase that haunted McCarthy. On the third, he arrived to find Seve unresponsive behind a locked door. After consulting Eddie by phone, McCarthy persuaded the building manager to let him in and found Seve in a deep sleep after taking a sleeping pill. Seve later became angry about the intrusion but moved on without discussion.

Walking the Baltimore waterfront the next morning, McCarthy confronted doubts about whether he was too late to reclaim these friendships. He called Matthew, who agreed to meet. Rather than fly, McCarthy rented a car and headed west through West Virginia. What began as a short drive stretched into an unplanned cross-country journey of nearly ten thousand miles through twenty-two states.

Along the way, McCarthy talked with strangers about friendship. In Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a young man named Joseph told him that being vulnerable in front of another man "just feels wrong." Pulling over on a dark road, McCarthy discovered that fifteen percent of men report having no close friends, up from three percent in 1990, and that the US surgeon general has declared an epidemic of loneliness. In Ohio, he met Lew and Bobby, retired police officers and close friends for sixty years who had recently started telling each other "I love you." Their openness leads McCarthy to reflect on how the relinquishing of power as men age can create space for deeper intimacy.

He reunited with Matthew in Lexington, Kentucky, where their bond reasserted itself through shared history and playful rituals. McCarthy was shocked to learn Matthew had had a heart attack thirteen years earlier without telling him. They reaffirmed their connection through a decades-old routine involving the Bruce Springsteen song "Glory Days." Matthew also persuaded McCarthy to invest in Vietnamese dong, a foreign currency he believed was about to be revalued, initiating a running joke throughout the book.

McCarthy drove south toward Eddie in Texas. In Tupelo, Mississippi, he visited Elvis Presley's birthplace and reflected on how fame had isolated Elvis. At a Brotherhood Breakfast at a Pentecostal church, a leader named Dale told McCarthy about a colleague who died by suicide, which drove Dale's commitment to men's fellowship. In Clarksdale, at a juke joint called Red's Lounge, a guitarist named Grayson described his closest friendship as one built through music: "We don't talk much, but I understand a good deal about him, and him me."

He reunited with Eddie in Cleburne, Texas. McCarthy recounts meeting Eddie as his high school English teacher, then showing up at Eddie's Greenwich Village apartment a year later; Eddie tossed a key wrapped in a dish towel out the window, and a foundational friendship began. In Texas, they ate at diners, visited museums, and drove to a Louisiana casino. Eddie identified their bond as "foundational" and "almost genetic," telling McCarthy, "This is a team sport."

In Austin, McCarthy met journalist Lawrence Wright and novelist Stephen Harrigan, lifelong friends. Steve said that without Larry, he "would have had a smaller life." McCarthy then visited Uvalde, site of the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, where he stood before twenty-one crosses honoring the victims and reflected on the shooter's profound isolation.

Continuing west through the Chihuahuan Desert, McCarthy reflects on the John Wayne model of masculinity, stoic and solitary, and its lingering power. At the Roy Orbison Museum in Wink, Texas, he tried on Orbison's iconic dark glasses and realized the singer's vulnerability was his greatest asset. He draws a parallel to his own life: The sensitivity he long hated became his greatest strength.

Through Arizona, McCarthy stopped at the Grand Canyon and had an insight in Winslow: Male friends' support relieved something distinct from his wife's, specifically the weight of responsibility he carried. In Sedona, leaders of a men's group identified shame as the primary barrier to male intimacy, arguing that men hide because they fear that if truly seen, they will be rejected.

McCarthy texted John, who invited him to Wyoming. In Lander, he revisited the town where he had taken an outdoor leadership course decades earlier, during which a student's death in a river crossing first brought him and John together. At John's log cabin near Jackson Hole, John placed McCarthy in his innermost "ring of friendship," identifying vulnerability as the door to trust and shame as what keeps men from opening it. Nearby, a fifth-generation rancher named Cody conceded that the traditional model of cowboy stoicism is evolving: "What is being a man? It's changed."

Driving across Nevada, McCarthy's spirits were sustained by regular calls with Seve, who told him, "The great thing is that when I talk to you, to Eddie, I feel like I'm still growing." At Lake Tahoe, the trip came full circle. McCarthy placed a ritual five-dollar bet on roulette number 35, a tradition from a night in Atlantic City when the three friends wagered their toll money on the number after seeing it in an Abbott and Costello movie. The number did not come in, but McCarthy no longer needed it to.

In Berkeley, California, he reunited with Don, the last of his five friends. McCarthy reflects that despite the extraordinary time spent alone on the road, he was never truly alone: People across America offered themselves up with surprising generosity. At dinner, Don identified "understanding" as the most important quality in friendship; McCarthy answered "safety." When Sam called, McCarthy told his son he would call back because he was "with a friend," a statement that surprised Sam.

Six months later, McCarthy was back at his kitchen table. Seve had regained control of his apartment and was in less pain. Matthew called with another dong update. Sam observed, "I've never heard you talk like that with your friends before. Like you've been doing lately. It's really nice." When McCarthy's daughter, Willow, called Matthew "kind of ridiculous," McCarthy smiled, shrugged, and replied, "He's my friend," echoing and answering Sam's original question.