A house, also to love friends

It's only been a month since my friend Henry got his place, a rental apartment in Palma, and it has already become our Holy See: the meeting point, the safe space for the whole group. Maybe not the rest, but I knew from the start that it would be; it was enough for me to see how just two restored chairs and curtains fluttering in front of the stained glass window became a home. And deciding, at the last moment, to go there to watch the World Cup final confirmed it, like a revelation, just as spontaneous acts do. It seems we had needed this for a long time, a sanctuary for our sorrows and joys. A place that welcomes us, spontaneously, where we can relax and be the only thing we want to be: friends.

There is no set arrival time, but we all enter through the door minutes apart. I arrive busy, Clara is already here, and Kuljit and Abril are coming behind. From one moment to the next, it's all a commotion and a scattering, and we make that space our own. So much our own that when we greet the neighbor from the building opposite – who is also an acquaintance of ours – he asks us: “But who lives in this apartment?”. Crowded at the window, we reply that Henry does, with Sergi. Although now, also, a little bit all of us.

Henry and I are friends. Very good friends. Friends to the point of me having changed my menstrual cup in front of him in the shared bathroom of a hostel in Amsterdam, when we were doing Interrail. Because sharing territory and intimacy does this: it unfolds friendships to their fullest consequences. A house makes the boundaries of our lives blur even more: where does yours end and mine begin? A friend's house will always be a bit like your own house. What is yours is mine and what is mine is yours. “Take whatever you want from the fridge and get a pajama shirt to sleep in”: there is no more powerful demonstration of love and trust than that.

What would Friends, 7 vidas, and Plats bruts have been without a house? If we don't stop to think about it too much, would we know whose house it really was where all the characters lived their lives? Or did everyone live in the same place? The reality is no, but what does it matter more? The house had fulfilled its mission, which was to provide them with a context to focus on the truly important plot of their lives: revolving around and around their friendship, like something infinite.

Without a home, our lives will never be anything like a sitcom. A home modifies our behavior; it allows us to share domesticity, to be as we only are behind closed doors. And if our friends haven't known us like this, can they be called friends? Who more than them deserves to know this version of ourselves, carefree and loose. In fact, it is imperative that they only know this, our deepest core, like a candy without its shiny paper wrapper. A home annuls everything: space and time. If we want, we can pretend that in the world there are only us left and this living room where we will spend the next few hours. Without supporting actors or unforeseen events. It is an act of responsibility and generosity, to give ourselves over as the sole protagonists. It is enough to bring something to drink and good conversation.

But there is a series of requirements that must be met for one of our homes to become that space, which makes us all look better, which brings out our most unique and genuine part – because, after all, we all seek that: a hint of genuineness.

First: a home must be, above all, a home. A room in a shared apartment can never be a center of operations. To enjoy true friends – who are the ones who stay with you in your 30s – we deserve our own space and a fridge where we don't have to search for our name on the corresponding shelf. Because the exact dose of intimacy that weaves good relationships is the one that allows you to continue the conversation with the bathroom door open while you pee and the one that exempts you from asking permission to take anything from the kitchen.

Second: it must be a strategically well-located place. Meeting points are, by nature, because it is always easier to go there than to return home. Or because, whatever route you have to take, they are always on the way, interposing themselves between you and the rest of the world. This capacity for a pole of attraction is important, like a catalyst that pushes us all to the same place. It must fulfill this function because it saves formalities and doubts. It is the place to go, without thinking: it lubricates plans, simplifies decisions, softens relationships. And it puts the most important thing at the center: seeing each other.

And third, the house that becomes a meeting point will always be a home, a more than habitable space: a place to enjoy and to let yourself be cared for. Lamps with different light intensities, a very clean bathroom, and a sofa that will never make you feel like you're just passing through. No one has told you, but your instinct knows that you can come here when you have nowhere else to go: at two in the morning on a Tuesday or when you leave work on a Friday.