"It tastes so good when it touches your lips...!"
Frank The Tank - Old School
The immortal words of Frank the Tank, Will Ferrell's party animal trapped inside a domestic body in Old School.
When I joined the JP Morgan Sales and Trading desk in 2003, I was 23 years old and absolutely convinced I had life figured out. Multiple people warned me about Victor during my first week.
"Stay away from that guy," they said, half-joking, half-serious. "He works hard. But he plays harder."
Victor had earned himself the nickname Frank the Tank after Will Ferrell's character - the party animal trying to live a normal life.
Victor's signature move at the time was to be in the pub minutes after the market closed with two bottles of white wine on ice - for himself! He always needed to be home by 6pm for the kids' bathtime - unless of course he had clients in town.
Then it was a no-holds-barred night of carnage. We became immediate friends. Long hours, longer nights, minimal sleep.
Victor was 33. I was 23. He had a decade of experience on me, but somehow we just clicked.
The pinnacle happened in Pamplona in 2004.
Three days of running with the bulls - or more accurately, three days of staying up all night in the streets, drinking a local concoction called Calimucho (cheap red wine mixed with Coca-Cola, served from leather pouches) hanging with random strangers from all over the world nervously waiting the dawn release of the bulls sized like small cars.
We'd stumble back to our hotel at dawn, thankful we'd avoided a goring. Two hours of sleep, then repeat.
I have no idea how we survived. I have even less idea how our livers did.
Then life happened. I moved to a hedge fund. Victor moved back to the US. We went from seeing each other five days a week to... nothing.
Not because we had a falling out. Not because either of us did anything wrong. Our lives just went different ways.
No final phone call. No "let's stay in touch" promises we didn't keep. Just the slow fade that happens when you're building new lives in different cities.
Twenty years of silence.
Until LinkedIn, of all things.
I'd started posting more regularly - mostly stories about fatherhood, investing, the occasional philosophical ramble about life. One day a message popped up from Victor.
Turns out he's in New York every few months for work. "We should grab lunch next time I'm in town," he wrote.
I assumed it would be one of those things people say but never actually do.
But Victor actually followed through.
That first lunch, I'll admit, I was slightly nervous. Twenty years is a long time. People change. What if we had nothing in common anymore? What if it was just two middle-aged men trading polite updates about careers and children, scrambling to find things we still had in common?
None of that happened.
Within five minutes, it was like we'd never been apart. The same humour. The same ability to take the piss out of each other without any edge to it. The same shorthand that comes from sharing those years on the trading desk.
We weren't young guys any more - the energy and the conversation was different - kids, schedules, regrets and mistakes as opposed to bid-offer spreads, moaning about traders and planning nights out. But the banter and the laughs were as sharp as always.
We've now had several lunches over the past year. Victor two daughters are now at college and apparently phenomenal volleyball players, he's loving his work in M&A at a prop-tech company, and he's back in the Bay Area living a life that looks nothing like the Frank the Tank days.
Which brings me to last week.
Westy, my best man from my wedding and one of my oldest friends, was unexpectedly in New York from the UK.
We don't see each other as often as I'd like - he's in the UK, I'm here, life gets in the way - but whenever we get back together, it's like we've never been apart.
Victor happened to be in town that same week.
Westy and Victor had met exactly once - at my wedding over a decade ago, where Victor had the pleasure of witnessing Westy stand on a chair (he’s very small) to deliver a hilarious, booze-fuelled English best man speech.
So I suggested lunch. Balthazar in Soho. Noon on a Tuesday.
Westy ordered a salad and a plate of raw beef. Classic Westy.
In the old days, Victor and I would have been having steaks and at least one bottle of red, but I knew I was having red meat for dinner, so I plumped for a toasted French ham sandwich and Victor had smoked salmon.
Oh how times have changed. Though not for Westy - especially with his non-alcoholic beer!
For the next two hours, we compared notes on life - kids, business, the absurdity of getting older. And of course we relived and rehashed some finance war stories from the trenches, laughing hard most of the time.
Westy, who I've known since we were teenagers. Victor, who I hadn't spoken to for two decades until recently.
At one point, Victor was telling a story about some crazy experience on the trading desk - Westy and I were already laughing before the punchline.
Turns out friendship doesn't expire. It just waits around. Twenty years, in this case.
The 23-year-old version of me, drunk on Calimucho in Pamplona, would never have believed that Victor and I would still be in touch over twenty years later.
That we'd be sitting in Balthazar in New York with Westy, eating sensible lunches instead of staying up until dawn, swapping stories about our kids instead of planning the next night out.
The trading desk warned me about Victor in 2003. They said he played too hard, that I should stay away.
Best advice I ever ignored.
What old connection have you been meaning to get in touch with? Not the acquaintance you feel obligated to message. The real one. The person who knew a version of you that doesn't exist anymore but somehow still knows you. The one where twenty years might have passed, but you suspect - if you're honest - that five minutes together would feel like no time at all.
What's stopping you from sending that message today?
