If Ethan Hawke and I Were Best Friends

My entire life, I've wanted to be best friends with Ethan Hawke.

There's just something about him that seems super cool. Like, he isn't even trying to be cool either, he just is. He would be able to recommend all the important literature I've never read and would discuss all of the intricacies of post-modernism and advise me on the proper depth of V-necks. But he'd still be sooo down to earth, you know?

Our spiritual connection started when I was a kid, when I found out we shared the same birthday in the newspaper. In high school, I would let my friends borrow my DVD of Before Sunrise, billing it as a movie that "will change your life." Last year, I purchased his novel The Hottest State at a used bookstore and found it autographed: "To Jessica, Ethan Hawke." There's some sort of existential, I Heart Huckabees, thread-pulling going on here.

Naturally, this weekend I sought out his new flick Sinister over Oscar hopeful Here Comes The Boom and that other movie where Ben Affleck adds a new hairpiece to his already immaculate repertoire. Although Sinister is semi-disturbing and a pretty decent piece of "OMG, LOUD NOISE!" horror, the Hawke-man carries the movie like a newborn child. Since it made an impressive $18.2 million at the box office, the 41-year-old actor's visbility is at a renewed high.

E. Hawke is back, baby! Now's as good time as any to make my case:

If Ethan Hawke and I were best friends...

We would go to Buffalo Wild Wings and order obscure gin and call the bartender a Philistine for not carrying it. We'd order Bud Light instead to experience how the proletariat lives and we'd max out on some Jammin' Jalapeno wings because we're here anyway, so why not?

We'd roll our own cigarettes from all natural tobacco grown on Phillip Seymour Hoffman's farm.

Being a posterboy for Generation X, he'd confide in me and tell me that nobody really gave a shit about Pavement back then and everyone was really all about Spin Doctors.

I would make fun of his cheekbones for looking "heroin chic" and he would make fun of my eyebrows for being "Scorsese chic" and we'd not talk for a few days. He'd try to FaceTime me and on his fourth attempt, I'd pick up and we wouldn't even have to say we're sorry to each other because that's what friends do.

We'd both have interesting facial hair, which would evolve every month. Sometimes it would be coordinated.

When Richard Linklater would show up at the bar, I'd say "Nice to see you again, Dick" in a really condescending way that would let him know that just because you make six movies with someone, it doesn't automatically make you BFFs.

He'd introduce me to Lisa Loeb and we'd all hang out together at first, but then I'd start seeing Lisa without him. He'd get surprisingly jealous after I break plans with him to go to a Wilco show so I could go to Martha's Vineyard with Lisa instead. He'd get pissy and Lisa would describe it as being "typical Ethan." We'd meet up in a few weeks at a neutral location and I'd ask, "Why can't you just be happy for me?" and he'd say "I am, I just miss my best friend."

Three times a year, we'd fly to Paris and just meander around with Julie Delpy.

I'd be like, "E., WTF, why did you agree to do Daybreakers?" and he'd show me Walt Whitman's original manuscript for Leaves of Grass and he'd be like "That's why."

When we are at cocktail parties and someone says something is "Kafkaesque," we'd laugh under our breaths because seriously, stop trying so hard.

While everyone is discussing Downton Abbey at one of our renowned dinner parties (free range so-and-sos, red velvet whatevers) we'd say our favorite show is Manswers and begin dissecting if you could really get herpes from your cat, just to see the disgusted look on Vincent D'Onofrio's face.

For Christmas every year, he'd let me recreate scenes from Training Day where I'm Denzel and Ethan is Ethan. I'd always want to do the part where he smokes PCP and he would always want to do the scene where he's put in the bathtub. We'd comprise and do half-and-half.

On Sunday afternoons in the fall, we'd skip football (or"doltball," as Ethan calls it) and instead read Sylvia Plath and discuss her use of silence. Feeling isolated, I would suggest we start a society; a dead poets society. Ethan would say "good one," in a really sarcastic snarl and I'd be confused at first, then ultimately realize what a fool I am.

That's it, Ethan. If you want to be best friends (seriously, why wouldn't you?), please fly me to Manhattan and put me up in a modest four bedroom, three bath apartment so we can begin this new journey together.

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