American men are lonely. Did Andrew McCarthy, recovering loner, find a cure?

Early connected successful Andrew McCarthy’s latest travelogue, “Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America,” a country unfolds successful which the actor-turned-bestselling writer pays an announced sojourn to Seve (nickname for “Stephen”), a lifelong person suffering from chronic backmost symptom that’s rendered him incapable to get retired much. Seve has fto the detritus of beingness heap up astir him — virtually — with transportation packages and plastic-wrapped apparel overrunning his tiny Baltimore apartment. McCarthy, who’s road-tripped from his location successful New York City, proceeds cautiously, stepping mildly astir the messiness and breaking down boxes. It’s a fragile moment, if an uncompromising one, revealing the ways successful which galore of america person the inclination to sometimes fell the rawest, astir shameful facets of our deepest selves from those who cognize and emotion them best.

“What had really happened to my friendships?” McCarthy wonders. “Were they inactive there, arsenic I claimed? Did I adjacent privation them? Or request them? What did I get from them, anyway? What did I person to connection them? How did relationship impact my spot successful the world?”

It’s a query that McCarthy, who came of property — and amassed megawatt fame — arsenic a 1980s heartthrob successful films similar “Class” and “Pretty successful Pink” earlier transitioning to feted author, longs to address. And so, helium does. In “Who Needs Friends,” his 3rd soul-baring question memoir, McCarthy embarks connected a 10,000-mile, six-weeks-long Odyssean quest, crisscrossing the continental United States to repair and reconstruct Platonic antheral relationships near to wither, not by volition oregon design, but by virtuousness of the unavoidable ways successful which work, household and geography — and, yes, the net — rupture the meaningful connections we deem astir precious and transformative successful our lives. McCarthy readily confesses he’s “very overmuch a loner,” quiescent and pensive — and yet helium craves attachment. He considers Seve “a surrogate large brother.” And they hadn’t seen each different successful years. How had helium fto that happen?

Andrew McCarthy, left, with person Eddie successful Cleburne, Texas.

(Andrew McCarthy)

Sensing he’s arsenic overmuch to blasted for the deficiency of interaction arsenic the guys connected the different end, McCarthy sets retired to revive these atrophied friendships, to marque them full again, to marque them caller — and to consciousness little alone. “Men person nary monopoly connected loneliness, but it is simply a monolithic issue,” says McCarthy implicit an aboriginal greeting Zoom from his Manhattan apartment. “And it’s thing a batch of people, peculiarly men, don’t privation to admit, due to the fact that to them it means weakness.”

As helium drives successful “Who Needs Friends,” mostly solo, from the East Coast to the West, McCarthy — who “hates driving” and completed the 22-state trek successful abbreviated bursts — mines themes ranging from isolation to parenthood successful the modern age, excavating secrets not lone astir the men who helped signifier his big life, but the defining civilization of antheral camaraderie crossed America. In the casual, observational manner of Alexis de Tocqueville, oregon possibly much similar Steinbeck, McCarthy talks to men, young and old, astatine roadworthy stops and tourer traps from Atlantic City to a Lake Tahoe casino, interviewing them astir what Aristotle calls “the quality of the friendship.”

What McCarthy discovers is that successful a nine obsessed with antheral bravado, 1 that acold excessively often values virility supra vulnerability, it’s the knocking down of affectional walls that enables antheral friendships to thrive. Whether it’s Eddie, a person McCarthy met successful precocious schoolhouse who resides successful Alto, Texas, oregon Larry, a buddy successful Austin, honesty and confession signifier the bedrock of existent antheral intimacy. Trust is key. But relationship extends beyond trust, McCarthy learns — it’s astir laying bare the deepest, darkest details of who we really are.

(Grand Central Publishing)

“I was coming location to myself successful a precise existent way,” says McCarthy of the journey. “The irony of this publication connected relationship is that I spent the immense bulk of it alone. But I ne'er felt alone, due to the fact that I truly did link to the state successful a mode I hadn’t for a agelong time. I fell successful emotion with America again, and what America truly is — not each this brainsick governmental stuff. Everyone was truthful unfastened to me.”

“I’ve written these 3 sort-of question memoirs, which I deliberation of arsenic a escaped trilogy,” McCarthy continues. “The archetypal is “The Longest Way Home,” wherever I was trying to travel to presumption with getting joined again, wherever I was asking, however bash you support intimacy and sphere your inherent solitude? And past I wrote [“Walking With Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain”] astir my lad and I walking crossed Spain. And it’s truly a father-son book. And this caller 1 is simply a publication astir America. But it’s truly astir friends.”

McCarthy has a delicate, soft-spoken mode astir him, shy and introspective, if a small melancholy, with a boyish grin that became the signifying diagnostic of his big-screen persona and the crushed Gen X girls flocked to the movie theatre during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Now 63, McCarthy’s grin and tender charm stay intact, and it’s casual to spot wherefore implicit strangers successful remote, off-the-grid pockets of Mississippi and West Texas and Kentucky, men with nary thought that McCarthy was erstwhile a dreamy chamber pinup, warmed up to him arsenic helium plied them with questions astir the relation relationship plays successful their lives.

“There wasn’t a azygous antheral I met who didn’t respond erstwhile I said, tin I speech to you astir your friends?” says McCarthy. “Maybe they looked astatine maine similar I was f— brainsick astatine the opening — but not a azygous feline said ‘no’ to me.”

A country successful Winslow, Ariz.

(Andrew McCarthy)

In retrospect, taken collectively, overmuch of McCarthy’s enactment arsenic an actor, filmmaker and writer hinges connected the relationship motif — that primordial ache to belong, that yearning to beryllium seen. “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “Less Than Zero,” “Pretty successful Pink” — each are stories astir young big cliques and clans, movies chronicling teen individuality and the pervasive loneliness that exists erstwhile we inevitably drift isolated from 1 another, erstwhile we propulsion 1 different away. Likewise, pangs of nostalgia signifier the ground for McCarthy’s 2021 memoir “Brat: An ‘80s Story” and its attendant documentary “Brats,” a task successful which McCarthy tracks down chap Hollywood “Brat Packers” specified arsenic Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy and Demi Moore, reuniting with them for the archetypal clip successful implicit 30 years. Together, they wrestle with the bequest of teenage stardom and its planetary meteoric impact.

“Brats” is precise overmuch truthful “about the nationalist facade of friendship,” notes McCarthy.

“The happening that amazed maine astir [about making “Brats”] is however overmuch affection we had for each different that we didn’t person erstwhile we were young,” says McCarthy. “I lived successful New York, they each lived successful L.A. It was the ’80s — it wasn’t arsenic casual arsenic it is present to beryllium benignant of seamless crossed the country. You know, we were these 22-year-old kids. You’re scared, competitory and getting each this attention. It was a precise confusing, head-spinning time.”

Decades aboriginal helium says the “brats” stock an intimacy. ”I could look at, say, Rob and it’s like, I cognize thing astir your life, but I cognize what you and I went through, and we’re the lone ones who went done this,” says McCarthy. “And it altered our lives successful a precise existent way.”

Andrew McCarthy stands connected a country successful Winslow, Ariz.

(Andrew McCarthy)

But McCarthy’s closest confidants are men who’ve ne'er acceptable ft connected a movie set, men ne'er trailed by paparazzi, and it’s those relationships to which helium tends successful “Who Needs Friends.” It’s a publication that, successful juxtaposition to “Brats,” charts “the private, idiosyncratic benignant of friendship.” Men — McCarthy’s friends — are lonely. Divorce, marriage, kids, nary kids; truthful galore of the men successful McCarthy’s orbit consciousness alienated, adrift, untethered to immoderate community. Marooned connected their ain de facto uninhabited island.

In “Who Needs Friends,” McCarthy offers nary full-safe salve for the loneliness of men — aft all, who can? But it’s “the carnal enactment of showing up,” the effort McCarthy makes to rekindle languishing friendships that goes a agelong mode successful proving conscionable however overmuch these friendships mean. Turns out, the elemental enactment of talking astir one’s friendship, the precise “acknowledgment” that it exists, works to fortify those bonds.

Saval is an award-winning writer and the writer of “The Secret Lives of Boys: Inside the Raw Emotional World of Male Teens.”