Where have all the Cowboys gone?

There is something that has been troubling me lately. When does a friend stop being a friend? Anyone that knows me knows that I don't throw the word " friend" around lightly. My friends have been my friends for years. I have trouble making new friends, true friends because I choose my friends with my heart, people that I know will be there for me and I for them no matter what. It takes time to cultivate a friendship, a true friendship with someone and then invest the time to keep the friendship healthy. This is kind of hard for me to write because I feel as I have been written off as a friend without so much of an explanation as to why.... this is not something that I have ever dealt with. I do not understand it. I have (had???) a friend that I have known for about 7 or 8 years. We met while I was in cooking school, we lived together...we talked on the phone frequently after I moved to Arizona, he moved to Arizona at one point and then to Portland, Oregon. Through all of this we remained close through the phone and internet. I was perfectly happy with this. A friend does not have to be someone that you see, and we always had plenty to talk about. He is my Monkey, and someone that I have always cared about very very much. He always knows what to say to make me laugh, at times he has accused me of only talking about myself, and I don't deny that this is probably true, but I only craved his wisdom and insight into matters. I don't think that I would be who I am today without him. ...we laughed harder than we have ever laughed at things..the kind of laugh that you can't stop no matter how hard you try. I could go on and on and on about us. He is also a bit of a flake. Okay, I am being too generous a huge flake. For about a year he has been telling me that he is moving to Arizona..then he told me that he was in Arizona, then he told me that he was on the road. I know he thinks that I don't listen to him when he talks, but I got the feeling that he was telling me a Tall Tale when he told me that he got Black Mammy dishes on his travels. Now, I know for a fact that he told me he had gotten Black Mammy dishes about a year before when he was on vacation. Well, the Black Mammy dishes aren't the point. I guess for my part I am guilty of not being one hundred percent honest and calling him out on his bull. I know that he is not moving to Arizona, I don't honestly think that he ever had any intention of moving to Arizona...so why carry on the lie for a year or more. Again, as a true friend, I should have called him out on this bullshit. But what would be the point, I don't know if it is the truth or not??? That is what it boils down to with me...is a person truly your friend if you don't really know if they are telling the truth or not? Do you really know the person? Can you call a person that you don't really know your true friend. I honestly don't give a fuck if he moves to Arizona I mean that would be great because we could hang out and stuff, but I was also happy just having him in my life to talk to and share our lives with. I am not huge on the fact that I am sitting here blogging about this, but shit, he will NOT answer my calls...call me ...not so much as a message on my space or facebook, for whatever that would be worth. I feel myself drifting further and further away from him and no body and no one can do anything about it. It's not something that I can open up to about with my other friends, because they just don't know him the way I do. I know that in the past he has dropped people in his life with no explanation...the next chapter comes and they are not invited to read it.. but I never expected that he would do that to me..I just didn't see it coming. I hope that if he reads this he will atleast call me and say " Hey, I was a shit, you are more important to me than that." He knows that I am the type of person that needs closure...although I hope if he calls it is not to do that..an apology for being a shit, or atleast tell me if I was a shit.....would be great because I miss him. I miss him a lot.