MWF Seeking BFF (2 page)

And I
was
fine. My T-shirt and yoga pants were perhaps a little more weekend-pajama than weekend-cool, but I walked the street fair with Lynn and her college friends, passing on oysters and Guinness in favor of a Bucket O’ Fries. (Cool girls eat fries, right?) These could be
my
friends, I thought. I could infiltrate the clique! At one point, Lynn’s friend Karen put her arm around me. I was awkward but tried to go with it. It was a great day.

Other than Lynn, I haven’t seen any of them since.

Around that same time, Lynn was the friend-to-be I invited to join me for my first wedding dress fitting. Callie and my mom had flown in from New York for the shopping, but I was on my own for this appointment. My aunt was supposed to come, but a last-minute doctor’s appointment forced her to cancel. Even though I knew it was a big step for our fledgling friendship, I was desperate.

“Are you doing anything Saturday?” I asked Lynn at work one day. “I have to go try on my wedding dress and would love your opinion. Do you want to come?” Bridal-related activities are usually reserved for VIPs, so I knew it was a monumental request.

“Just me?” she asked. The look on her face reminded me of the male lead in a romantic comedy when the girl says “I love you” too soon. It was a startling combination of fear and confusion and whoa-slow-down-there-lady. “Um, I’m not sure. I might have plans.”

I tried to backpedal. “What? Oh no, never mind actually. I was just thinking, but actually I, well, I’ll let you know. I probably won’t need you.” It was a poor exit strategy but Lynn took it.

It’s possible that I read more into my coworker’s reaction than was actually there, but I’d already psyched myself out. I didn’t mention it again and a few days later I went to my fitting. Alone. But not before having a minor breakdown on the phone with my mom, devastated that I had no companion to tell me how blushing bride-like I looked.

All of this makes me realize one thing: I do not miss dating. Matt and I met freshman year of college. He went from friend-with-benefits to boyfriend to husband. My experience with all this courting and should-I-call-the-next-day is limited, and the thought of diving back in—even if only platonically—is seriously daunting.

My friend Blythe moved from New York to Portland six months ago with her boyfriend. She’s funny and outgoing and I figured she’d probably found her Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha already, so I shot her an email seeking advice. “Here in Portland, I have two friends, Eve and Julia,” she told me. “Eve is dating my boyfriend’s business partner. She’s great, although I find myself thinking that she’s not very much like me and if we didn’t have the common experience of following boys we love to a place we have little interest in being, we might not have become friends. She’s a finance geek. She’s quiet and thoughtful. I adore her—but in other circumstances, I don’t think we’d have connected. My other friend, Julia, is married to another of Max’s friends. She’s fun, lively, adventurous, and a Republican. When I was talking about Rosh Hashanah, she said, ‘Who?’ Right now, with work and all, these two seem to be enough for me. I would love to find some other
girls to become friends with but I don’t even know where to look. My yoga studio is filled with women, but how do you strike up a conversation? In the locker room when you’re naked? I’m sarcastic and facetious. It’s hard to find those people on first encounter. I can be nice, but I don’t want nice friends. I want funny, gregarious, sarcastic, and smart friends.”

It’s so nice to hear you’re not alone.

Journalist Valerie Frankel wrote in
Self
magazine about the types of friends a woman needs to be happy. “Psychologists have long described four major types of friendships,” she wrote. “1) The acquaintance, someone you’d chat with on the street or at a local café, who gives you a sense of belonging; 2) the casual friend, a ‘grab lunch’ pal who often serves a specific purpose, such as a tennis or running partner; 3) the close buddy, an intimate, trustworthy comrade you can say anything to; and 4) the lifer, who’s as deep and forever as family.” Frankel’s research found that women should have 3 to 5 lifers, 5 to 12 close friends, 10 to 50 casuals, and 10 to 100 acquaintances. I’m searching for someone who would fall in the close-friend category. If she became a lifer I wouldn’t object, but I imagine the differentiating factor from one to the other is time. No one I meet next week is going to measure up to someone I’ve known since fifth grade. But I’m pretty chatty. I could get to the “say anything to” level pretty quickly. I do have close friends, it’s just that they live in New York City, D.C., San Francisco, and Boston. I need someone who lives across the street rather than across the country.

I’ve been in Chicago for more than two years. Obviously, sitting around waiting for friends to emerge naturally isn’t working. It’s time to turn this mission up a notch. I’m looking for a Kate to my Allie. Six to my Blossom. Blair to my Serena.
No one’s knocking down my door. If I want a new best friend, I’m going to have to go get one.

I could go the old-school route and take out a want ad. Craigslist perhaps:

I know all about the Craigslist killer, and that’s a lot of information up front, so I decide to start smaller scale. First I’ll reach out to my entire social network asking to be set up with any and all friends they have in Chicago. Then I’ll actually call
or email the women I’ve met with whom I’ve exchanged the requisite “we should get together!” I’ll approach the girl at the bookstore or yoga. Who cares if she thinks I’m trying to get in her pants? I’ll wear my wedding ring; that should clear up any confusion.

For the next year, I will go on one new friend-date a week. Why a full year? Because when I first complained about not having any BFFs in Chicago, my cousin Elizabeth (who is from here but, alas, now lives in New York City) said, “It’s like college, you need to give it a year.” I saw her point. In college, people are initially friends with the kids who live on their dorm floor at first. Those are the friends by convenience. By the end of the school year, you unearth your actual friends—the ones you will keep in touch with over the summer or room with as a sophomore.

Twelve months from now, my contact list will hopefully be full of Chicagoans dying to join me at the farmer’s market or movie theater. I’ve already got four girls to ask out: Hannah, a friend of a friend who I’ve been introduced to via email but never met. Kim, a girl in my cooking class foursome when Jaime and I took Seafood 101 eight months ago. She was there with her sorta-boyfriend and we exchanged email addresses. Neither of us ever used them. Becca, a girl I met at a bar when a mutual friend was in town. (She’d heard of me from that friend and said, “You should have called me!”
I’m
the new kid in town, I thought,
you
should have called me.) And the manager at the boutique on the corner whose name I don’t know. I go into her store almost every weekend and we’ve struck up a friendly acquaintance. She knows I’m married and the exact style of sweater I like. She seems the most promising.

By the end of December, I figure one of three things could happen: 1) I could have a new best friend. She and I will talk
on the phone as we run errands, balancing our cells on our shoulders as we carry in groceries and fumble with our keys. We’ll meet for lunch to discuss Lindsay’s latest meltdown or the new Nick Hornby book. 2) I could have fifty-two new acquaintances, with whom I’ll chat when we run into each other on the street. I’ll realize that I’m 27 (28 by then), not 14, and friendships will never be the same as they were back in the day. Blythe said she’s “spent a lot of time thinking that you don’t replicate your lifelong friends when you move somewhere new, especially with a boy. You can’t presume to even come close.” Maybe she’s right. 3) I could come to the conclusion that I don’t have the time or energy for these new friends after all. I’m married now, I work long hours and I spend a lot of time with my mom, who lives six blocks away. It’s entirely possible that this project will convince me that Matt is my best friend, and the reason I don’t have more close friends in Chicago is that I don’t really want them. My life is plenty full already.

The only way to know is to get out there. Play the field. Dive into the world of serial girl-dating and just hope I emerge in one piece.

FRIEND-DATE 1.
As I approach the restaurant, there’s a girl down the block walking in my direction. I squint to make her out through the January flurries. Average height, brown hair, peacoat. An everygirl. That’s got to be her. When I enter Market, the new bar next door to my office, I do a quick once-over of the area near the hostess. Empty. The peacoat girl was definitely Hannah. She’ll walk in the door in about 20 seconds. 19. 18 … My head starts spinning. When she gets here, do we hug? Or handshake? Hug is a little familiar for someone I’ve only met over email. But a handshake is pretty formal for potential buddies meeting for a drink. We did exchange “I feel like I know you already!” emails. And when you know someone, you hug them, right? 11. 10. 9 … I don’t want to be overzealous in my hugging, though. Definitely don’t want to be that girl. What if I lean in for an embrace as she sticks out her hand for the shake? We’ll end up in one of those one-arm-around-each-other half-hugs. That already happened to me once this week, with a colleague. Yikes.

She’s here. We make eye contact. “Rachel?” “Hannah?” She
goes right in for the hug. I reciprocate. Flawlessly, I might add. There’s no sign I spent the last half-minute rehearsing this in my mind.

Let’s back up. My inaugural girl-date and I exchanged our first email two months ago. She came to me via my best friend Sara. Actually, we should back up a bit further. Five years, to be exact.

After I graduated college, I moved home to New York and Matt moved to Philadelphia for law school. About a month into his Villanova stint, he broke up with me. I know now this is the natural course of events for post-grad long-distance relationships. Most of the women I know who married their college sweethearts went through the same thing. But at the time, I was devastated. I was quite sure Matt was out of my life forever and I was furious with myself for wasting years on him. I was lonely and frustrated and decided I needed a new social outlet to distract me. I started a book club.

I invited my other best friend, Callie, and Callie invited her cousin, Lauren. Then each of us invited two more people. The only requirement was that we bring in ladies the others didn’t know. The idea was that if we were strangers, we wouldn’t let gossip distract us from the book discussions. For three years, nine of us met every month. Over time, girls moved away and others were invited to replace them. Soon after I moved to Chicago, Hannah was called in as a relief book-clubber. After two years, and one bad breakup, she decided to leave Manhattan for Chicago, her hometown.

I was elated when Sara, who also belonged to the book club, emailed to tell me Hannah was moving here. “You guys will be great friends,” she wrote. “She has a book club she can invite you into or she can start a new one with you.” Amazing. I’d
wanted to be in a book club since I arrived in Chicago but when I mentioned it to my friend from college, she said “How ’bout a dinner club?” I once even tried to finagle an invite to a coworker’s book group when I overheard her mention the titles they’d read. “If you ever need another person, I’d love to join!” She looked at me as if I’d asked to join an orgy.

I sent Sara an email shortly before Hannah was due to arrive. “What’s her email address? I want to grab her as my BFF ASAP.” When I next checked my Gmail, I had two responses from Sara. The first had Hannah’s email address. The second said “Oops. Didn’t mean to cc her. I guess the ice is broken.”

Sara is the smartest girl I know, but her fleeting moments of idiocy are made worse by the fact that she has no idea she’s just been a huge idiot. After she typed Hannah’s name in the
TO:
field to get her email address, she left it there. She thought nothing of this slight oversight, cc’ing her again on the “oops!”

She’d just forwarded my first potential girl-date an email in which I laid claim to her as my best friend
forever
! We’d never even met! Sara is as low-key as I am overexcited, so it all seemed peachy keen to her. I was mortified.

Despite our memorable introduction—we’ll laugh about it one day?—Hannah wasn’t scared off by the declaration of my intentions. We decided to meet for drinks.

So here we are. Hannah and I settle into our seats, order two glasses of wine and start chatting. When she starts to ask if I’m hungry, I shout “Yes!” before she finishes the question. I eat when I’m nervous.

The conversation is off to a comfortable start. We each explain how we’re connected to the other book club girls, which leads to a wider-cast name game. Oh, you went to Tripp Lake, you must know Jill! You’re from Glencoe? Do you know the
Bernsteins? We come from similar upper-middle-class suburban worlds. We know plenty of people in common.