MWF Seeking BFF (31 page)

These are not outcasts or misfits. These are women who, like me, are busy and work long days but want to invest time into genuine friendships.

Better even than the new potential friends are Nelson’s short lectures throughout the evening. Actually, lectures is the wrong word. Those are the boring speeches philosophy professors give while hungover freshmen sleep in the back of the classroom. These are more like sermons. I want to stand up and shout “Amen!” after each talking point.

As it turns out, on top of being a life coach and entrepreneur, Nelson really is a pastor. She and her husband lead a spiritual group called Second Wind, “an inclusive and progressive church community in San Francisco,” according to the website. She knows how to captivate a crowd. She’s warm, funny, and inspiring. Ours is a rapt audience.

“Your friends probably thought it was weird that you were coming to do speed-friending, but do you know that what you are doing right now is actually one of the best things you can do for your physical, emotional, and mental health?” She recites to us some of the research on friendship, and for all the pink girliness of her website, her talk is very grounded. It’s not about celebrating sisterhood and doesn’t sound like one of those cheesy chain emails that moms always forward.

Nelson speaks specifically to the logistical difficulties of making friends and of scheduling that second date.

“We spend so much time emailing back and forth about our calendars, saying ‘I can do this date, what about you?’ or ‘I can’t do it then, how about the week after?’ that by the time we meet again too much time has passed. The spark has died. If you’re out with a friend and you want to see her again, suggest a date. Pull out your planner and figure it out right then.”

Nelson expounds on the four components of female friendship, as determined by Paul Dobransky in his book
The Power of Female Friendship.
“Friendship is consistent, mutual, shared, positive emotion,” she quotes.

“Consistent, because, let’s face it, if you meet someone tonight and you never see her again or you only meet once more, that’s not friendship. That’s someone you’ve met,” Nelson explains. “Mutual because it has to go both ways. If you are the only one doing the work, it’s not a friendship. Shared
because if you are the only one revealing things about yourself, well then this person is a therapist, not a friend. And positive emotion because nobody wants to spend time with Debbie Downer.” These four traits are a variation of the friending tips I uncovered early in my search, but they’re a welcome and necessary reminder.

Twenty women are feverishly taking notes. I’m getting a side of self-help with my speed-dating, and I’m feeling totally impassioned. If I lived in San Francisco, I’d be signing up for her church group.

Before the evening is over Nelson makes us each promise, out loud, that we will reach out to whomever we match with within two days. “This is friendship, there is no playing hard to get. There is no two-day rule before calling back. You are all here, you obviously want the same thing.”

It’s time for me to list the ladies I’d like to see again. I talked to a total of eleven women and I feel bad not writing down everyone’s names. They all seemed to be worth at least another meeting, but Nelson was very clear that we should be ruthless in our choosing. We’re not mean girls if we don’t pick everyone, she said, and we need to be realistic about our time and not waste theirs. I list my top four choices—Erin, Susan, Nicole, and Keisha. One perfectly nice girl gets axed for living in the suburbs, another I’d already met, and the others just didn’t seem like the right fit. If the women I choose list me in return, I’ll get their contact info by the end of the weekend.

And if no one picks me? Nelson swears it’s never happened.

“Don’t think about that,” she says. “Won’t be a problem.”

Still, it’s hard not to worry that there’s a first time for everything.

In fourth grade I sent a friend to deliver a note to little
Tommy Braig after lunch. I was a precocious 9-year-old girl, determined to go after what I wanted. The full body of the message read: “I like you. Do you like me?” Waiting to hear back was killer. It was the longest recess
ever.

The next few days will be the Tommy Braig incident all over again, even if this relationship is of the platonic variety. (Though, who are we kidding, it’s not like Tommy Braig and I did anything more than say hi in the hallways, even when we did finally “go out.”) It’s enough to send me into a tailspin.

I check in with Nelson before I leave, and tell her how skeptical I’d been earlier.

“When I first launched this company I thought, ‘Is it only going to be losers who sign up?’ ” Her words, not mine. “But I’m constantly amazed by my clientele. It’s not lonely needy types, it’s professional, beautiful, insightful women who have enough confidence to say, ‘This matters to me.’ ” Professional, beautiful, and insightful? I accept.

FRIEND-DATE 36.
Eddie is in my improv class and, from what I can tell, has been wanting to get a peek at my life since he found out I live in Lincoln Park. My neighborhood is, I’ll admit, yuppie central. When Matt and I first decided to relocate to Chicago, Lincoln Park wasn’t on our list. Not our style, we thought. Until we got a look at our current apartment and the tree-and-bakery-lined streets surrounding it and fell in love. Still, I remember thinking there must be something in the water when we first moved in, because everyone within a five-block radius seemed to be pregnant. It’s a baby-and-dog haven, Lincoln Park. Neither of which we have.

Eddie lives in Pilsen, a South Side largely Mexican American neighborhood that’s much hipper than our North Side home,
and I know he finds my setup—the Lincoln Park writer married to a lawyer and living in a two-bedroom home—entertaining and intriguing in a look-at-the-animals-in-their-cages sort of way. It doesn’t bother me, maybe because his attitude is more wonderment than condescension. Or maybe because I’m also often amazed at how my life has turned out. So when he texted me last weekend—“What’s going on in Lincoln Park this week?”—I invited him to head my way for some wine and sushi.

Aside from being snarky and hysterical, Eddie is also gay. And I’ve always wanted a gay best friend. Who needs a Monica to my Rachel when I could have a Will to my Grace? The gay BFF has become something of a pop-culture token in recent years—
Sex and the City
’s Stanford, Glee’s Kurt, and the purple Teletubby are all fan favorites. Rickie Vasquez of
My So-Called Life
fame is my personal dream BFF. And while the media portrayal of the gay best friend often veers into one-dimensional territory—no friendship consists exclusively of fashion advice and scoping out men—there is something unique about the straight-woman gay-male friendship.

In their book
Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys
, Melissa de la Cruz and Tom Dolby call this relationship the “quintessential urban marriage.” The anthology, which was turned into a reality TV series, celebrates the bond that exists between “gay men and their gals,” and I won’t deny it, I want to be a part of that.

The straight-girl gay-guy friendship doesn’t involve the competition or jealousy that can turn a female friendship toxic, and there’s no sexual tension. It’s a win-win. As my friend Emily, a gay rights activist with an army of homosexual male best friends, says, “It’s the purest relationship you can have
without hidden complications. When I moved from New York to D.C., it was easier to make gay male friends because I could be myself and not worry about ulterior motives.”

I know plenty of gay men. One of the most memorable nights of my life involved dancing my heart out with a gay pal to “Jenny from the Block” in the middle of a sports bar and then racing, on foot, to the nearest IHOP. But I’ve never had the intimate, tell-each-other-everything, completely open and honest relationship with a gay man that some women brag about. Perhaps Eddie will be the one.

“Hey, hey, here we are,” he says when I pick him up from the El. Eddie is wearing his standard uniform of black skinny jeans, black Keds, and a V-neck T-shirt with a hoodie. We’re eating at a BYOB sushi restaurant, so we’re each armed with a bottle of white.

Discussion at dinner revolves mostly around our improv class, but halfway through Eddie mentions he’s thinking of moving to L.A. Another potential BFF on the run.

“It would be a nice new start,” he says. Eddie grew up in Michigan, so yes, I imagine L.A. would be a serious change of scenery. “But I’m all talk so who knows, don’t start missing me yet.”

After dinner I invite Eddie over for a nightcap and a peek at my yuppie home in all its glory, but he declines. “I’m going to go meet this guy who keeps texting me,” he says. “I’m not sure about him, but I might as well give him a chance.”

As long as he’ll give me one, too, we’re all good.

This Saturday is September 11. It’s also Callie’s wedding. People are generally taken aback when I tell them the date of my
best friend’s wedding, and then ask if she got everything at discounted prices. I have no idea, but since she’s getting married in Massachusetts’ Berkshires and not in Manhattan, I doubt it. When Callie first told me her wedding date I suggested she include a disclaimer on the invitations: “If you’re not having fun, the terrorists have won.” (I can’t take credit for the slogan, I borrowed it from a coworker.) She chuckled just enough to make clear she didn’t find it funny.

“It’s just another day on the calendar!” Callie yells every time someone asks her stance on her loaded anniversary date, so I’ve stopped mentioning it. I want to be the supportive friend, not another inquiring mind putting her on the defensive.

Callie’s wedding marks my first stint as a bridesmaid. The whole ritual of naming a bridal party—and the subsequent identical outfits—is undoubtedly bizarre. It’s the only time in adult life when it is completely acceptable, and totally expected, to publicly declare our best friends. In elementary school my friend Katie and I had all the BFF-4-EVER jewelry. We tagged each other’s binders and mix tapes with “BFF! LYLAS!” There was no ambiguity there.

Katie and I outgrew the necklaces as surely as we eventually outgrew each other (we lost touch when we went to separate high schools). Never again could we so simply and uncontroversially proclaim who the
best
of our friends were, so we didn’t. Until weddings came along.

Choosing bridesmaids can be prickly. Once we’re of marrying age, saying “I feel closer to you than you,” or even, “I like you better than you,” is sure to piss someone off. That’s why I chose not to do it. I knew I could ask Callie and Sara, my two oldest friends, without ruffling any feathers, but I had to draw the line there. Otherwise I’d end up excluding someone
or having eleven bridesmaids, and neither option sounded especially attractive.

Anyone who’s been a bride—or a bridesmaid—knows that selecting the wedding party isn’t always about whom you feel closest to, anyway. Sometimes it’s about family. Or your husband-to-be’s family. Or the random friend who asked you to be in her wedding so you feel you have no choice but to reciprocate even though you don’t really like her.

Such drama was avoided with Callie’s attendants. She has seven bridesmaids and each of us will be wearing a one-shoulder ruffle getup in periwinkle. The whole matching dresses tradition is the most curious aspect of the wedding-party custom. But any seemingly outdated, completely nonsensical practice had to start somewhere. A quick search of some wedding websites tells me that in early Roman times bridesmaids acted as a “protective shield … to intervene if any wayward thugs or vengeful suitors tried to hurt the bride or steal her dowry.” The Western tradition, however, is said to stem from ancient Roman law requiring witnesses to wear outfits identical to that of the bride and groom. These marriage decoys would confuse any evil spirits or jealous suitors who might show up to ruin the wedding. Unfortunately there’s no such tradition in place for warding off sloppy drunks intent on being the life of the party, a much more immediate concern in my experience.

If this reasoning holds up, Callie should probably get rid of her current party and find some ladies who look like her and could kick some wayward thug ass. Or who could at least throw an evil spirit for a loop. I fear her current batch of bridesmaids is more likely to run away at the sight of ghosts.

The modern-day bridal party phenomenon is really more about being surrounded by the people you love, and I’m excited
to be one of those ladies for Callie. As for the dress thing? That’s just about the photos really. And making sure no one standing near the bride is wearing anything heinous. (Or, some might say, making sure everyone standing near the bride
is
wearing something heinous, so as not to upstage her. But my best friend isn’t like that.)

My mother, Matt, and I arrive in Albany at 9
A.M.
and drive the hour to our Massachusetts hotel in a rented Hyundai Sonata. As soon as I can get Callie on the phone I ask for an assignment.

“What can I do for you? Do you need food? Does your mom need anything?”