MWF Seeking BFF (34 page)

Three-quarters of this search are now behind me. I’ve gone on thirty-nine girl-dates in nine months. If three months in I had acquaintances and after six I had friends, today I feel like I’m very much on the path to bestfriendom. Aside from Jillian’s family visit, Labor Day weekend included a trip to the dog park with Margot (a true sign of how much I like her), show tunes night at a local gay bar with Kari and her husband, a movie with Hilary, and a yoga workshop with Natalie. I even had to pass on a night out with Hannah, as she texted me that she’d be in my neighborhood—a last-minute invite!—after Matt and I were already out on a date. My work BFFs—Ashley, Lynn, Joan, and Kari—are still my daily lunch mates and the people with whom I exchange about fifteen
People.com
“breaking news” links a day. We make off-campus plans infrequently, but five days a week of chatter can really bring people together. I finally have total faith that we’ll remain friends even if we don’t always share an office.

Over the past month I’ve seen Alexis again—she came over for help with her blog—and continued my weekly pre-improv dinners with Rachel. Eddie often joins us now, too. I even signed up for the second level of Second City classes. I never planned on advancing—I’ll find a friend and run for the hills, I thought—but when Rachel and Eddie both said, “You have to do it!” they made the decision for me. The sound of new
friends imploring you to stick around is a beautiful and powerful thing. Like the call of the Sirens. Plus, I’ve grown to love my class like one loves a dysfunctional family. Even the self-appointed class clown who doesn’t know when to stop talking—who actually recognizes that he should shut it, says “please somebody stop me,” and then keeps talking anyway until all of our faces are buried in our hands and our entire bodies are cringing—even he has carved himself a space in my improvisational heart.

And to think, I knew none of these people a year ago.

Another bonus of being 75 percent through? After months of being the initiator, invitations now come my way, too. I’d been waiting for the tide to turn, for my friendships to become universally reciprocal, and in the past few months the shift has become obvious. I have a barrage of text messages to prove it.

What I still don’t have, what might not even be possible in one short year, is the type of intimate friendship on par with any of my close friends around the country. I could probably text someone for brunch, but do I know the strengths and values and insecurities at the core of any of my new companions? Do I understand the history and intricate relationships that make them who they are? No.

I recently came across an essay in which author Ann Patchett beautifully sums up the crux of what I hope will emerge in the final months of this search. “[Here’s] my idea of real intimacy,” she writes. “It’s not the person who calls to say, ‘I’m having an affair’; it’s the friend who calls to say, ‘Why do I have four jars of pickles in my refrigerator?’ ” I want someone with whom I can talk about the deep stuff—hopes and dreams and expectations and disappointments—and also the minutiae. Sometimes it takes talking about everything to get to the place where we can talk about nothing.

In the time since my six-month assessment, friendships have evolved. I might call Natalie for a ride to the airport, or Hannah or Rachel or Jillian for a shoulder to cry on after a fight with Matt. I’d bounce health questions—is that a freckle? Or a mole?—off of Lynn, Kari, Ashley, or Joan. But the four-jars-of-pickles analysis? We’re not quite there yet.

I’ve given in to paying for friendships. If eHarmony can charge two hundred forty dollars a year, then coughing up five dollars per month for GirlFriendCircles or thirty dollars for the personal attention of Meet Joe or fifteen dollars for speed-friending isn’t so bad. Considering that studies show people value time with friends more than time with their romantic partners, these sites might be a bargain.

There’s a difference, though, between subscribing to a service that will connect you with potential friends and straight up paying someone to hang out with you.

Enter
RentAFriend.com
.

The website is exactly what it sounds like. Unless it sounds like an escort service. Because the company promises in
BIG BOLD LETTERS
on its homepage (which looks like it was designed for my 1987 Apple IIe computer) that solicitation is prohibited and the site is for “friendship purposes only.” It bears noting, however, that plenty of the friends-for-hire post pictures that I’d qualify as more suggestive than friendly—hello,
cleavage—and the majority of customers rent friends of the opposite sex.

While I can peruse the site (narrowing my potential pals first by zip code and then by gender) for free, I’ll need to hand over some cash—$24.95 per month or $69.95 for the full year—in order to contact anyone. And if I find someone I want to hang out with? I’ll need to pay her directly on top of my monthly fee. “Friends” charge anywhere from ten to one hundred fifty dollars per hour, though twenty to fifty dollars is the norm.

Kari told me about RentAFriend in May after she saw it on a local news segment. In June my aunt emailed me an article about the service. A month later a blog reader sent the link my way. Sure it may be a prostitution ring, but who better to give it a test drive, they said. I can handle shady and inappropriate advances if need be. I’m tough.

RentAFriend is modeled after similar successful sites in Asia and boasts more than three hundred thousand friends for rent. People hire friends for anything from a business trip dinner date to a weekly companion for their elderly mother. According to an MSNBC profile of the company, two college kids once rented friends to pose as parents after they were caught drinking on campus.

Um, those are not friends. Those are called actors.

If I sound skeptical, it’s because I am. Isn’t the very nature of friendship reciprocal? If I have to pay someone for her company, it’s not exactly a partnership of equals.

But I’ve come this far, so it’s only logical that I should rent a friend. At least see what it’s about. I’ll find the one Chicago-based woman on the site who gives off no I’ll-pleasure-you-for-money vibes and invite her on an outing. In a public place. In broad daylight.

Maybe my cynicism is misguided. The friends-for-hire might be regular Janes, looking for new pals and some extra cash. Come January I’ll be a pro at girl-dates. Perhaps I could lease myself out.

This afternoon, while sitting in Starbucks, I type my zip code into the site’s search field. I narrow the results to female only. Of the women within six years of my age, only three aren’t ogling the camera. (Four if you count the girl who I’m pretty sure is flashing the Bloods gang sign. I don’t.) Two of those three, Sascha and Christine, are my age.

Sascha’s profile reads: “I just want to have a good time, whether it’s drinking coffee while figuring out which destinations should be on the short list or dancing on the beach with our smuggled cocktails (umbrella usually not optional, even if it’s an Old Style tall boy) or getting dressed up for a nice night out. Gals, I know how to meet boys. Guys, hard to find a better wingwoman. I’ve been lucky enough to meet a whole gaggle of incredible people over the last year, and always love meeting more.” In one of Sascha’s profile pictures she’s in the stands of a football game, her arm around a middle-aged shirtless guy wearing a cowboy hat and what appears to be a Wyoming Football barrel around his waist, held up by suspenders.

Candidate number two, Christine, has a much shorter profile. “I am very outgoing and love connecting with people! I love living in Chicago and exploring different neighborhoods. I can strike up a conversation with anyone and put people at ease. Let’s hang out!”

I’m leaning toward Sascha—she sounds like a party animal!—until I come to my senses. She sounds like a party animal. Every now and then I have a momentary memory lapse and forget I’m not in college anymore. I don’t want to smuggle cocktails on the beach. I hate the beach! Taking pictures
with beer-soaked locals in crazy costumes doesn’t crack me up, it makes me uncomfortable. Christine seems more like the me I
actually
am, as opposed to the me I sometimes pretend I am.

I send Christine an email explaining that I am new(ish) to Chicago and am always looking for different ways to meet people. And though I’ve never used RentAFriend before, it seemed an interesting concept. Would she be up for meeting?

Within a few hours I have a response.

“Hey Rachel—

I got your info from RentAFriend and wanted to connect! I am new to this site and basically wanted to find ways to supplement my part-time job with some income. I decided to charge $20 an hour, and would love to get together. Let me know.”

After we exchange some more emails and I explain my background (i.e., I am not a creep trying to solicit sex), I suggest a trip to the farmers’ market next week. She ups the ante to lunch and the farmers’ market and the museum. At twenty dollars an hour.

It’s a date. Likely a pricey one.

Of all the various organizations and classes I’ve joined since starting this search, I was most leery of LEADS, the young Jewish group that Pam, the
JUF News
editor, told me about earlier this year. For whatever reason, I’ve always avoided religiously oriented events. Maybe it’s because I don’t usually click with those who frequent Purim Parades and Matzo Balls, the Christmas Eve party for Jewish singles. (I’ve never been, but I hear some of the antics that take place are, shall we say, not kosher.) Or perhaps Matt’s objection to organized religion has influenced my own take on temple. (I can’t remember
the last time I entered one for anything other than a wedding or funeral.) I know it sounds silly, given that so many of my friends are Jewish, but very few of them are religious. Forget orthodox, conservative, and reformed. To me, Judaism has two sects: Those who equate Jewish geography with a map of Israel, and those who play by asking if you know the Rosenbergs of Scarsdale. My Jewish friends have always been the latter.

I worried that signing up for LEADS (which stands for Leadership Education and Development Series) would be akin to a lie. Wouldn’t I be declaring that Judaism was deeply important to me just by enrolling in the eight-week course? Didn’t it imply that I’d lit the Shabbat candles more recently than twenty years ago?

Jewish organizations host programs like LEADS in order to recruit young Jews like me and to invite outsiders into the community, so I decided the false pretenses argument didn’t hold water. It’s not like I’m Catholic, showing up to a Jewish mixer wearing a tallis.

At the inaugural session we spent most of the evening playing Fun-Fact Bingo. Another icebreaker game! My specialty! (My fact: I coached a third-grade girls Catholic Youth Organization basketball team to win the New York State Archdiocesan Championship. It seemed apropos.) Group introductions came next. As we went around the room explaining why we joined LEADS, I noticed a recurring theme: “I’m the only Jew in my group of friends, so I figured this would be a good way to expand my Jewish network.” Probably two-thirds of our group gave a variation of that explanation. A few said their friends had tried LEADS and loved it, so they were jealous. And one girl, with a thick southern accent, said “Hey, y’all! I
just moved here from Alabama and I don’t know anyone here or have any friends. So if you need friends, I do, too!”

Bless her heart. There were some nervous giggles in response to her impromptu speech, but I applauded this girl’s candor. The ladies who announced they joined LEADS to meet their future husband got laughs, but they were laughs of recognition, not pity. Most everyone nodded in agreement (I’m one of only three married people in my group, and the other two are married to each other). When the southern belle declared she needed new friends, the look on the guy sitting next to me seemed to say, “Oh, this poor girl just admitted she was a loser.”

Much has changed during this year of friending, but one thing has not. In the eyes of 20- and 30-somethings, a proclamation of friendlessness still equals loneliness, while admitting you want a lover just makes you a modern woman.

I admired her. Maybe if I’d been so bold when I first moved to Chicago I could have saved myself two years of frustration.

Then came my turn. “I’m always looking to meet new people, and someone suggested I try LEADS, so here I am.”

We all joined for the same basic reason—to meet new people. No one said, “I’m here because I am super-religious and was hoping to deepen my understanding of the Israelites.” Sure, there are varying degrees of observance in the room—from me, the borderline nonpracticer, to Miriam, the conservative Jew who leads our meetings’ infrequent prayers—but the organization is focused on building a community rather than pushing a religious viewpoint.

I hit it off pretty quickly with Meredith, a pharmaceutical sales rep who is from Rhode Island but has lived in Chicago for five years.

“I need to meet some Jews!” Meredith told me when I asked why she signed up. “Seriously, I want to date Jewish guys and I don’t know how to meet them in this city. Although, considering I was one of, like, ten Jews in Rhode Island, I’ve never had an easy time of it.”