My outsides are starting to match my insides.
FRIEND-DATE 18. I’ve been going on so many of these outings, I’m starting to notice every one of my dates’ little quirks—a tendency to touch my arm, a fidgety hair flip. Amanda, another essay responder, curses. A lot. I don’t mind it really, but I notice. An aspiring musical theater actress, she tells every story with the requisite animation and a side of jazz hands. She also tells me a very strange story regarding John Ritter’s testicles. As in, “I remember watching Three’s Company after school every day and he wore those tight shorts and I couldn’t stop staring at John Ritter’s balls. And I would think, those are John Ritter’s balls.” I’m not sure if those three words have ever been uttered in the same sentence, let alone repeatedly. It’s a strange story to lead with. “That’s when I really started noticing boys.” Weird, yes, but a decent ice breaker.
The most important lesson of the evening came earlier in the night, though, when, while making small talk, I said, “So, you just moved to Chicago?”
“No, I’ve lived here five years.” Oops. The potential friends and their emails are starting to run together. I need to pay better attention to the dossiers.
Despite my inability to retain the simple facts she shared in her introduction, Amanda sends me a Facebook request the next day. I accept. Social media friending is step one on the path to real-life friending. On her page, I notice she has a blog. Like any good Facebook stalker, I check it out. The first sentence? “I haven’t really written much about this, but I am going on a Blind Friend Date tonight.” Oh my god, this post is about me! I can’t believe it. If I needed any proof that making friends might be different in the digital age, here it is.
I shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, I have a blog. There are seven to ten million active blogs on the Internet at any given time, so I’m bound to meet other women who are publishing their every thought on the World Wide Web. Still, when you spend your time observing other people, it’s a surprise when you suddenly realize someone out there is watching you. Amanda wrote about being nervous for our meeting, her concerns that it would feel like an audition, and the necessity of going after what you want. After getting over my initial shock, I did what any self-respecting blogger-slash-friend-dater would do. I blogged about her blog. And when she posted her reaction to our date—“Our time was fun, easy and interesting. Nothing like a job interview, or even like a real blind date, where there might be awkward lulls or uncomfortable staring contests across the table”—I posted about that, too. Suddenly I was blogging about her blog about the unnecessary nerves of her first blog. It was all very meta.
Reading Amanda’s blog and Facebook page, I feel like something of a voyeur. Suddenly I know that she loves Susan Boyle and A Wrinkle in Time and has a job interview next Friday, even though she didn’t share any of that when we met. It makes me wonder if social media actually makes it easier or harder to get to know a new friend. I see how it might be easier in the sense that you can gather tidbits about her life before you even meet. You might know her favorite TV show, have seen pictures of her wedding or baby. If she’s a frequent status updater you may even know what she did last summer. Or last night. It’s like you can fast-forward through the could-we-be-friends stage and arrive immediately at the meat of the friendship-building.
But isn’t that discovery process what friendship building is all about? Sharing those bits of trivia—I know every word to “Stayin’ Alive,” she can recite Shel Silverstein’s “Whatif”—isn’t just a means to an end. Getting to know everything about a potential BFF might be more vital to the friendship than actually knowing everything is.
What if I see that a potential best friend’s favorite shows are Planet Earth and “everything on the History Channel”? Will I (subconsciously or not) try to appear the type of person I imagine she’d like? I could tell her, honestly, that I own the Planet Earth DVDs. But I might leave out the part about how I got them for free at my last job and have only watched bits and pieces. I could memorize talking points about the History Channel miniseries America: The Story of Us, and tell her that while I thought its intentions were noble, “some measurable amount of conceptual sophistication would have been welcome, and a good deal less huffery, puffery, and gimmickry.” She probably wouldn’t know I was quoting The Washington Post.
It’s a slippery slope, knowing too much too soon.
And now that I’ve gathered so much intel about Amanda, I’m worried I might let something slip the next time we see each other. Because while we all Facebook-stalk, protocol is to not admit it. I might know, from status updates, that a potential friend swims laps every morning, but it’d be creepy to say “Don’t worry about eating that doughnut, you deserve it after all those calories you burn!” Instead, I check out her profile and she reviews mine, but then we meet and pretend to know nothing. And I’m no actor, so it would be a lot easier if I actually knew nothing.
This Wednesday marks my 28th birthday. Cinco de Mayo. A few of my new pals have noticed the occasion on Facebook and asked what I’m doing to celebrate. I’ve decided to lie low. We’ll go to dinner with my mom—it’s her birthday, too, I was born on her 30th—and my brother and his girlfriend, but that’s about it. I was torn at first because I know all these new people suddenly. I could invite them out for dinner or a night of drinking, but we’re still teetering on the edge of real friendship. I’m not ready to ask them to give up a Friday night for me yet. Next year. For now, I’d rather have a small celebration with my family and continue to focus on building the friendships. Anyway, 28 is not a very exciting age.
Though I may not have a lot of friends in Chicago yet, I do have a lot of family here. Matt and I spend a good chunk of our time with my cousin Ben and his wife, Amy, and this Sunday we head over to their place to have brunch, gossip (me and Amy), and watch golf (Matt and Ben). On the drive home my phone rings. I’m surprised to see Hilary’s name pop up on the caller ID. Until now we’ve been exclusively email and Facebook message communicators, so it’s exciting to see we’ve graduated to phone calls. My natural reflex is to hit ignore—I feel rude taking calls when I’m with other people—but this is a special circumstance. “Hi!”
“Hey, what’s up?” Hilary is nonchalant, as if we talk on the phone all the time.
“Not much, just driving home with Matt. We were at my cousin’s.”
“Oh nice. Do you want to do something? My friends want me to meet them at a sports bar but I’m not in the mood and I need to get out of my house. I want to go somewhere fun. Like roller-skating.”
This is what I’ve been waiting for! That “what are you up to, let’s go on a playdate” friend. And though scheduling brunch with Hilary was next to impossible, maybe she works better last minute. My plan had been to go home and catch up on Desperate Housewives, but this sounds far better. Plus, when I met with University of Chicago professor John Cacioppo at the beginning of this search, he specifically said I should try to go on adventures with my new friends. Expanding outside your comfort zone is where you bond and make memories, he told me. Roller-skating would definitely qualify.
“Sure. I’ve got nothing going on,” I tell her. “Though I don’t know where one goes roller-skating in Chicago.”
“Me neither. I’ll look it up. Or maybe we could go bowling. Or to the batting cages.”
“I’m up for whatever. I love a good adventure. I just need to drop off Matt, then I’ll pick you up and we can decide?”
I arrive at her door thirty minutes later. “I’ve decided we should get our fortunes told,” Hilary tells me as she enters the car. “There’s a place on North Avenue in Old Town.”
“Really? Okay.” Roller-skating would’ve been more up my alley. I’ve never been to a fortune-teller. They sort of creep me out. But it will certainly be an adventure. There will be a story to tell. A memory. Hilary and I will always be able to say, “Remember when we went to that fortune-teller?”
When we arrive at a building disti
nguished only by a small sign that says FORTUNES out front, we ring the bell and are told to go to the second floor. I’m picturing some patchouli-smelling darkness with plenty of hanging beads and crystal balls, but when we let ourselves in, we’re in a really nice apartment. It seems we’ve crashed some family’s lazy Sunday. There’s a baby that may or may not be a sumo wrestler in a crib watching Nick Jr. There’s a guy in a bedroom at the end of the hall who opens the door and, while talking on the phone, directs us to sit on the couch near the sumo baby. He never reemerges. There’s a woman who speaks little to no English and might be the little one’s nanny, or mother, getting ready to feed her. Hilary and I exchange looks of combined confusion, horror, and amusement, and take our place on the couch. We’re trying to carry on a normal conversation and not let our tones communicate what our eyes are so clearly shouting: Where the hell are we? For five minutes, we sit on the couch forcing small talk as we take in our surroundings. No one, save for the guy on the phone, has so much as acknowledged that we’re here. If we left now, it would have been adventure enough.
While we’re discussing Hilary’s latest beau, the nanny-or-mother hands me the phone. I look at the woman, then at Hilary, and we both burst out laughing.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, you want to have your fortune told?” asks a voice on the other end.
“Yes, please.”
“Okay, I’m about twenty to thirty minutes away. What kind of reading do you want?” I’ve decided that I want a tarot card reading, if that’s an offering. Those have always looked intriguing.
“What are the options?”
“You can ask me two questions that I will answer for ten dollars. Or I do palm readings, tarot cards, crystals …” The tarot cards, she says, are forty dollars.
“We’d like to do the tarot cards, but forty dollars seems like a lot,” I say.
“I can do it for thirty dollars if youse both going to do it.” I can’t place her accent. It’s as if she’s trying to make it sound Middle Eastern, but the “youse” sounds more Bronx.
“Okay, we’ll both do that then. You’ll be back in a half hour?” I refrain from asking why she didn’t see our arrival in her future.
“How about you come back at six?” It’s 4:15.
“We don’t have time to wait that long,” I say. “How about five?”
She agrees, and Hilary and I kill time at the local Starbucks before returning to what might be the oddest place of business I’ve ever encountered. This time, the fortune-teller answers the door. She has on no headdress, she carries no crystal ball. Such a disappointment. She’s about 5′4″ with reddish hair and a cigarette stench that’s triggering my gag reflex. “Which of youse wants to go first?”
Hilary volunteers, so I take a seat on the couch. The obese, but actually quite adorable, baby is still in her crib, still watching Nickelodeon. I take a book out of my purse, grateful that I make it a rule never to travel without reading material. I discover the fortune that recently came with Matt’s Chinese food stuck in between two pages. When I was little, I thought that maybe my life was a movie—I’d tuck my shirt into my Charlie Brown–themed boxer shorts so I looked okay even in my sleep, wondering if the kids at school were watching me when I’d write in my diary late at night. I grew out of that, but there are still times when my life feels scripted. This is one of those moments. I look around for the cameras, as if I’m on The Truman Show and someone has orchestrated this craziness. But there are no cameras, only the fortune. “You will soon find a kindred spirit for lasting friendship.” Matt ate the fortune cookie, of course, but saved the inside for me—“You need it more than I do” was the message—but I’d forgotten it was in my book until just now. It’s a fortune kind of day.
After about twenty minutes, Hilary comes out and I’m led into the fortune-reading “room,” which is actually just the washer-dryer closet.
“Do you want me to tell you whatever I see, whether it is good or bad?”
“Yes, please.” My voice is shaky in the same way it gets when I’m in job interviews. I have no idea why I’m nervous.
She tells me to think of two wishes. I should tell her one of them and keep the other to myself.
“Okay, tell me your wish.”
“Um, I’d like to have two healthy children.”
I tell her the healthy kids line because I figured it’s generic, and I don’t want to give away too much. This is a test. She’s going to need to prove her psychic abilities with as little help from me as possible. The other wish was to succeed in my friend-quest, but she doesn’t need to know about that. Unless she sees it, of course.
After the first round of cards, she begins her assessment. “I see long and healthy life for you. You have good, kind heart. Good person.” Yeah, yeah. Get to the good stuff.
“But, I see … When did you have your loss of relationship?”
“Like, any relationship?” Damn, that was a giveaway.
“Yes.”
“Well, my dad died close to four years ago.” Rationally, I know that everyone’s had some loss of relationship in her life, but still, it seems kind of freaky.
“Yes, I see inner turmoil for you. Something you have not made peace with yet. But you will this year. You must. You must let the past go.”
She flips the next round of cards.
“I see three children.”
“Three?”
“Yes. And I see a financial investment in the next, oh, five to seven years. This will be a good year for you, though. You will make peace with the demons inside you that are keeping you from being totally happy. You need to work on your self-confidence, because it is your inner demons, not any outer ones, that are keeping you from having success even sooner.” What are my inner demons? Insecurity? BFFlessness? As much as I want to call BS on everything she’s saying, I do need to work on my self-confidence. Fear of appearing needy and annoying is the single biggest obstacle I face in this year of friending. I wonder about the internal monsters that are keeping me from total happiness. She very well might use that line on all her clients, but could she be onto something? The inner demons keeping me from pure happiness are probably loneliness. Is this some sort of “become best friends with yourself and best friends will appear” law of attraction nonsense? I’m not so much into the New Age movement, but it’s something to think about.
“Your inner demons can be worked out,” she says. “Also, I see that you could really benefit from my three-pronged reading next time—palm, tarot, and crystals. It is sixty-five dollars.” Sure it is.
Hilary and I did some real bonding at the fortune-teller’s, but she’s not the only one who’s extended an invitation recently. Jen hosted Alison and me for a TV night. Hannah asked me to dinner. Ellen followed up and we got pizza a week after we met. Margot and I ate sushi. Lacey sent me an Evite to her girlfriend’s house-warming party. I feel like reciprocity is finally kicking in and my boatload of acquaintances are turning into friends. It’s only May, and I’m on track to becoming the most popular girl in the Midwest.
FRIEND-DATE 19. Last month, a cousin sent me an article from the Jewish United Fund newspaper. The story was called “A Different Kind of Exodus,” about the writer’s best friend who had recently moved. The author, Pam, said she wished she could “recruit for a new best friend in town.” Sounds familiar.
I’d been so encouraged by the response to my own essay that I decided to send this Pam a note. “I really liked your article and have been going through the same thing myself. I was wondering if you might want to grab a drink sometime?”
Pam replied, asking if she could publish my email in the letters to the editor. No response to the request for plans.
I tried again. “I was serious about grabbing a drink … I couldn’t fill Jessica’s size eleven shoe, but I love Cubs games and This Is It.” The baseball team and Michael Jackson documentary were both on the short list of Pam’s best friend requirements.
This time, she responded
to the matter at hand. “I have a tough time getting asked out by guys but I’m happy that at least a girl asked me out.
We’re meeting at Orange, a brunch spot popular for its frushi—fruit sushi. Or, really, fruit wrapped in sweet rice. I think it’s kind of gross but most Chicagoans love it. I’m interested in seeing if Pam and I hit it off. Her article also called for someone who will join her at Friday Night Shabbat services, which is to say, not me.
I’ve always classified myself as culturally Jewish. Gathering the family for the Passover Seder is important to me, though actually attending temple—even for the high holidays—is not. I had a bat mitzvah and got married under a chuppah. I went to a private high school in New York City and summer camp in Maine, both Meccas for teenage Jews. My sorority was considered “the Jewish one” though we had no actual religious affiliation. I grew up surrounded by Jews, so, until this year, they’re who I flocked to. I didn’t seek them out, but we usually bonded over a common upbringing.
That said, I don’t think I could be less religious. I’d argue that Matt, my atheist husband, is more religious than I—at least he’s interested in it. He reads about religion and ponders over it. He meets with religious leaders and thinkers to debate about God. But not me. I treat my Judaism like the pile of clothes in the back of my closet that needs to be hand-washed. I know it’s there, but I don’t deal with it. I’d rather just push it aside and forget for a while. I pull it out at Passover when the family comes in town for Seder, or when I’m invited to a Yom Kippur break fast (I don’t actually do the fasting part, or even go to temple, so for me it’s more about bringing wine and getting kugel and bagels for dinner). I imagine when it’s time to have kids Matt and I will have to sit down and have a conversation about bar mitzvahs and temple, but we’ve got some time.
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