We don’t laugh together. Not once in ninety minutes. Our commonalities start and end with blogging, which can only sustain a conversation for so long. And while it’s something we both do, it doesn’t say much about who we both are.
From what I’ve read of her, Maggie is really funny. In person, I’m not seeing it. She would likely say the same about me. I saw a greeting card the other day that said “I’m much more interesting on my blog.” It might have been created for this very date. Our enjoyment of each other’s online personas isn’t translating to the real world.
Maybe these communities are online for a reason.
Toward the end of the meal I excuse myself to the restroom, where I text Matt an SOS. Unfortunately we haven’t set up a rescue plan, and feigning some “Hello? What? There’s an emergency? I’ll be there right away!” is so sitcom it would never work.
I have no idea how to fill the long silences. Maggie already told me about her kids and her ex-husband and her job. I told her about Matt and our move to Chicago. And then, nothing. She doesn’t have time to watch TV or read, she tells me, which rules out my go-to conversation filler. In the movie version of our date, here is where the birds start chirping.
“Care for some dessert?” Our waitress is shoving the menu toward us.
Please say no. Please say no. I give Maggie my best “it’s your call” expression.
“I think we’re all set,” she says. “Just the check, please.”
We walk together toward the train and my car. As we part ways, I’m reminded of that Friends episode where Chandler says “We should do it again sometime!” at the end of every date, even the awful ones. As Maggie and I stand on the corner, trying to gracefully part ways, I hear the Mr. Bing reflex going off in my head.
“Well, we should definitely get together again,” I tell her.
“Totally,” she says.
What? Why? It’s that uncontrollable urge to leave on pleasant terms and avoid an even slightly uncomfortable encounter.
“I don’t think this worked out so well but have a great life” just doesn’t have the same ring.
“Um, I’m here with GirlFriendCircles?” It’s not really a question, but my voice hikes up an octave as I tell the hostess at Frasca, the pizza-and-wine-bar locale of my very first ConnectingCircle, why I’m here.
She stares at me blankly.
“Is there a reservation?” I ask.
“I don’t see one.”
“Okay, I’ll just go check if anyone’s seated yet.” In my hand is the official “Table Tent,” a place card to identify myself if I’m the first one here. A quick walk-through tells me that I am, but when the hostess asks if I want to be seated I politely refuse.
The Table Tent has a drawing of two female stick figures who seem to be holding hands, or maybe dancing, in a swirl of bright orange, green, and pink polka dots. Next to the image, in bold letters and similar colors, is an announcement: “We’re meeting new girl friends tonight.”
I’ll broadcast my search online, I’ll hand out my business card to strangers, I’ll even pay $29.95 for a six-month membership to a friend-matching website. But I will not sit alone in a crowded restaurant wearing a sign that might as well say “I have no friends.”
At the beginning of this year I wondered if there was anything I wouldn’t do in service of my quest. This is it. The line has been drawn.
I wait by the door until I see Jane, whose red hair and glasses I recognize from the photos of the other RSVPs. We exchange a timid hello and show ourselves to a corner table. We never put up the Table Tent.
My group is made up of Jane, Melissa, Rose, Logan, and me. Jane and Melissa don’t talk much. Rose tells us she signed up for the service because a book she’s reading encouraged her to try activities outside her comfort zone. I pull my second Chandler Bing in a single week and take it upon myself to fill every silence with a lame joke.
“Sure I’ll have a second glass of wine, maybe we can make this GirlFriendCircle really interesting!” Ugh. What is wrong with me?
The other ladies laugh. Whether out of nerves or pity I can’t tell.
Logan is a 4′11″ spitfire. She shares her life story—her move from California to Chicago, her recent transition to self-employment—without taking a breath. She’s dating a guy long distance at the moment (“though Skype helps!”), and is planning the solo trip to Paris and India she’s always dreamed of. “I thought of it long before the whole Eat, Pray, Love thing,” she insists.
I’ve set a goal to ask out at least one potential BFF from each mixer I attend or group I join. Logan should expect to hear from me soon.
After all this blind connecting, I’m excited to spend a night with people I already know. My kitchen is stocked with pizza dough, a vat of tomato sauce, and eight girls in search of new BFFs. In a mere twenty-four hours I’ve gone from connectee to connector. Brynn, Lacey, and Ellen are laughing like old friends in the living room; Mia and Amanda are discovering their common California roots; Jackie, Kari, and I are sporting aprons and rolling out pizza dough, and Margot’s surveying our progress, red wine in hand.
It’s the evening after my GirlFriendCircles adventure, and I’m playing host at my first ever dinner party. I invited mostly the new friends who I don’t see as often as I’d like and who reached out to me after reading my online essay. They all admitted to feeling similarly disconnected, with a shortage of local friends for whatever reason, so we can use one another’s company. I added Margot to the list because while we have lunch decently often, I think she’d get along with this crowd. And Kari, my coworker, was recruited as a buffer. She has a knack for friendly chatter, so having her on deck to help guide conversation eases my nerves. After all, the rest of us have openly admitted to having trouble making new friends. There might be a reason for that.
Tonight’s gathering is a make-your-own-pizza-and-cupcakes affair. At yesterday’s ConnectingCircle, we had “sharing questions”—What’s your favorite book? Where would you like to vacation and why?—to keep conversation going should there be a lull. At this shindig, I ward off collective boredom and anxiety by putting my guests to work.
On my kitchen counter are three pizza stations: Margherita; Pepperoni and Shallot; and White Pizza with Sun-dried Tomato and Scallion. Aside from the ice-breakerness of cooking together, the make-your-own aspect takes some pressure off me and my cooking skills.
I said I was interested, I never said I was good.
“I read it’s better to roll out the dough by hand than with a rolling pin,” Jackie says.
“Go for it.” I give her the rectangular baking sheet that will double as a pizza pan for tonight. She’s wearing one of my four cooking aprons—remnants of two kitchen-themed bridal showers—and seems to have an idea of what she’s doing.
Kari and I choose the rolling-pin route, and soon we’re all gathered around my couch, talking weddings and job offers in between bites.
“Where’s Matt tonight?” Mia asks me.
“At my mom’s. I sent him there to watch LeBron.” I’d warned Matt about the ladies’ night a while ago, offering our bedroom as a private refuge, but he wanted to steer clear. My mother loves hosting her son-in-law, so she’s made him a dinner of pasta—his carby favorite I try to keep out of our kitchen—and relinquished her couch and flat-screen. The entirety of America, minus some nine pizza-loving ladies, is tuned in to an ESPN circus, watching LeBron James announce that he will be leaving Cleveland to take his talents to South Beach. A quick refresh of my USA Today app tells me the news, I share it with my guests who nod in semi-interest, and we get back to girl talk.
I’ve eaten three slices of pizza and one cupcake before I notice the clock. It’s 10:45. Nearing my bedtime and long past Matt’s. I never imagined my 7 P.M. call time would keep a group of strangers here so late. It’s the sign of women who have been seriously craving some female bonding. As pleased as I am that the evening is a hit, I’m wondering if there is a polite way to kick them ou
t. It’s a school night, people! But Jackie is deep in conversation with Margot about what wedding dresses would work for her body. She’s getting married next May, on the same day as Amanda, who’s grilling Brynn with questions of health benefits. Amanda is waiting on a job offer from a small consulting firm, and Brynn is in HR at a mammoth company. She has lots of insights—on timing, retroactive coverage, and similarly titillating topics—all of which Amanda is eating up.
I close the door behind my last guest at 11:30 and check my phone, knowing Matt must be itching to get home, if he’s even awake. There’s a text from my mom. “Please call as soon as they leave. Matt is sound asleep.” I call and give her the all clear. Ten minutes later Matt sleepwalks into the kitchen, eats a slice of homemade pizza, and crashes.
The next morning there’s an email to the group from Mia. “I’d be happy to host the next one. Sushi night?”
And a bona fide cooking club, maybe even a new group of friends, is born.
CHAPTER 9
“Okay, you’re a priest and a nun. Go.”
Andy runs up to me, flailing his arms. “Father, Father, I don’t know what to do!” He’s using his best girly voice, and I immediately take on the role of priest.
“What’s wrong, my child?” My hands are hooked together and raised chest-level like the Von Trapp Family Singers. I don’t know why, but since I’ve never actually interacted with a priest, this is how I imagine they stand when on the clock. Maybe because Maria was a nun.
“I’m having these strange feelings … for a woman of the convent.”
“Please, take a seat,” I say.
“Have you ever encountered this problem before?”
“Well, there was this one other sister …”
“And by sister, do you mean a nun or an African American woman?”
“Both, actually,” I say. “She went by the name of Sister Mary Clarence.”
“Oh yes, I think I remember her,” Andy’s high-pitched alter-ego says. “As portrayed by Whoopi Goldberg?”
“And … scene!” Kimmi, our teacher, cuts us off on a high note.
It’s week four of my improv class at Second City, a school that boasts alumni including Tina Fey, Steve Carell, and Chris Farley. This is the first scene I’ve done that hasn’t made me want to run away. It’s also one of the only where I was allowed to speak. Our inaugural class was made up entirely of getting-to-know-you games, the second was silent scenes, and the third was gibberish. That was a nightmare. “You’re raking leaves and you’re feisty,” my teacher told me. You know the song “Nothing” from A Chorus Line? The one where Diana Morales can’t bring herself to “be a table, be a sports car, ice cream cone”? That’s how I felt. I proceeded to make my best raking motions while simultaneously shaking my head and growling. Is that even what feisty looks like? Unclear.
Despite the fact that I’m most certainly not going to be the next Liz Lemon, I am actually starting to enjoy these classes, if not so much for the activity as for the company. There are some definite potential friends here, and because we have class every week I can get to know them before bringing the relationships to the friend-date level. Consistency is one of the tenets of friendship, and the fact that I can count on three hours with these people every Tuesday night is helping to solidify relationships.
There’s also the fact that we keep making asses of ourselves in front of each other. I mentioned earlier the “click accelerators” that Rom and Ori Brafman pinpoint in their book Click. Improv is the perfect place to put the vulnerability accelerator to the test. I may not be revealing my greatest fears or weaknesses, but standing up in front of a crowd and acting a fool—and having them actually laugh with not at me—is a fast track to trust.
Kimmi demonstrated this very truth in our second class. First, everyone in the room had to stand in front of the group and tell a funny story. (Mine involved my 6-year-old self driving around with my mother, who would yell “Move, Jerk!” or “Nice turning signal, Jerk!” or “Learn to drive, Jerk!” until I asked her how it happened that we were always behind the same person.) For the second round, we told embarrassing stories. (Me, twenty years old, too many shots of Beefeater Gin, vomit. Tale as old as time.)
“You might have laughed at the funny story,” Kimmi told us afterward. “But you probably felt a moment of connection with the embarrassing one. You felt humiliated for him, or you flinched or covered your eyes. You felt for him. And that’s what you want the audience to do for you.” Apparently winning over a crowd isn’t all that different from wooing a BFF.
I didn’t know this going in, but improv is a male-dominated art form. In my class of twenty-two, we have seventeen boys and five girls. I was disappointed at first—No ladies? No friends? No, thank you!—but being in the minority has bonded us women. And I’m not necessarily averse to making male friends. Andy’s great, and there’s Eddie, who’s gay and hilarious and a BFF waiting to happen.
As for the women, Jenny is an itty-bitty thing who gives the impression of a porcelain doll until she opens her mouth and always, every single time, goes for the dirty. If she’s not sitting on a toilet, she’s getting a bikini wax. Or getting it on. It’s so unexpected out of her small frame that it always gets a laugh. In real life, Jenny is a producer at a local news station. We’ve discussed the possibility of getting together with our husbands—hers is a Matt, too—but nothing has come to fruition yet.
Right now the most promising prospect is Rachel. She’s 22 and just graduated from the University of Iowa. On paper, she’s another mini-me. Aside from the first name, her middle name is Levin while my married name is Levine. This much we figured out in the first week. During the following week we discovered that our moms are in the same quilting group. Then that we were in the same sorority. She lives in Evanston, where I went to college, and loves all the same TV I do. Though I haven’t had good luck with dates in her age group thus far, Rachel seems like a winner. Having weekly class in common gives us a solid context in which to anchor our relationship.
The fact that Rachel comes equipped with a pal for my mom gives her a leg up on my other potential BFFs. I’ve joked about mother-daughter double dating before, but Rachel and I have already discussed it as a real possibility. Our moms are friendly in their quilting group, and Rachel lives at home. It only makes sense that my mother and I would head out to Evanston for a ladies brunch.
My mom has been continuing her own BFF search alongside mine, though she wouldn’t explicitly call it that. She befriended Shelly, the fellow widow with whom she said she could go on cruises back when I was friendless and totally jealous of her. Then she secured a seat at the lunch table with a group of quilters. (Even quilters have cliques! I can’t stop picturing Regina George, fifty years later, instructing her minions that “On Wednesdays, we wear pink.”) She belongs to some three different quilt guilds. It appeared she was having it easy until I started to notice the loneliness in her voice from time to time. There are threads of my own story in my mother’s, and I want to encourage her to buck up and go for it when she gets invitations to parties where she doesn’t know anyone. Still, her hesitance is about more than the difficulty of meeting new people.
Mom hates being “the token widow” and I can’t blame her. (When my father first died, I dreaded being “the one with the dead dad” in my group of friends. I don’t know why this concern took such hold of me, but in the haze of grief we latch on to irrational fears.) Take a few weeks ago, when she went to her best friend’s son’s wedding.
“The hardest part was not having someone to zip up my dress,” she said.
What can I say to that?
If you look past the résumés, Rachel is actually much funnier and more outgoing than I. She’s supergoofy, in a self-deprecating and endearing way. She’s constantly tripping herself up in scenes and then trailing off with some collection of unrelated words. “I. We. Yeah. Lunch. Fail.” Even her gibberish, which sounds like a poor attempt at German—“Flargen bargen fargen”�
�makes me laugh. And she’s just enough younger than me that she has no difficulties with friend-making. She’s proof of what I’ve come to call the Second City Factor.
The gist of my Second City theory (which is completely unrelated from the improv school) is that it’s in your second city after college when friend-making gets tough. When young 20-somethings arrive in their first post-grad home, they’re surrounded by other real-world freshmen in the same boat. Everyone’s a novice in the workforce, unfettered by college classes or midterm papers, looking for buddies to drink, gossip, and go to the movies with. Making new friends is easy—everyone is more or less looking for the same thing.
The decision to move to the second post-college city (or suburb, or town), however, is usually made independent of friends. No matter if you do it for love, career, family, or school, the second move is on your own terms. And given that you’ve probably got a few post-grad years under your belt, you’re not guaranteed a sea of new-in-town friend prospects this time around. Plenty of the companions you’re looking for have lived in your new city for years and have already filled their BFF quota. Suddenly, you’re floundering in the search for that certain someone, despite having been surrounded by plenty of perfect someones all your life. The trick is to find other second-city dwellers or slowly infiltrate the established ranks. That’s when making friends becomes the tricky dating dance: Am I coming on too strong? When can I call her again? Did she like me, or did she like like me?
I’m currently grappling with my second city, while Rachel—and most of our improv classmates—are in their first.
That’s the other thing. I’m one of the oldest students in the class. From what I can tell, Beginning Improv is a course that people sign up for when they still live at home and are trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up. My class is mostly filled with aspiring actors/comedians/writers who have day jobs (sometimes) but not careers. Being a 28-year-old professional with no dreams of the stage seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
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