During our mid-class break, Rachel and I have been taking shopping trips to the Walgreens across the street, where she’ll tell me about her most recent text exchange with Bill or pre-class dinner with Josh.
“You and Bill text?” I’ll ask, baffled by the ease with which she socializes with our fellow improvisers during the off hours.
“Sure,” she’ll say.
“When did that start?”
“I don’t know, I got his number sometime. Probably at drinks after class. We don’t say anything interesting.”
“Did you just text him randomly one day? Or did he contact you? Was it weird?” Each week I grill her for the specific logistics of how she has already turned our entire class into a band of BFFs. It comes easy to her, not like something that needs to be overanalyzed, and I’m starting to realize that I sound both insecure and generally socially inept. So, after four weeks, I decide to curb the inquisition and make a move of my own.
The next day, via email, I ask my younger self out. We put a pre-class dinner date on the books.
The further I get into this year, the clearer the necessity of regularity becomes. It’s like Shasta Nelson’s formula: Twice a month for three months makes a friend. A few of my semi-successful girl-dates—Muffy, Pam, Morgan—haven’t evolved into real relationships because we have nothing that reliably brings us together. If it were important enough to both of us, we’d make plans to ensure some consistency, but that has to be a two-way street. There aren’t enough days in a month for me to schedule bi-weekly dates with everyone—at least not if I ever want to enjoy a quiet night with Matt, or yoga, or 30 Rock—so I’ve focused mostly on the ladies who I absolutely adore (Jillian) and those who reciprocate my interest in our friendship (Hilary, Margot). The other contenders at the front of the pack are those who I already see regularly (Hannah at book club, my co-workers in the office). And hopefully my new cooking club will manufacture some regularity with that promising crowd.
The difference between the monthly consistency of book club versus the weekly nature of improv is that it takes four times as long to get to the same place. So while I’ve belonged to two book clubs since January, I’m just now establishing independent relationships with some of the members. In New York, my fellow book clubbers became some of my favorite people. They came to my wedding, they’ve visited me since my move. We had such girl-crushes on our nerdy little gang that we’d plan mid-month nonbook gatherings, just so we’d get more time to love each other.
Aside from Hannah and Jillian, I’ve still never seen any of my Chicago book club friends outside of our meetings. Though I have started emailing with one of my fellow readers whenever there’s something important to say about Modern Family or Friday Night Lights, and with another when I notice her updates on Goodreads.com. And Natalie and I exchange messages about yoga.
You may recall that Natalie is Matt’s coworker, the one who brought me along to her friend’s cookie party earlier this year. We’ve been friendly since then, but two book clubs ago we bonded over her newfound love of yoga—she had started only a month earlier and was already doing a thirty-day challenge—and the fact that I got engaged at an Anusara retreat gave me yogi street cred in her eyes.
(It’s true. Almost two years ago, I booked a trip to Tulum, Mexico, for a week of beachside downward dogs. I’d begged Matt to join me, but since he couldn’t take the days off I decided to test my tolerance for solo travel. There would be like-minded people, I figured. New friends! On the first night, after class but before dinner, I waited, naked and in the dark—we only had electricity late at night—for my shower to heat up. Suddenly a shadow of a man slipped into my hut. I was about to get raped by a local vagabond. Why had they told me I didn’t need to lock my room? After screaming, jumping some five feet in the air and simultaneously trying to cover my lady parts, I saw that the Mexican hobo rapist was in fact Matthew, who’d booked the trip in secret. Nothing like mistaking your fiancé-to-be for a sexual predator. That’s romance.)
It’s been about six weeks since Natalie and I first bonded over yoga. But the magic moment when our friendship really took flight was at our last meeting, on a Friday two weeks back. We’d read, or reread, The Great Gatsby, and one of our fellow members was hosting us on her family’s boat. Ten ladies, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Lake Michigan.
As with most of our meetings, discussion about the actual book lasted about thirty minutes. At which point Natalie and I decided to play with our host’s new iPad. She subscribed to Us Weekly on that thing! Brilliant.
“I think I want a romper,” I mentioned as we admired Alicia Keys adorably sporting her baby bump in a khaki number.
“You’re kidding.” Natalie looked horrified. “They’re awful!”
“I think they’re cute. If you can rock it, which I’m not sure I can. But they’d be perfect vacationwear. Nice and comfy, no waistband …”
“Right. Wear a dress.”
“I do, but rompers are a good alternative. No thigh chafing!”
“Rachel. Rompers are for infants. They are onesies. A grown woman should not wear one in public.”
The debate continued with no resolution. Until Saturday afternoon when I had lunch with my brother and his girlfriend, who was wearing a glorious Armani Exchange thin-strapped, gray-and-white graphic-print romper.
Gotta love modern technology. Within minutes I’d texted Natalie a photo of Jaime with a note. “See! Cute!”
It has become our Great Romper Debate. Whenever I spot a woman wearing one well, I send Natalie the photographic evidence. Whenever Jessica Simpson wears one, Natalie sends the resulting tabloid attacks my way. This happens more than it should. Some bodies do nothing for my cause.
The romper has become our inside joke. Our friendship tipping point.
FRIEND-DATE 28. Two weeks after the inaugural dispute, Natalie and I are at the Cubs game. With our men. It’s a perfect double date because there is baseball for the guys, rampant rompering for us, and Matt actually knows these people.
If there’s anything to complain about, it’s that yoga and rompers play such starring roles in our fledgling friendship that I can’t think of much else to say. Romper this and yoga that. Whatever. I’ll take it.
Matt and I are going to Croatia next Friday. It’s our honeymoon, almost one year after the fact. We took a two-week Mediterranean cruise about seven weeks before our wedding, so taking another week off after the nuptials wasn’t in the cards. As it turned out, had we booked a big trip we would have canceled, given how sick Matt’s dad was by the time of the wedding. We couldn’t have known that then, we just lucked out. Well, really lucking out would have been having our fathers walk us down the aisle, but given the circumstances, we took what we could get.
Going to Europe for a full seven days means I’ll have no choice but to double up on girl-dates this week. It shouldn’t be too hard, as follow-ups have been tough to come by this month. The majority of my new friends are on the wedding circuit and traveling a ton. I’ve been out of town six out of the last nine weekends. People talk about fair-weather friends, but from my experience, the warmer it gets the harder it is to pin people down. I may get my Chicago residency revoked, but I’m just going to say it: I can’t wait for summer to end.
If I really wanted to maintain my once-a-week policy, I could shoot for an impromptu Croatian jaunt with a fellow airline passenger, but that might be pushing it, even for me. Girl-dates are probably not the best addition to a honeymoon agenda.
FRIEND-DATE 29. Logan, my GirlFriendCircles connection, is not on speed (I don’t think) but she could be. She’s like a tornado, a mini–Tasmanian devil. Given that she’s less than five feet tall, it almost feels as if her tiny size can’t contain her big personality.
I’m a talker, too, so I don’t mind, but it’s exhausting just listening to her. The intense energy she expends telling story after story—and the lack of breaks for, you know, breath—has me on edge. It’s as if she might pass out at any minute a
nd needs to get it all in now. Sort of like Six in Blossom or the Micro Machines guy.
“And you should totally come to the trunk show! It’s at my apartment and there are tons of girls, and gorgeous earrings, bracelets, necklaces.” Logan pulls a catalog from her purse. “And wine, of course! It’s so fun! Rachel, you’ll love it!”
There’s real pep here. She’s genuinely excited to tell me stories of jewelry sales and networking events. It’s no wonder she works in PR. There are few women who could pull off this kind of enthusiasm without appearing totally fake. She’s constantly hosting Tweetups, she says, and is an active member of the Step Up Women’s Network.
“You should come to our event next week! It’s going to be fab.”
I can’t make it—the whole Croatia thing—but I shouldn’t worry. “I’ll keep sending you invitations. You’ll get sick of hearing from me!”
I might, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. She even seems to be the first grown woman in history to love dating. The single ladies I’ve met who are over the age of 25 all harp on the misery of the singles scene. I can’t dispute them, as my most recent experience on the circuit—aside from with my husband—was eight years ago. I went out with a guy I met at a bar in San Francisco my junior year of college. I was interning at San Francisco Magazine for three months and had given my number to said gentleman when we met in the Marina neighborhood, around the corner from the room I was renting. A week later, we were to meet at the same spot. I drank an entire cranberry and vodka before he even arrived, let him make out with me on my stoop, and avoided his phone calls ever after. So no, I’m not an expert. But Logan’s lack of woe-is-me attitude is refreshing.
“I told him, ‘Ross, you’ve got a perfect girl here. If you want to see me, you need to book a ticket to Chicago. I’m not traveling to Seattle. Don’t F this up.’ ” Logan’s been talking to a guy who lives across the country. A different one than the South Carolinian she’d been pursuing last month.
“But, you know, I love dating. You never know what you’re going to get!” At 35, I’d think she was being sarcastic, except I’m not sure she knows how.
I nod and smile. It’s unnecessary to interject.
* * *
FRIEND-DATE 30. Rachel and I meet for the early-bird special, a 5:45 stir-fry dinner before improv. We’re basically eating with our grandparents.
“I think Kimmi hates me,” she tells me.
“Me too! But I have a girl-crush on her anyway,” I say.
“Yeah. She’s way too cool for us.”
Rachel’s speaking my language.
She has an interview to be an intern at a casting agency and needs advice on what to wear. I give her my best how-to-nail-an-interview tips. Afterward, we get vanilla ice cream cones from McDonald’s and agree to make this a weekly date, as soon as I get back from Europe.
I wonder if a honeymoon has ever led to a divorce. Not that mine will. No siree. But I could see how one could. People always describe their honeymoons as “romantic,” “magical,” “blissful.” But traveling for a week with one other person, spending twenty-four hours a day with him and no one else, is sure to lead to a few spats. No one ever admits this, probably for fear of confessing that the honeymoon was over before the actual honeymoon was over.
Our week in Croatia is romantic, blissful, and magical, except for when it is hostile, frustrating, and bitter. Ours is a stupid argument, of the we’ll-laugh-about-this-later variety, but without any friends around for refuge, a little nothing feels like a huge something.
It comes four days into our trip. We are in Korcula, a charming little island off the Dalmatian coast. Actually, we’ve taken a morning escape from Korcula to Stupe, a tiny beach island with only one structure—a seafood restaurant. There are no sand beaches in Croatia. It’s all rock. I actually prefer it this way, as I’m not a fan of dumping sand out of my bathing suit bottom after a long day in the sun. Still, given the terrain, it probably wasn’t my best idea to scale the entire island in only a pair of black flip-flops. But I’m not unlike a child who fancies herself an explorer, so I run ahead of Matt—in his sensible sneakers—in search of the perfect flat rock to set up shop.
We quickly learn what it seems all the other island visitors already know. Other than the bit of beach directly in front of the restaurant, there is no perfect space to set up shop. It seems we are the only people to have had the bright idea to trek the perimeter of the entire island, and the last bit of rock, which we need to traverse in order to get back to the dock and restaurant, is the most jagged yet. There’s only one solution.
“Take my flip-flops,” I tell Matt. “I’m going to swim it.”
“Okay, be careful,” he says.
It’s only a short distance and the person who needs to be wary is Matt, who’s maneuvering the slippery rocks while wearing his huge backpack and his beloved camera around his neck. We make it with no problem.
Until.
“Matt, there’s a weird pain in my foot and there are these strange black dots on the back of my heel that I can’t get out.”
“It’s probably just rubber fibers from your flip-flops,” he says.
“I don’t know what that means. These shoes don’t even touch the back of my heel. And when I try to get them out it starts to bleed.”
“I’m sure you’re fine,” he says. “You did all that rock climbing with your flip-flops on, they probably rubbed off on your foot. I wouldn’t worry.”
Despite having never heard of flip-flop fibers embedding themselves in someone’s skin, I choose to trust my husband. Until ten minutes later when I hear a group of British children in the water yelling, “Watch out for sea urchins!” Except “urchin” sounds more like “uhhchin” and I wish I could infuse such an accent into my would-be offspring.
“I see a sea uhhchin!”
“Don’t touch the sea uhhchin!”
I have no idea what a sea urchin is—they’re in sushi, yes?—but it appears these kids and their parents are all wearing aqua socks, while I chose to swim barefoot.
“What is a sea urchin, exactly?” I ask their mother, with whom I’d started up a friendly conversation in an effort to get this very information.
“They’re the black spiny things in the water,” she says. “You can spot them if you keep an eye out, but if you step on one the tentacles can get stuck in your foot like a splinter.”
“Do you think that’s what this is?” I shove my heel in her direction.
“I don’t really know. I’ve never seen what the sting looks like, actually.”
I’m still of the belief that moms know everything. Not just my own mother. Anyone who’s ever borne children. “You’re a mom, does this rash look funny? Who should I call to fix my washing machine? What’s the square root of 6,629?”
A quick referral to my Lonely Planet Croatia guide tells me that sea urchins are everywhere on the floor of the Adriatic and that swimmers should wear aqua socks to protect themselves. If you do get the spiny needles stuck in your foot, olive oil can help remove them. If you do not get them out, they could become infected, the book says.
It would have been a good idea to read this earlier.
“This is definitely a sea urchin,” I tell Matt. “What were you even talking about, rubber fiber? Is that even a thing? The Croatians are going to cut off my foot, I know it.”
I’m not usually much of a hypochondriac, but the fear of having an infected heel in a foreign land has visions of amputations dancing in my head.
“Rachel, you need to calm down,” Matt says. “It’s going to be fine. We’ll go to the pharmacy when we get back, don’t let it ruin our day.”
Too late for that. “Not ruin our day? There are tentacles. In my foot. What if they’re poisonous?”
“Then the book would probably have mentioned that. I think we would have heard about it if there were deadly animals all over the ocean floor.”
I want these things out pronto. I can’t think about much else. We eat ou
r lunch in silence, except for when I request a bottle of olive oil to douse my foot with. (They don’t have any.) I’m frustrated that Matt clearly doesn’t appreciate the severity of the situation, he’s annoyed that I’m acting crazy.
When we get back to Korcula we head straight to the pharmacy, where, after a questionable exchange in broken English, they give me some antibacterial ointment and Band-Aids. At the hotel, I ask the concierge, a stronger English speaker, what she thinks.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes, kind of.”
“Huh. Well, I think it’s fine. I’ve had one in my leg for three years.” There’s a distinct hint of pride in her voice.
I’m still not convinced, so I do what any rational self-diagnoser would. I consult the Internet.
Well, that’s it. These Croatians don’t know what they’re talking about. According to WebMD I should be shaving off the top layer of my skin and then digging out these needles.
“I need to go back to the pharmacy,” I tell Matt. “Got to buy some tweezers and operate.”
“Don’t you think that is what will infect your foot? Shouldn’t you trust the pharmacists instead of the Internet?”
It’s 4 P.M. The rest of the day continues along this path of me overreacting and Matt not overreacting nearly enough. He’s furious at me for blowing this out of proportion, while I’m enraged that he’s not freaking out right alongside me.
What we need is a break from each other. Not a Ross-and-Rachel-style break, just an hour or so to each come back to neutral. Matt should watch a game with some guys and grunt about how I’m unreasonable, and I could use a friend to give me the face-to-face emotional support I need, which in this case means figuring out a better solution than “if it’s still really hurting in a few days we’ll go back to the pharmacy, even though it will already be too late.”
The sea-urchin-shaped cloud dissipates throughout the next day and disappears entirely after we arrive on the island of Hvar, where I find a pharmacist with a magic ointment that extracts the needles. “Put it on your foot every day and they should come out on their own in less than a week,” she tells me. It’s a pitch-black cream that smells like tar, but it has solved my current marital problems. I refrain from enveloping her in a bear hug.
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