MWF Seeking BFF

by Rachel Bertsche

  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?”

  My excessive desire to take on bridesmaid’s duties and be of some help to my best friend comes from a place of kindness, for sure, but also largely from my own insecurity. Due to the distance between us, I missed many of Callie’s pre-wedding festivities. I did fly to New York for her engagement party, but her shower was on a Thursday evening so I couldn’t make it. Her bachelorette party, which took place while I was in Croatia, was scheduled after I’d already booked my ticket. (I did send a giant penis cake in my stead, which should count for something.) I know the other attendants have played a more active role in the pre-wedding celebrations and I feel like now is my chance to make up for my absences. This weekend I can establish myself as A Good Bridesmaid.

  Aside from wanting to live up to my end of the bridal party bargain, I’m anxious to reaffirm my best friendship with Callie. Not that we’ve been growing apart, but I’ve been so unusually focused on making new friends and she’s been so busy with work and wedding planning that lately we haven’t talked as much as we used to. This is largely a product of living seven hundred miles away from each other—research shows that emotional closeness between friends declines by about 15 percent a year in the absence of face-to-face contact. My search
is about complementing Callie and Sara locally, not replacing them. So while I stomp around pronouncing that Callie is my best friend forever, I need to do my part to ensure the “forever” part sticks.

  I don’t want to be forgotten.

  “Callie wants a curry chicken sandwich and a Diet Pepsi,” I announce to Matt and my mother after hanging up with the bride-to-be at lunchtime. “I told her we’d pick it up and bring it to her; she’s getting her hair and nails done.”

  “Look how excited you are,” Matt tells me. I’m literally bouncing out of my seat.

  “She’s my best friend!” I say. “She held my wedding dress when I peed. I just want to do the same.”

  When I was planning my wedding, plenty of people warned me that the weekend would be over as soon as it began. “Make sure you stay present and soak up every moment,” they’d say. “You don’t want to miss a second.”

  Maybe because I’d been put on such high alert, I was acutely aware of each memory as it was made. My wedding didn’t fly by as I’d feared. I danced and laughed and lived it up, and I didn’t let myself get bogged down by overlooked details (a missing tablecloth here, a misspelled name card there), or wardrobe malfunctions. (My mom stepped on my tulle gown before the ceremony even started. Awesome.)

  Callie’s wedding, though, feels like it doesn’t even happen. By the time the ceremony starts—after the rehearsal dinner and speeches, the full day of primping and picture-taking—I’m so excited to catch up with my old friends in attendance that it’s over before I can even share a dance with Matt.

  The crowd of high school friends at Callie’s wedding is largely the same as the group at Emily’s Miami nuptials earlier this year. And while the bouts of frenvy—that specific brand of jealousy that hits when I’m with old friends and am reminded of the lives they share back in New York without me—do bubble up, they occur less frequently and with far less force. When Jill and Callie reference their crazy adventures in Brooklyn—“This is just like the time we went to that bar, remember? The one that had the thing? With the psycho girl?”—I feel on the outside of an inside joke, but it doesn’t make me wish I lived in New York. Instead it makes me miss Chicago and the comfort I’ve found in my new groups of friends—my book and cooking clubs, my coworkers, Rachel and Eddie and the improv gang.

  Visiting old friends used to make me feel like I was back on the mother ship. I felt like a stranger in a strange land in the Midwest. But there’s been a welcome, if unexpected, reversal this year. Curling up with lifelong besties will always be the ultimate creature comfort, but my life—the one spiraling forward, picking up steam and determining my future—is in Chicago. With my no-longer-new husband, and my very new friends.

  FRIEND-DATE 37. There’s new compelling evidence that this quest is working. My girl-dates from earlier in the year are starting to introduce me to their friends. My social net is getting cast wider, extending as far as three degrees. I’m 50 percent Kevin Bacon.

  Take tonight’s date, Alexis. I was introduced to Alexis through Hannah, who I met through Sara. In January, Alexis and I were separated by three degrees. Now we’re at only one.

  This is triadic closure at work. Remember that theory? The one that says one’s friends will find it easy to become friends with each other. Earlier this year I got sick of only meeting friends of friends. I wanted to establish my own relationships and create my own networks. I’ve finally achieved that. I’ve woven friendship webs, even more of them than I can sometimes keep track of.

  I see the merits in both approaches to friending—expanding social networks or forging numerous independent relationships. The former allows you to be at the center of a cluster, having several tight relationships within a given group, while the latter puts you in the role of connector between different social webs.

  According to Connected authors Christakis and Fowler’s research, Americans are more likely to take the network expansion route. The probability that any two of our friends know each other, they found, is 52 percent.

  Hannah, Alexis, and I now fall into that category. Alexis is planning an extended trip to Italy and wants to keep a blog while she’s there. Hannah sent her my way for general blogging advice and because “you two will have a lot to chat about.”

  “My dream is to be a food personality—to teach and do cooking demos—rather than run a restaurant,” she tells me. “So I’ll be spending three months in Italy to cook and eat and drink. And eat. It’s my specialty.”

  Alexis has Snow White coloring—pale skin and dark hair—and is long and lean, with perfectly sculpted arms that I covet. “How do you stay so thin doing all that eating?” I ask, gazing at the biceps I would like for myself.

  “Are you checking out my arms?”

  Caught. She totally just called me out. “I am. This is totally embarrassing. But I want mine to look like that.”

  “That was hilarious. You were just, like, literally talking to my arms.”

  I should be mortified. I’m not. I love calling people on their ridiculousness, so I can take it. If anything, the exchange makes us feel like old friends. We already have an inside joke.

  After we down two glasses of wine and one volcano roll, Alexis tells me a story of skinny-dipping at a friend’s and realizing that one of the girls there, a lesbian, was into her. “Later in the night she grabs me by the hand and drags me to the car to go get more beers with her, and I finally just said, ‘I can tell that you like me, but I’m straight.’ And then she kissed me. It was quite a night.”

  It’s not the usual first girl-date conversation, but I think that’s why the dinner is going so well. There’s a difference between the potential friends who are “nice,” and those I sense could become lifers. Alexis falls into the really-could-be-a-BFF category and I have a feeling that one day, when we have twenty years of friendship under our belts, we’ll look back and pinpoint this story of the misplaced affections—and my blatant arm gazing—as the beginning of it all.

  Rom and Ori Brafman, the authors of Click, are experts on those small euphoric moments that tell us a relationship is going to stick. As this year has progressed I’ve tried to incorporate their “click accelerators” into my everyday life—standing closer to someone I want to befriend (proximity), being fully present in each conversation (resonance), and joining defined communities that are conducive to forging bonds (safe place). But what if I already have a girl-date planned, and I really want it to go well? What if I think, “This girl is The One, I just need her to feel the same”? Is there a way to manufacture a click?

  According to Rom Brafman, people tend to overlook one particular weapon in the friendship arsenal. The power of storytelling.

  “My guess is that if I recorded a conversation between you and your friends in New York, I’d hear each of you relating stories of things that happened to you. Whether it is funny or gossipy or newsy. ‘You’ll never guess what happened’ type of stuff,” he told me over the phone recently.

  When we meet new people, he explained, we switch into interview mode. We think the person sitting across from us needs to know how long ago we graduated from college or what we majored in.

  “It’s factual, but it’s not very interesting,” he said.

  He’s right on point. A distinguishing feature of the few girl-dates that had me giddy, aside from laughter, was that we went beyond the boring exchange of information into more personal, story-driven territory. There are ways of obtaining the factual tidbits—the where-are-you-froms and what-do-you-dos—without grilling your girl-date, Brafman said. The details emerge through narratives.

  A story of skinny-dipping and unexpected makeouts? Click click click.

  The next day I send Alexis an email with a link to some popular food blogs we discussed at dinner. I include in the note a variation of my usual “we should get together again” spiel, as I like to get the plans for the second date moving quickly. In the spirit of network building, and also because I adore her, I suggest we invite Hannah next
time, too.

  Five days later (apparently she wasn’t quite as smitten as I) Alexis writes me back. “You are totally raw and hilarious,” she says. “My kind of personality.”

  When you spend the majority of your time setting up girl-dates, there comes a point where you have to think outside the wine-and-sushi box. Before this year started I was so comfortable in my personal bubble—one that consisted of the office, restaurants, movie theaters, and yoga studios—that I felt no need to stray. Now that I’m constantly entertaining the ladies, I’ve expanded my repertoire. I’ve brought dates to free workouts in the park, readings at independent bookstores, musical improv performances, and community running groups. I’m basically the Casanova, or The Situation, of girl-dating.

  My new friends have expanded my Chicago in return. They’ve introduced me to fortune-tellers and community gardens and new neighborhoods—Margarita to Chinatown and Jillian to Little Vietnam where I had some pho that was to die for. (To Die Pho! What a brilliant name for a restaurant. A project for my next life.) It’s the free-gift-with-purchase of this quest: Invest in new friends and rediscover your hometown at no extra charge.

  Today I’m joining Mia—who I met through my online essay, is in my cooking club, and lives around the corner—and some of her friends for a day at a suburban winery. Until a week ago I had no idea that Illinois had wineries, but this thirty-year-old bed-and-breakfast, just a forty-five-minute drive outside the city, ships in grapes from California and makes vino on-site.

  Mia won this wine tasting for ten people in an auction last year, so I was flattered when she told me to expect an invitation. In Matt’s ongoing horserace, Mia has been inching her way toward the front of the pack. She’s the up-for-anything type who actually follows through when we discuss fun outings. She’s easygoing but interested, and loves a good session of girl talk, whether it’s about her latest suitors or my most recent deadline horror story.