“Thank you so much for coming!” Lindsey said when she saw me.
“Oh, of course, I wouldn’t miss it,” I said. “I can’t believe there’s a line here already. I just had to wait alone for ten minutes in a mass of miniskirts to get in. I felt so lame in my normal-person clothes, but I haven’t even had a chance to go home yet.”
See that? What I did there? I passive aggressively said “Look at me! I am such a good friend, I would never bail on your birthday party. But let’s just recognize all the amazing things I did for you like waiting in line alone and coming out even though it’s been such a long day.”
Sometimes I hate myself.
Why do I say these things? Do I think I deserve a medal for fulfilling the obligations of a good friend? It’s like I’m saying “Please, you don’t have to thank me! That’s what friends do,” and in the same breath trying to prove how good a friend I am for showing up when there were a few annoyances on the way. The best kind of friend shows up, period. No mention of how she fought through hell and high water to get there.
I’ve probably known for a while, at least subconsciously, that I do these things. But it’s only now that I’m majoring in friendship analysis that my faults are wriggling their way to the forefront of my consciousness. If recognizing the problem is the first step to recovery, then I’m on my way.
FRIEND-DATE 41. I arrive at the El track at 12:45, the appointed meeting time for my RentAFriend date. Christine and I made plans to grab lunch and visit the museum. It has turned out to be too cold for the farmers’ market, and I’ve never been to the Museum of Contemporary Art.
“Christine?”
“Hi! How are you?”
My friend-for-hire is wearing jeans, a black sweater, and a blue puffy North Face jacket. Nothing about her outfit suggests that she moonlights as an escort. Good news.
As we ride downtown, Christine tells me she grew up in the northern suburbs and went to the University of Wisconsin. She’s a social worker at a nearby hospital four days a week, and lives with three roommates in Lakeview, a few blocks north of my apartment. We talk about her upcoming high school reunion, our plans for Halloween (she’ll be dressing as a dinosaur, I’ll be hiding out at home. Costumes aren’t my thing), and how she is “single and ready to mingle.” Basically, we discuss everything except the giant elephant on the El—the fact that I leased her on the Internet.
I finally bring it up at lunch.
“So how long have you been on RentAFriend?”
“A few months maybe. Not that long. I read an article about it earlier this year, and I figured it would be a good way to make some extra money since the hospital only has the budget to pay me for part-time. It seemed shady at first, but since I have total control over who I meet I figured it would be okay.”
“Have you met anyone else through the site yet?”
“Nope, you’re my first. I’ve heard from a few men, but they all seemed totally creepy or their English was so bad I didn’t see how we’d communicate. So I told them it probably wasn’t a good idea.”
“Yeah, this is my first time, too,” I tell her. “But it sounded sort of intriguing, and I’ve been looking into new ways of making friends, so I figured I’d give it a try.”
Christine seems like a nice, normal girl, so I want to make clear I’m looking for real friendship. The free kind.
“My friends all think I’m crazy,” she says. “Even today, after I told them I was meeting a girl my age, my roommates were all ‘Make sure you bring your mace!’ ”
“That’s exactly what my family said!”
There’s something amiss about a get-together in which both parties are encouraged to carry pepper spray.
The strangest thing about this lunch is that it isn’t particularly strange. Our date is quite … usual. Almost as if we are actually friends.
Until it comes time to pay for lunch. Though we haven’t discussed it explicitly, I figure picking up the tab is part of the gig. But then, when the check arrives, Christine does the fake wallet reach. Ladies, you know what I’m talking about. It’s classic first-date behavior. You don’t actually intend to pay, but it would be rude if you didn’t at least pretend to offer, right? Um, yeah, I know that move. I’ve used that move.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Christine has already stuffed her wallet back in her purse, so this is all just courtesy.
“Yup, it’s part of the deal.”
After lunch we wander around the MCA—the first floor is closed for an auction so it doesn’t take long—and prepare to part. On an otherwise solicitation-free corner of Michigan Avenue, I look at my watch. It’s almost 3 P.M. I dig sixty dollars out of my purse.
“I feel weird taking money from you,” she says.
“Oh, you know,” I mutter as I awkwardly shove a wad of bills into her hands. “If you ever want to hang out again—like, for real—you know where to reach me.”
Yeah, this doesn’t feel like an escort situation at all.
As we head our separate ways, I take another glance at the time. Wait. If we met at 12:45, and it’s ten to 3, then I only owed Christine forty dollars. I gave her one twenty too many.
I tipped my rented friend! Kill me.
I guess she didn’t feel that weird taking my money.
Tonight is Mia’s 35th birthday party. It’s at a bar in our neighborhood and the ladies from our cooking club were all invited. Only three of us make it. Jackie and Brynn are settled at the bar when I arrive. Brynn even brought her husband, Jesse, which makes me wish Matt wasn’t out of town for work so I could have dragged him along. A good majority of my new friends still haven’t met my husband and I’m pretty sure they think I made him up.
After about twenty minutes, Mia, who has been working the room in sexy over-the-knee boots that scream birthday girl, makes her way to our end of the bar.
“You came!” Her higher-than-normal pitch makes clear she’s already a bit tipsy, but it’s her birthday. She’s entitled.
“Of course! I wouldn’t miss it.” (I don’t mention that to get here I had to trek from downtown, where I skipped out early on a cousin’s birthday dinner. Progress.)
Mia drapes her arms around Jackie and Brynn and leans her head toward me so we’re standing in a football huddle.
“You guys, I’m so glad we met. You’re all so great. I love our cooking club.” Mia’s making a drunk profession of love and I’m eating it up. When I get some extra alcohol in me, you’ll never catch me dancing on the bar or falling over myself. No, I’m the girl telling everyone just how great she is and how lucky I am to have met her. I don’t confess deep dark secrets. I confess girl-crushes.
“I’m glad, too,” I say. Jackie and Brynn smile and nod. We’re too sober to reciprocate the lovey-doveyness, but I know we all feel similarly. I’m grateful for this moment. Once in a while it’s nice to be on the receiving end of the friend-love declaration. And it’s comforting to hear that my quest has affected my new friends. Not that Mia was lacking in the social department, it turns out. When she wrote me after reading my essay, I figured she was in the same boat. Judging by the size of this crowd, it’s clear she was in my shoes once, but not anymore.
“This is quite a crowd you’ve got here,” I tell her. “You’re so popular.”
“You know what’s amazing? I didn’t know a single person at this party when I moved to Chicago five years ago.”
“Really? What a testament to the life you’ve built,” I say.
“I know. It makes me never want to leave.”
As I look around the room I’m impressed and encouraged by this detail about Mia’s guest list. I didn’t host any festivities for my birthday this year, partly because 28 is a boring age but also because, at the time, so many of the people I’d met fell into the more-than-an-acquaintance-but-not-yet-a-friend category. I didn’t want anyone to feel obligated.
I’ll be celebrating my 30th birthday around the same time as
the five-year anniversary of my Chicago relocation. If I have a party, there will definitely be guests there—family, old Northwestern classmates—who I knew when I arrived. But if the friendships I’m building stay on track, I should be able to boast mostly new additions.
Two days later, Brynn and I are at Mia’s house for an afternoon of pumpkin carving. I haven’t carved a pumpkin since I was 10 years old, but Mia has stencils and actual carving tools. Bring on the jack-o’-lanterns.
“It was nice to hang out with Jesse the other night,” I tell Brynn. “He was a trouper to come along.”
“He had fun. He’d had a long day so was exhausted by the end of the night, that’s why we left early.” Brynn didn’t actually leave earlier than the rest of us, but she and Jesse led the charge out of the bar at about 12:30.
“Well, I was impressed. He didn’t even seem put off by all the girl talk. It’s too bad Matt wasn’t there to discuss sports and Camp Cobbossee with him.” (Brynn and I recently discovered that our husbands went to the same summer camp, though they had the same reaction when we shared this revelation. “Oh, yeah, I think I remember that kid.”)
“Where is he again?”
“New Orleans. It’s his annual work retreat.”
“Sure it is,” she jokes. “Are you sure he really exists? He’s like Snuffleupagus.”
(Interesting factoid: Big Bird’s BFF was an imaginary friend from 1971 to 1985. Only Big Bird and the kids at home could see him. The writers only made him visible to the Sesame Street adults after a number of child abuse cases made headlines. They worried if young viewers saw the adults accusing Big Bird of lying about Snuffleupagus, they might be scared no one would believe them if they reported abuse happening behind closed doors. But I digress.)
I get what Brynn is saying. I’ve definitely felt like I’m straddling two worlds this year. Rachel the friend and Rachel the wife are still two separate but equally important people. (To quote the great Mr. Costanza: “A George, divided against itself, cannot stand!”)
Back in January I was keen on making this search only about me and my lack of local friendships. I wasn’t looking to make couple friends, though I knew some might emerge. I wanted women I could count on and vent to and call for brunch. None of those things involved Matt.
Friends who passed muster would meet my husband eventually, I thought.
Except most of them haven’t.
I’ve done a decent job of balancing my friend self with my wife self this year—consciously scheduling husband-date nights amid all this friending—but a pretty bad job of integrating them. If I made Matt join each time there was a boys-allowed friend event, he might divorce me. That much estrogen once in a while is fine. Once a week might be a bit much.
Now that I’ve forged some legitimate friendships, it’s time. I want these people to know the most important player in my life. They hear about Matt a lot, so it would be nice for them to see him live and in person. To know, once and for all, that I don’t sleep next to a blow-up doll.
When I pick Matt up from the airport I tell him what Brynn said.
“What does she mean, Snuffleupagus?” he asks.
“He was Big Bird’s imaginary friend at the beginning. Whenever adults were supposed to meet him he disappeared.”
“Really? This changes everything I ever thought about Sesame Street.”
Not exactly the “I better meet your new friends and fast” that I hoped for.
FRIEND-DATE 42. My friend Chloe—the effortlessly stylish one whose visit earlier this year prompted a blowup with Matt—was supposed to be in Chicago this weekend. Her best friend from business school moved here in August, so she was coming to town to see us both. Jordan and I haven’t yet had occasion to meet—I think Chloe was waiting to set us up until she could introduce us in person—but considering Chloe’s other best friend is Sara, my Sara, I’m guessing she’s my type.
Yesterday, Chloe canceled her trip. Clients needed her in the office at the last minute. “That’s the life of a consultant, I guess,” she wrote in her email to Jordan and me.
We had planned to all go to a Cardio Hip Hop class on Saturday morning. When Chloe warned us she might have to bail, Jordan and I decided to go regardless.
I haven’t been to All About Dance, my favorite dance studio, in a while, so the fact that Jordan goes every Saturday is encouraging. A workout buddy is just what I need.
While friends giveth pounds, friends can taketh away. Research has shown that the average female will lose more than ten pounds when she has a diet-and-training buddy, and one study found that while 61 percent of women say they struggle to get moving alone, the same percentage say they love working out when they can do it with friends. Plus, women push themselves harder under a partner’s watchful eye.
Jordan and her dancing shoes couldn’t have come at a better time.
After class we head to Nookies, my regular brunch spot. Jordan, I can tell, is a keeper.
First of all, she writes an idiom newsletter.
“What does that even mean?” I ask.
“Well, my parents are from Syria and not native English speakers, so I wasn’t raised hearing many idioms. I hardly know any! Now, when I come across a new one I write it down and research its meaning and where it came from. In the newsletter, I explain where I heard it, what it means—sometimes they have multiple definitions—and the origin.”
“For example?”
“The most recent one was about ‘golden handcuffs.’ All the monetary incentives that you get at a job that would keep you tied to the position. Like salary, stock options, great benefits, bonuses.”
Jordan tells me the phrase originally came from John Steinbeck, who once called the city of San Francisco “a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.”
The newsletter, which has only had three issues thus far, is called “Making Heads or Tails of Idioms.” It’s so nerdy that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it first. I immediately subscribe.
Jordan has as much enthusiasm for her newsletter as she does for her upcoming Halloween costume (she’s going as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander, and has bought the wig and body art to pull it off) and the night of partying that will ensue. She’s 29, single, and loves to go out.
During brunch I keep thinking about Rom Brafman and his take on the power of storytelling. Jordan is a storyteller. She doesn’t say, “I’m from Michigan and went to U of M and work as a consultant.” Instead she regales me with stories about her trips to Peru (I particularly enjoy her sitcom-worthy misunderstanding when a local told her to visit Saqsaywaman) and Guatemala (she and Chloe went together and made a pact to lose their newly discovered “third and fourth legs,” their pet name for love handles).
After a long lunch and some shopping—which I really shouldn’t be allowed to do while I’m still sweaty from dance—we plan to meet at the studio again next Saturday. Time to lose my third and fourth legs.
I’m still a sweaty mess when my mom buzzes my apartment.
“I want you to meet my new friend,” she told me on the phone when she invited herself over.
Janie lives in Boston but recently bought an apartment in my mother’s building because her sons both live in Chicago. “When my boys called and told me they found a perfect place for me, I couldn’t resist,” she says.
My mom’s neighbors are mostly in their thirties, so finding another 50-something widow was fate. Now they get together whenever Janie is in town.
“Do you come out this way a lot?” I ask her.
“Well, now that I have a new friend I’m going to come even more!” She gives my mom a friendly tap on the arm and they giggle like schoolgirls.
I want to hug her.
Cooking clubber Jackie and I are on our way to a Seven for all Mankind warehouse sale. Considering how much I hate shopping for jeans—it often ends with me fighting back tears at how hard it is to find a flattering pair—the simple fact that I’m okay with her witnessing my spiral int
o crazytown means I must like her a lot. During the drive I ask Jackie about her wedding planning.
“The big stuff is done. I got the dress, the DJ, the location. The rest is just details that I don’t have the energy to think about right now,” she says.
“Understandable.”
“Oh, that reminds me. What’s your address?”
A friendship milestone! This is my first wedding invitation to come from this search. There haven’t been many tangible measures of success this year, but a formal invitation? To a wedding? Everything is going according to my grand master plan. Cue evil laugh.
I’m wrapping up a friend-filled weekend at dinner with someone I haven’t seen—haven’t even spoken to—in about seven years. Nick and I worked together during the summer of 2002. I was an intern at The Westchester Wag, a small socialite magazine in my native New York suburb, and Nick worked for some science journals that we shared office space with. I was 20, just finishing up my sophomore year at Northwestern, and he was 18, getting ready to head off to Franklin & Marshall. We were work buddies—we made each other mix CDs and did the New York Times crossword together (though I could never get past Wednesday). We hung out a lot that summer, but it was a seasonal thing. When school started in September we mostly lost touch, communicating every now and then over instant message.
The following summer we met up for pizza one night, playing catch-up and gossiping about old coworkers—Nick was back at the same office, I was interning at Field & Stream.
We hadn’t been in direct contact since that night in 2003, but we quickly became “friends” when Facebook came on the scene. There was no true reconnection (the social networking definition of “friend” is a pretty loose one) but occasional status updates and newsfeed alerts told me that Nick graduated college, that he moved to San Jose, that he was in a relationship, and then, that he wasn’t.
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