Thelma, Kris and Louise

I have spent the last two weekends with great girl friends. (Nay, gal pals. The word “girlfriend” seems to imply that we plant hyacinth together and share recs for calcium supplements.) These are down-to-earth, take-life-by-the-chops, put-up-with-my-antics gal pals.

This isn’t like me. I don’t do large groups of people for extended periods of time. Particularly new people. I have been known to dart to the bathroom for some damn alone time, already or to volunteer to be the one to run out for ice/formula/paper clips just so I can hear myself think. I recall an ill-fated large gal pal excursion to the beach; you know the type, the one where you pack your entire sorority and the Keebler elves into a waterfront shack to keep costs in the cents. I thought I would die. Girls here. Girls there. Jo was jealous of the attention Meg was getting; Amy followed Beth around much to the chagrin of Marmee. Too. much. togetherness. makes me. feel smothered.

Female friends have also burned me in the past. I put more time into that friendship with stupid Maureen McCheatsalot* than I did into 8th grade math, and when I saw her walking down the hill holding hands with my beau, I was suddenly Molly Ringwald without the happy ending. Forget the more routine female failures: the acquaintances you have met 18 times but they just can’t place the face, the friends who sabotage your growth in insidious ways virtually beyond detection, the ones who have been around for years but have never found even minutes to ask a question about YOU.

And so it was refreshing to like waking up in the morning to the sounds of the girls giggling about the events of the night before. It’s rewarding to sit monumentside in the Sentra with your hangover and your hazards on to assist a good friend following her photography passion. To share your skinny clothes with a friend you know will love them until you fit into them again. To scare a new friend into thinking the human head jokes might actually be true.

I enjoyed every moment of the missed calls, Thai food, Bug beckoning, Cricket’s self-pimping, pizza, laughter, corner store runs, hubcap purchases, chunky milk, delayed elevators, Injera as a facial, shared towels, moisturizing your situation, foot shredding, intimidating tripods, failed air mattresses, and even the hugs goodbye. I nearly wept upon finding the remains of the vanilla vodka in the freezer.

Maybe I’m not so bad with women after all.



* Names have been changed to protect the identities of dim high school friends who stole boyfriends of this blogger.