Tag Archives: friends

My So-Called Valentine’s Day

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I used to hate Valentine’s Day, which is such a cliché. Every year, you hear people bitch about how it’s just an excuse to sell greeting cards and chocolate and how it’s “Singles Awareness Day” for people without significant others. All that is true, but in spite of that, I’ve found myself enjoying Valentine’s Day more and more in recent years.

Why? For the simplest reason ever—there are worse things than being single. Being in a good relationship > being single >being in a bad relationship. I’d much rather spend Valentine’s Day unattached than with someone I just started dating, or someone I’ve been dating for awhile but no longer want to be, or someone who likes me a lot more than I like him or vice versa. I know people who are spending V-Day with people it would be better for them not to be with, and I don’t envy them a bit.

Also, a lack of a relationship doesn’t mean a lack of love. At this point, I see Valentine’s Day as a time to celebrate the loving relationships I do have—with my friends and with myself.

Last night I went out with some of my favorite single ladies for our own Valentine’s Day celebration. We ate some fabulous unhealthy food at Coolidge Corner Clubhouse and then headed over to My So-Called 90s Night at Common Ground in Allston. For those of you who have never experienced this particular event, it is possibly the best time you will have at a bar in Boston—hours of Backstreet Boys, Third Eye Blind, Coolio, Ace of Base, Britney Spears, Chumbawumba, etc. We danced, yelled out the lyrics, did shots, and drank a lot of beer. When I’m finally not single, I’m going to miss this built-in excuse to go out with my girlfriends. Maybe then, Flag Day will become my new hang-out-with-the-girls holiday.

Tonight I ordered sushi, poured myself some wine, took a hot bubble bath, and watched my DVR’ed TV shows and some of my favorite chick flicks. I also bought myself a heart-shaped box of candy and a single red rose. Why not? While there are certainly things in my life that could be improved, for the most part, I am very, very happy. (My whole house is great! I can do anything good!) And if that’s not something to celebrate, what is?

With Friends Like These…

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Recently, the Internet has been abuzz with outrage about a terrible piece of advice. If you haven’t heard about it, be prepared for a massive spike in blood pressure. A woman wrote to Lucinda Rosenfeld at Double X, telling an awful story about how her drink was drugged at a concert and the two friends she came with not only went home without her when they couldn’t find her but, after she was taken to the hospital with no memory of what had happened, only grudgingly drove her back to her car when she called them. Rosenfeld’s “advice” was that while a significant other or a family member is obligated to help out in that situation, a friend is not. Infuriatingly, she also insinuated that the letter writer might have a drinking problem and was possibly lying about being drugged. You can read about the whole situation here, and there’s also a good discussion of it on Tomato Nation (Sarah Bunting, the founder of that site and co-founder of Television Without Pity, is a much, much better advice columnist, by the way).

As discouraging as it is to read about this, it is, at least, a bit heartening that the vast majority of people who read Rosenfeld’s column are furious. So I’m not going to repeat the points others have made.

But the column did get me thinking. Rosenfeld apparently doesn’t think that friends are obligated to respond to a panicked 4 AM phone call, although not many agree with her. If someone called me at 4AM in a terrible situation like the letter writer’s, even if it wasn’t a close friend, I’d respond and help. And if I called someone in the same situation, I’m sure someone would help me, because that’s what decent people do.

This is my question: which friend would I call? My issue with the situation isn’t that no one would respond. It’s that whomever I called would respond, but I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t be surprised to be the first person I called. I can’t imagine calling anyone in that situation who wouldn’t be thinking, “She didn’t have anyone else to call? Really?”

The thing is, that letter raised a lot of interesting points about date-rape drugs, blaming the victim, the obligations of friends, and the assumptions that prevent women from reporting rapes. But a smaller point it raised was that sometimes the people we think are our close friends don’t actually see us that way.

And that is a huge fear of mine. I have made that mistake before. My freshman year of college, I had the unfortunate experience of realizing that some girls I’d considered close friends didn’t actually like me, or at least didn’t consider me a close friend. I know that was a long time ago and I should be over it, but the fact is, it still influences the way I behave towards those I meet and sometimes keeps me from getting too close to people. When I start to make new friends, I can’t help but think things like, Do these people really want me here? Do they actually like me or are they just being polite? Oh, no—should I have said that? Did I accidentally offend someone? Am I being annoying without realizing it? Maybe I shouldn’t have come. And if people don’t invite me to do something, is it because they forgot about me or because they genuinely don’t want me there?

I don’t think I’d be the first person anyone would call at 4 AM, either. Again, is that because I haven’t let anyone get too close to me, or because other people see me as selfish or unreliable? It’s occurred to me recently that there are people I consider friends whose phone numbers I don’t even have. What do those people really think about me?

This post probably makes me sound like a neurotic freak, but it’s not a new thing. I think about it a lot, because I always wonder what would happen if I left Boston. Would people forget about me? How many people would really miss me? What would happen if I left and then came back? How many people would really want to stay in touch with me?

Everyone likes to think that friendship lasts forever, but that’s not usually true, in my experience. Even if you don’t stop being friends with someone, eventually someone will move away or get married or move onto a new stage of life, and inevitably, the friendship will change. Someone you still consider one of your best friends might no longer be the first person you call when something good or something bad happens. You like to think that your friends care enough about your life to want to hear what’s going on with you, but ultimately, you care too much about their lives to be willing to subject them to it.

Wow, this post sounds really depressing. But I can’t complain too much—at least I haven’t been drugged and left alone to fend for myself in a hospital with no memory of most of the night. As that poor woman starts to recover from that horrifying experience, I wonder whom she’s leaning on, since her family is far away and she clearly can’t depend on her friends. I hope she’s successful in finding better friends. In the meantime, at least I know I have people who wouldn’t leave me alone in a bar and would willingly come pick me up if I called them from the hospital in the middle of the night—regardless of what those people really think of me.

You Eat Apples, Right? I Produce Entourage.

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Columbus Day weekend, Julie and I went to visit Christina. A fun time was had by all. Among our topics of conversation:

-How my sister, over Parents’ Weekend at BC, took my parents to Mary Ann’s. (No further explanation needed if you know anything about BC bars.)

-How, before YouTube, flash videos like this one were what we used to crack ourselves up in college. (Weirdly, I just had this same conversation at work a few weeks ago.)

-How we absolutely must see this movie, which we saw in a RedBox, at some point. “If they fly, you die.” Awesome.

-How this clip is unexpectedly hilarious.

I don’t know what it is about it. But here, if you haven’t seen it, is the follow-up to it.

-Fish of a certain shape and color.

No, there is not, in fact, a point to this post.

Bar Etiquette May Be an Oxymoron, But…

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…I’d still like your thoughts on this one.

So last weekend, Julie and I went out to The Phoenix Landing. I’d never been there, and it turned out to be a pretty cool bar.

But there was one little incident there that I’d like to share with you.

Apparently, my tag was sticking out of my shirt, and another girl there seemed to have a problem with this. So instead of telling me that my tag was sticking out, she stuck the tag back in for me.

Now, it’s quite possible that this makes me a freak, but, perhaps because I’m insanely ticklish, I do not like being touched unexpectedly, especially by strangers. So, when I realized that some strange girl was sticking her fingers down the back of my shirt, I jumped and quickly moved away from her.

The girl appeared to be extremely offended that I wasn’t thrilled to have her take it upon herself to fix my tag. She started explaining to Julie what she’d been trying to do. Not quite sure why—I was well aware of what she was doing, I just apparently didn’t appreciate it as much as she thought I should.

And it didn’t end there. Later that night, when I was in the bathroom, as I exited the stall, I heard the girl talking to her friends. Apparently oblivious to the fact that I was standing behind her, she was saying, “So there was this girl, and her tag was sticking out, and I tucked it back in, and the girl, like, moved away from me.” She sounded disproportionately upset, and her friend was offering up the explanation that sometimes girls get territorial when they’re drunk (incidentally, those were two adjectives that didn’t describe me at all that night).

And closer to the end of the night, when I was in the bathroom again, I could see someone sticking her fingers into the door like she was trying to open it.

“Um, someone’s in here,” I said.

“Yeah,” came the girl’s voice. “I don’t have a problem with the girl in the purple shirt.” (Guess what color my shirt was.) “I’ll get you before you leave,” she said.

Well, she didn’t “get” me, whatever that meant, but there you have it. Who’s the crazy one here: me, or the girl who thought that I should be thrilled to have her make sure my shirt tag was where it was supposed to be?

I Was a Thirteen-Year-Old Titanic Fan

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Today is the ten-year anniversary of Titanic’s release. Which is amazing and scary to me, because I can remember it so well.

When Titanic came out, I was That Girl. I saw it in the theater three times. I had a gigantic Leonardo DiCaprio poster on my bedroom door (the whole poster was his face, larger than life). My friend Jenna and I were full of all kinds of Titanic trivia and could recite entire scenes from memory. I became addicted to the Oscar telecast after seeing Billy Crystal host the show where Titanic won 11 awards. I sang “My Heart Will Go On” at the top of my lungs whenever it came on the radio. I had a Titanic T-shirt. I even sent away for a replica of the necklace, which turned out to be plastic and really cheap-looking.

Did I mention I was thirteen? I was the movie’s target demographic, so I can say all this without shame. Plus, if you’re going to get all nostalgic, it’s always more fun if you jumped on the bandwagon and were a complete dork than if you were too cool to be into whatever the trend was.

It’s funny to think about everything else that was popular circa 1997-1998. Dawson’s Creek was just starting. Boy bands were beginning to hit their stride. The Macarena was on Minute 14. People wore striped shirts a lot, or at least they did at my middle school.

But Titanic really dominated that year. Ten years later, I realize it’s not quite as good as I thought it was in eighth grade. It was nominated for fourteen Oscars, but Best Original Screenplay, rightly, was not one of them. The characters are very obvious and have no layers, and a lot of the dialogue is really cheesy. Example:

Jack: I’m not an idiot. I know how the world works. I’ve got ten bucks in my pocket. I have nothing to offer you and I know that. But I’m too involved now. You jump, I jump, remember? I can’t turn away without knowing you’ll be all right.
Rose: Well, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Really.
Jack: Really? I don’t think so. They’ve got you trapped, Rose, and you’re gonna die if you don’t break free. Maybe not right away because you’re strong, but soon, that fire that I love much about you Rose, that fire’s going to burn out.
Rose: It’s not up to you to save me, Jack.
Jack: I know. Only you can do that.

Also, while Leonardo DiCaprio is a very good actor, you’d never know it by his performance in Titanic. Even when I was thirteen, I was afraid that both he and Kate Winslet would fade into obscurity or be typecast for therest of their careers. Happily, and surprisingly, that didn’t happen, and the two of them did another movie together that will be released next year.

And if you really think about the romance part of it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. How were they supposed to be soul mates? They only knew each other for a few days. Who knows how long the romance would have lasted if Jack had lived?

My thirteen-year-old self would be horrified to hear me saying this. But has any of this stopped me from getting the Special Edition DVD? Hell, no. I think that no matter how old I get, this is a movie that will have a special place in my heart, just because of all the memories I have associated with it.

Random Items on My To-Do List

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Christina, who got a teaching job in Southern MA, moved out. Two days later, my new rooomate Stephanie moved in. And a day after that, I started a new job at a different publishing company.

So there are only four months left in the year. And there are a lot of things I want to do in those four months. I have writing goals, but a lot of other random ones, too. Among them:

-Get a passport
-Make fudge
-Organize all the stuff under my bed (I have all these folders full of old stuff I don’t need anymore. I am a ridiculous pack rat.)
-Go to New York to see a show
-Go to a Red Sox game (this might not be so much a goal as a wish, but still)
-Buy some TV shows on DVD (I’m thinking The O.C., Sex and the City, Season 4 of Gilmore Girls, maybe certain seasons of The X-Files)
-Get a better haircut
-Go to the dentist
-Go skating at Frog Pond
-Do more movie/game nights with friends

It’s weird that it’s almost September. Even though I’m not in school and haven’t been for over a year, September still feels like I’m about to start something new, like a good time to make goals. Or re-dedicate myself to old goals. No matter how random they are.

Non-Spoilery Harry Potter Post

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I turned 23 on July 20, and just for this year, my birthday was an international holiday. Christina and I went to Potterpaloozza in Brookline before we went to get our books.

I had my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows finished by 7:00 PM on July 21st, and because I’m a complete nerd, I’ve since re-read the whole thing. I won’t spoil those who haven’t finished it yet except to say that I loved it and I think it’s my favorite of the HP books.

But I’m still a bit let down. This is really the end (well, except for the encyclopedia J.K. Rowling says is coming out eventually). Not only will we never have another Harry Potter book to anticipate again, but I have a hard time imagining any book that could cause people to unite the way the HP books do. What other book could cause concepts like the Sorting Hat to become so well-known in the mainstream, or inspire “Republicans for Voldemort” bumper stickers? What other book could lead people to stand in line at midnight dressed in costume? What other book could appeal to so many people—elementary school students and senior citizens, lifelong readers and people who’ve never read for fun in their lives, fantasy nerds and those who never read anything outside of fairy tales that had to do with magic? What piece of fiction could get so many people debating who would survive the last book or what side Snape was on?

It’s amazing, too, because I’d been afraid for a long time that reading for pleasure was a dying pastime. Books only tend to get widespread attention if Oprah’s involved (even better if you write a memoir of questionable authenticity) or if they’re written by a plagiarizing Harvard undergrad. When I worked at a pool, all the little kids would be bouncing off the walls when a new HP book was about to come out. I always used to get made fun of for reading when I was in elementary school. I wish Harry Potter had been around when I was little.

My parents were recently talking about how they remember seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, and were saying that there won’t ever be anything again that could be so universal, that everyone would be so obsessed with.

I said, “Yes, there is. And it’s even British.”

Shut Up, Keith Lockhart

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This weekend we celebrated Halloween. My friends had a TV and movie-themed Halloween party. I was Tinkerbell. My friends, for the night, were Pocahontas, I Dream of Jeannie, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Audrey Hepburn in the little black dress, among other things.

But this year, we were something else for Halloween, too. For one day, we were college students again.

We went to the Mods (the senior townhouses that are BC’s big party dorms). We drank beer. We played beirut. We went to the football game. We sang “For Boston.” We had a party and we saw our friends who no longer live in Boston. And we wished with all our hearts that we could be back.

I was in the chorale in college, and every year during Parents’ Weekend, the Boston Pops did a concert to raise money for scholarships. The chorale got to sing with them, and my sophomore year, we were having our dress rehearsal with the Pops and Keith Lockhart. Among our songs was “Our Time” from the musical Merrily We Roll Along. Among the lyrics:

Something is stirring, shifting ground …
It’s just begun.
Edges are blurring all around,
And yesterday is done.
Feel the flow,
Hear what’s happening:
We’re what’s happening.
Don’t you know?
We’re the movers and we’re the shapers.
We’re the names in tomorrow’s papers.
Up to us, man, to show ’em …
It’s our time, breathe it in:
Worlds to change and worlds to win.
Our turn coming through,
Me and you, man,
Me and you!

Cheesy, yes, but catchy and great for graduations or anything involving students.

After we’d rehearsed it, Keith Lockhart said, “Is anyone familiar with the musical Merrily We Roll Along?” No one was, so he went on to explain what the song meant. The show, he said, ran backwards, and “Our Time” was at the end of the play. It starts when the main characters are two bitter old men who hate each other.

Well, thank you, Mr. Lockhart, for ruining this song for me.

I’m twenty-two, an age that sounds young even to me. I’m in my first real job. I have absolutely no idea what my future holds. I like to think that all kinds of things are still possible– I can hit the jackpot with my writing career, make a career switch, fall in love, get married, have kids, see the world, own my dream house, buy the gorgeous clothes I see in store windows instead of fantasizing about them, accomplish all the things I’ve always meant to do.

But there’s a nagging part of me that keeps thinking of this book I read recently called When They Were 22. It tells about how all these famous people—everyone from Oprah to Ernest Hemingway to Jane Goodall to Brad Pitt—had some major turning point in their lives when they were 22 that jump-started their careers.

So I kind of keep wondering, is that going to happen to me this year? Or will I always look back on college as the best years of my life? Is it really my time? Or will I end up like the characters in Merrily We Roll Along?

Post-College Nightlife

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After college, all the rules about going out change. Suddenly, half the bars you used to frequent in college are off-limits. If you went to BC, as I did, that means au revoir to Cleveland Circle, which includes Mary Ann’s, Cityside, and Roggie’s (unless you’re at Roggie’s for late night pizza, since it’s the only place in Cleveland Circle open at two in the morning). It also means no more trips to The Kells for BC nights on Wednesdays. You have to find the bars that are more “twenty-something” and less “college student.”

This was the challenge that my friends Lindsey and Erin and I faced when we decided to go out last Friday night. We reviewed our options. Where could we go that wasn’t too college and, at 10:30, wouldn’t take so long to get to from Brighton that we’d be stuck paying a fortune for a cab when it was time to leave? (Since the T stops running at 12:30, if you don’t live right in the city, you’re kind of screwed when it comes to going to bars downtown.) We eventually settled on SoHo in Brighton Center, which a lot of college students don’t know about because it’s not on the T. You have to take a cab to get there, but in our case, the ride wasn’t very far.

The rules about the guys you check out change, too. Your first question when you talk to someone isn’t “Where did you go to school?” but “Where do you live?” or “What do you do?” And it’s not so creepy to be hit on by a guy in his late 20s or early 30s anymore. We might even welcome it. But skeezy guys exist at all stages of life, as we’ve found out.

We miss the college bars, though. Once this summer, Lindsey and I went to Cityside. In about fifteen minutes, we saw our friend Ashley, an Irish guy Erin was dating at the time(whom she actually met at Cityside), and this creepy guy named Paul, who didn’t go to BC but once tried to convince Lindsey that he did and who, after getting Lindsey’s number, left her a voicemail message in which he screamed at her to “pick up [her] fucking phone!” At the time, Linds and I had just come from SoHo, and we had with us a twenty-seven-year-old guy I’d been dancing with there. He’d never been to Cityside, and he commented that it seemed like the kind of place where everyone knew each other.

And he was kind of right. What bars near colleges lack in quality, they make up for in comfortable familiarity. Mary Ann’s, for instance, is disgusting. The floors are always sticky with beer and there’s barely room in the bathroom to sit down to pee, but you know everyone there, and suddenly, they’re all your friends. The random kid in your English class whom you’ve never talked to is suddenly telling you stories about his roommates. The girl who lived on your floor freshman year whom you’ve lost touch with is hugging you and telling you that you look great.

Cheers did take place in Boston, and I think that this city, which is full of college students, really wants what the song says: a place where everybody knows your name. Now that we’ve graduated, we’ll never have that again.

But some of us still try for it. Friday night at SoHo, when Erin and I left our table to get a second round, Erin leaned in close to me. “Don’t tell Lindsey this I told you this,” she began, causing my ears to perk up, “but we…” She swallowed hard. “We went to The Kells,” she whispered, then covered her eyes in shame. “On Wednesday!”

The 856th Sign That I’m Not A Kid Anymore

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For awhile I’d been saying that I hadn’t quite gotten to the point where my friends were getting engaged.

Well, scratch that. My friend Alyson, my roommate for a year in college, is engaged to the guy she’s been with since our freshman year at BC.

I’m really happy for her– I had a feeling she’d be the first one of my friends to get engaged– but yeesh. I feel so old. I have a full-time job and an apartment, AND my friends are getting married.

Also, I just have to clarify something: at the moment, I do not have Internet in my apartment. We’re getting cable and Internet on Tuesday. Right now I’m at my parents’ house in C-Town. Once I have Internet access at home, I’ll be making more frequent updates.