7 posts tagged “friends”

...belly...distended...send....help...

Last night, I went for dinner with two lovely women, J. and K., to celebrate J.'s birthday. We ate at Babbo. We ate a lot of food. A lot of food at Babbo. Actually, I ate a lot of food, because I am an idiot and forgot that I could just eat half of every course and get the rest packed up. Well, I didn't forget, my mouth was just enjoying itself too much (dirty!) and didn't let my brain register.

Here is the menu. And off it we ate -
Antipasti. J. - Lamb tongue, K. - tripe, me - octopus.
Primi. J. - Mint love letters, K. - goat cheese tortelloni, me - stricchetti with lamb
Secondi. J. - salmon special, K. - skirt steak, me - braised beef
Dolci. J. - a...blueberry tart I think? K. - formaggi (sensible lady) me - ricotta cheesecake

Yes, that was a lot of food. And cocktails to start, and champagne throughout. We ladies can eat. (Well, K. was clever and had half her stuff packed up.) And today my belly is taking one for the team.

True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. - George Washington

I wonder if anyone wants to do a sociological study on urban thirtysomethings and how they make new friends. I think, if my experience is anything to go by, the findings could be distilled down to a single point: They don't.

This phenomenon is something people talk about all the time, right? How hard it is to make friends after a certain age? I feel like even when I was in my 20s, new friends were just shooting up around me. Now, not so much. Of course, a big hindrance for me is that I haven't really made any work friends. I work in the Bronx and live in Manhattan, so when there is after-work drinks or other social activities, I just don't go along. I don't want to, because the whole time I'd be thinking about getting home and how I was still an hour away from my apartment.

I guess the times I really notice it though is at parties. Invariably, when I go to a party there is someone, or a couple of people with whom I (or we) really hit it off. Often I get email addresses or phone numbers, and elicit a promise to "hang out sometime". Even while we're doing it, I feel like there's an unspoken acknowledgment that yeah, it isn't really gonna happen.

Anyway, so we were at our friend's party on Saturday night, and started talking to a couple who I really liked. Did all the "hey, so we should hang out" crap, and this time, THIS TIME, I told them that I was well aware of all the times people did this and didn't follow through, so I promised to email them the next day. And I did. And invited them to OUR party in two weeks time.

They were super-fun, so we'll see if this goes anywhere (lordy, this is more stressful than going out with boys!) What do you reckon the odds are?

On 3/21/07, [s]  wrote:

if you die:

1) can i have my socks back

2) can [mr. gaspode] still come to cwc

J.: i have decided not to clothe the baby

Back in the day, I remember saying that I would know I was an adult when I could be certain that I'd be able to eat dinner without spilling something on myself. That day is yet to arrive.

But really, I've been thinking about being a "grown up" in all its ways and forms. Obviously the concept of being an adult is very different from person to person, with respect to how they see themselves fitting (or not) into the world. But I'm thinking along broad generalisation lines here, and mainly for my group of friends, all of whom are in a certain demographic (early-mid 30s, highly educated, lower middle to upper middle class, liberal).

I feel like there are waves of things that are happening to my friends and me, which is kind of logical given we're all about the same age, so we went through leaving high school, graduating college, graduate school, first real jobs together. And a lot of the "grown up" feelings of your 20s are good ones, I think. Leaving home for the first time, then living in your own place, without flatmates, getting a "real job" rather than temping, getting a "real car", putting a down payment on a house (unless you live in New York), getting a graduate degree, maybe embarking on a relationship that will be long term. Maybe thinking about kids (although for us, that's in our 30s, but you get it).

But now, at the age of 31, I've seen my friends start to experience some of the bad things about adulthood. Two of my friends are in the middle of an acrimonious divorce (with each other). This is the first time I've watched a friend (I'm mainly friends with him) go through that sort of pain. A friend just got diagnosed with cancer, another is newly HIV positive. Friends parents are dying, not through accident, but because of illness and old age. Dementia. I worry about my friends a lot more - their sadnesses, their stresses, their alcohol intake. And we're at the age, where, when I feel like we need our friends a lot, we're starting to splinter apart. A big wedge is children - the people who are starting to have them are moving away from the childless ones. And also, people are solidifying their family groups, sometimes at the expense of their friends. Which is fine, you know, but sometimes you need all the support you can get.

I am going to Atlanta this weekend, for 5 days, to attend the Society for Neuroscience meeting. It will be the 5th time I've been to this meeting, which is a huge occasion (I think that there are usually just under 30,000 conference registrants). I'm looking forward to it. Particularly to catching up with my conference friends.  One thing that's always strange to me is how I can run into people in my field twice a year (at this, and another smaller conference we attend) and take up our "friendship" where it left off. After the day's work, we repair to a bar, catch up on each other's lives and don't talk nearly as much science (SCIENCE!) as non-science geeks probably imagine we do.

Granted, throughout the year maybe one or two emails go back and forth, but with these 5 or 6 people, the limits of the friendship pretty much stop when we get back on the plane to New York, Columbus, Ann Arbor, Madison, Denver or wherever we live and work. That said, I definitely consider them my friends. I've given relationship advice, sat with one while his wife was going through a miscarriage and he couldn't get a flight home, helped them find positions and written letters of support for them, helped them pick out gifts for their kids... They have helped me when I lost a very valuable piece of jewelry, put me to bed when I was ill, helped me find a job, given me travel advice, and cheered me up with funny stories.

I think one of my conference friends won't be there this year - he has a newborn at home. I bet he's secretly glad, because he can stay home and watch the Mets in the baseball playoffs. But I will miss seeing him, as I have done for the past 5 years - 50% of our yearly friendship will be missing.