When I got back to school this term, I was convinced that I had almost no friends. I counted in my head, and could come up with only maybe half a dozen girls I was really close to.
I went over to the frat I hung out at, where I feel comfortable and safe, to sit watching TV, talking for hours and lamenting my unpopular status.
I came home and kvetched to the guy who lives upstairs and always stops by, asked the boy who lives down by the River to go get consolatory ice cream with me, and blitzed my male alter-ego in Boston to tell him exactly what I thought of my miserable state of affairs.
And then, from somewhere in the depths of my isolation, I realized: this isn't high school. Your friends do not have to be the same as you are. They can be of different races, sexual orientations, nationalities, religions and, the odd one for me, different genders.
I mean, I had a few close guy friends in high school, but I surrounded myself with females. I was a wolf, with an all-girl pack, and we would go hunting together.
However, even among my chicas in high school, I was always been more stereotypically masculine than most people are comfortable with, anyway. On those online quizzes, I come out almost 50/50, only a slight leaning indicating that I am, in fact, a female. I don't get along well with traditionalist males, who expect a counterpart to whatever bare scrapings of masculinity I possess.
And hanging with the guys is so fun! I can sit around, shoot the breeze, make weird noises and express opinions about how stupid shopping and cleaning and housewares are. Guys as friends are reliable, honest, and often protective in that cute and utterly unnecessary but still comforting sort of way.
Also, they are simple in ways that I like. They have the same power struggles as females, but are much more overt, with battles fought out in shouting matches or over pong tables rather than behind closed doors. I can get along with guys. Guys are uncomplicated.
Which is where I come to the crux of the matter, the weird part, the reason I jumped out of the shower to sit down and pound out this editorial in one sitting: my best friend is a girl. She's wonderful. We've supported each other through some really crazy times, for her or for me or for both of us at once, clinging to each other through the long nights of a very sad winter.
We've helped each other, made each other laugh. We've done each other's nails and cooked together and gone shopping and done all the girly stuff that I though I despised. We've admired art, gossiped about guys, and evengasp!cleaned together.
This evening, I'm even going to her formal in her boyfriend's stead (he's in Virginia for the summer), so I guess that's what inspired this. I realized that, while the quantity of my friends is mostly guys, the quality somehow definitely rests in this one female.
She's all that I like about chicks, with none of the cattiness or spitefulness or inane prattle I detest about them. And sometime I even remember to thank her for that.
I guess even I need some complication sometimes.
