Girls Night
We start at the best part:
Time to Get Ready
At precisely 6:30pm on Friday, we get in our showers and scrub off the higher-pitched voices we use at work with Trader Joe’s tingling body wash and a $2 loofah.
When we get out of that shower, we can be anyone we want and it’s wonderful.
Slowly but surely, my reflection gets closer to who I truly am. This is not a costume. This is the real me. The Rhea you see staring at a screen all day? Pretending she is politically correct? She is the actress. The Rhea in front of this mirror is as close to the real thing as you’re ever going to get.
We stand near the door shoving our obnoxiously large key fobs into our fashionably tiny purses waiting to see which one of us will ask the God-given question:
“Wait, can we Uber?”
The Pregame
My Friend Emi comes down to let us in, so naturally we get locked out.
She is so good at caring for other people that she has turned it into a career as a nurse. The rest of us live with our more selfish decisions, blissfully far from a concentrated pack of strangers all simultaneously experiencing the worst days of their lives. I wonder how she does it.
Allegra glides down the stairs with her hair pulled back. She is wearing a vest and smells like the sun. I am always looking forward to seeing what she is wearing because she is double my height and lives in an Alternate Fashion Universe.
Hey buddy
I missed you so much
You smell so good
I adore their apartment. It is Painfully Far from Subway but their big windows and room to breathe have successfully Pavlov’d my dopamine receptors into opening as soon as I walk through the door.
I’ve worked all week for this moment. I am safe from all the noise, insulated from the impossibilities baked into my everyday. Slack messages, grocery lists, Routine Human Maintenance Tasks temporarily disappear in a bubble that tastes like Corona and sounds like Rauw Alejandro. Teevs hands me a lime and we say Salud.
Within these walls, There is no feeling so insignificant that it should be kept to one’s self:
I love this new lip balm.
My boss was mean to me this week.
I saw a cute puppy today.
But make no mistake. All the big decisions are made here too:
I think I’m going to quit my job.
We should move to San Diego.
You need to break up with her.
I have room to think, to breathe, to pace.
“I got an interview!” Allegra exclaims.
Oh my god, THEY LOVE YOU!!!!
The Uber
Excuse me sir, do you have bluetooth?
Does anyone have lip gloss?
Can you play the new Bad Bunny?
Within this 2013 Honda Accord anything and everything is possible. We are the youngest and hottest we will ever be and we are all getting laid TO-NIGHT!
I fake a sneeze so that Emi can crack open a claw without the driver noticing.
“You’re a genius!” She tells me.
I would die for you.
Finding Nemo Alpha
15 minutes of pretending not to know what private equity is = free gin & tonics. Now that the drinks are in your hand, only one question remains:
How long do you wait to return to your friends? Sometimes it’s 10, other times it’s 5. Most of the time it’s 0. I can’t help but feel guilty. For the most part, they’re moderately polite and harmless. And their friends are almost always watching from a few feet away.
But I do it because I love my friends and I love their faces when I make it back to them with gifts. It makes me feel like Santa Clause.
Plus free drinks taste better. They never leave you with quite the same hangover.
We sacrifice all dignity in making special requests to the DJ. In the most extreme and dire cases, we dance on him.
The Chamber of Secrets
I ask My Friend Emi if she wants to stand at the bar with me and look hot.
Me and My Friend Emi went on a double date once. That probably needs its own story and more-than-likely is never getting one. Ojo and/or Sebastian, if you’re reading this — we’re sorry and we wish you all the best.
“Hagrid incoming,” she says to me.
I turn around and, to my astonishment, see a 7-foot-man in a fur trim coat who could easily pass for a cousin of our favorite Hogwarts Gamekeeper.
And he was getting bigger.
He’s coming to talk to us.
We could not contain ourselves and so we didn’t. He had a cuter friend of a more reasonable stature, but to no fault of his own, it was hopeless for him. Our awe rendered us mute.
“Where are you from?”
“HERE,” we say, rather brutefully, fighting every cell in our bodies aching to burst into laughter.
“I’m from Venezuela.”
A pause.
“Ven•eh•ZUE•la,“ he repeats.
The Giant did not speak, for he did not need to. We were intimately more familiar with the mythical British land in which he resided.
Cha-Ching
Red alert. The reddest of red alerts. Mandi’s ex boyfriend is standing at the bar.
Wait, is it really him?
Are you sure?
Positive. Can’t you smell him?
Is he wearing a gold chain?
Who the fuck does he think he is?
She got him that chain.
She got him that shirt too.
Fuck, where is she?
But it’s too late. She’s standing in the middle of the dancefloor running a million calculations in her head: 700 sleepovers, 16 days of Hannukah, 4 vacations, 1 girl in his bed who wasn’t her.
We can go somewhere else.
Anywhere you want.
Let’s go to Zadie’s! You love Zadie’s.
“We’re not going anywhere,” she says.
SHOTS! ON! US!!!
He has spotted us. Confirming he has spotted us.
Is he-
No he can’t be.
He’s getting bigger.
“What do I say?”
Don’t overthink it. Whatever you say when you see him is what you’ll say when you see him.
OK LADIES. LOOK ALIVE.
They line up in formation.
Hands out!
I reach into my purse for my emergency stash of Hubba Bubba, distributing pieces amongst our makeshift army.
Glasses on!
A line of us surrounds Mandi, wearing sunglasses and chewing bubblegum. The type of shit you only see on your worst ayahuasca trip.
What do you think he’s saying?
I’m a loser. I’m nothing without you.
I should’ve been a better man for you.
I miss your friends. They’re so much better and cooler than my friends.
He retreats back to his corner. Mandi looks unfazed.
“Give me that drink,” she says.
“It was always yours.”
“Let’s dance.”
We dance.
Clearly, my friend has won. She has won not because she’s hotter, smarter, more successful. She has won because she’s better. More open to the world and its experiences, kinder, gentler, sweeter, the list goes on.
By all intents and purposes, she is the winner. And she is so good – so pure of heart – that she doesn’t even care about winning.
But I’m not.
I spot a very handsome, very tall man checking us out and hear a Cha-Ching for all the good karma I’m about to accumulate.
Hi! What’s your name?
Christian, what’s yours?
Not important.
Is that French?
Ahahahaha! Oh my god you’re sooo funny. Anyway, you should meet my friend!!!!! I think you guys would really hit it off.
And that they do . . . indeed.
His friends console him, make their own unspoken decision, and make a swift exit.
That’s more like it.
Epilogue
Allegra and Teevs are grabbing more beer. Jojo is doing her lip liner. Emi has clips in her hair and she is giggling. We stand beneath a disco ball and I think to myself:
I’m rich
I’m rich
I’m rich!!!!!