i say cunt. a lot. 90% of the time it is said about somebody who is, in fact, being a cunt. and about 10% of the time it’s about something totally frustrating, like peeling a pomegranate or having to ‘register’ on a website just to buy something you really don’t need anyway. it’s weird that i say cunt so much because i try not to use any other profanity, like, ever, and i go so far as to never even using the lord’s name in vain. for someone who is pretty adamant about replacing all of her ‘gods’ with ‘gosh’s’, i’m totally liberal with the c word. while day drinking with ryan last week, he brought to my attention how weird it is that in my late 20’s i have had, pretty much, only girl friends, where in my teens and early 20’s i had only guy friends. there is a direct correlation to why my usage of ‘cunt’ grows exponentially with each new girl friend i accrue…it’s because they are cunts (i am too, i promise). with guys, in my experience, the conversations are about similarities, interests and shitty childhoods. mike and i used ride the train together from our first jobs in the city and talk about books for an hour and a half (when i wasn’t hiding from him because he talked way too much…about books). jeff and i would swap stories about awful step-families while smoking parliament lights at the diner for 5 hours straight. i believe this blog is proof positive that ryan and i talk about anything and everything all the time, but if i’m to solely look at what we were doing 7 years ago, it was drinking at spruce street grill, talking about and listening to 1970s singer songwriters. when i moved to hoboken, my neighbor matt and i would watch yankee games and 1980s teen movies about 4 nights a week and actively try to reach out to corey feldman ‘just for fun and because he prob has nothing better to do’. you get the picture. it was easy. it wasn’t complicated. it wasn’t cruel.
now, i only really have girl friends. i’m not entirely sure how this happened, but i have some ideas. i lived with a whole bunch of ladies for about 5 years and have made and maintained some pretty great friendships because of it. i also slept with almost every single one for my guy friends, which, tends to put about a five year ‘weird strain’ on the former platonic friendship, therefore, i am forced to hang out with people i haven’t woken up drunk and naked next to (small pool). lastly, once a dude friend gets married, single lady friends are off limits because their wives are insecure cunts. there, i said it.
so for the past year or so i am hanging out with my bff’s, all of my bff’s, from high school bff’s to roommate bff’s to beach bff’s—there was a lot of bff’ing going around. as of late, not just because i’m chilling with ladies all the time, but also because of the nonsense of facebook, twitter, texting, gchat, etc., being a bff feels like a full time job at a day-care with super cranky and judgey two year olds that vie for your attention 24/7. everyone is so preoccupied with whatever anyone else is doing and their preoccupation then doubles when they spend time relaying this preoccupation to 3 other people all.day.long. everyone needs to be invited everywhere, included all the time. everyone has an opinion that they won’t give or else they wait to give it at a very drunk inopportune time that comes across as immature and unkind. its gotten to a point where we are just so wrapped up in ourselves that we don’t have time to talk about books (we need to set up a club just to do this, fyi). friday night, i was on the phone with another ryan talking about gluten (gluten!), thoroughly enjoying the conversation. v came to pick me up, and i quickly had to get off the phone with him, and immediately hopped in her car and start gossiping about a mutual friend. it was instant. and it was prefaced with ‘ugh, so and so, i cant even’ and v goes ‘tell me everything’. and whole i’m totally judging someone else for being just who they are, i realized that a majority of my conversations start this way. my gchat pings, and without even looking at it i know its going to say something like “can i vent for like 5 min??” vent is a bullshit ‘nice’ way to say you’re going to spend some time shit talking someone for not acting the way you’d like them to. i do this all the time.
this weeks three weeks ago, i was thinking about my ‘goal’ for getting better in 2012 which was ‘start spending time with the right people’ and during my few days of tuning in and paying attention to my relationships, i realized that i am pretty terrible at being friends with girls. its exhausting. i love my girl friends when we are acting like guys (guys who love a great sale at anthro). i, truly, have some of the most inspiring, hilarious, giving and unique women in my life that i feel so blessed, often, so often, but we need to chill, girls. big time. we are the right people…when we aren’t being cunts. we have good hearts that get caught up in the cattiness. ive always considered luck in friendship, in any relationship, really, to be when you are so genuinely happy for the other persons good fortune that you never ever feel twinges or pangs of jealousy. ever. and i am so thankful that i have had a solid handful of these friends in my life. friends where when i have lost my job and lost boys and lost hope, i can still be over the moon smiley for them when they are gaining. and i know the feeling is mutual. and that is a great dynamic. IN CONCLUSION**-‘start spending time with the right people’—let’s work on us being the right people (im on my way to scoop up miss v to go to a garage sale and talk about old records and books). let’s forgive everyone else for not being what we want them to be (whenever i’m being the worst person ever, ryan calls me a selfish cunt and vows to hate me forever, then gets over it when there is a new episode of portlandia on that he wants to discuss. and neither of us views this as ‘caving’ or ‘crawling back’), if we aren’t enjoying one another, lets take a time out, and wait until we are all set to enjoy a night of living room dance parties rather than bar shit talking sessions. i’m going to be a better friend to my better friends. and i’m going to hang with my boy buds* more often. and i’m going to ignore all the nonsense that comes from everyone else.
*the good news is, the five year ‘weird strain’ is almost up for most of them. 2008 was a crazy year.
**it takes me forever and a day to conclude.
let’s get better 2012 inspired by this really great website.
