That encompassed two meet up for drinks and a karaoke session that went until four thirty. Over the watermelon soju, my friend was telling me about her Relationship Funeral. She recently had a breakup (amicable) and since they often frequented the same places, she went up and down to those bars, drinking in each one and toasting to the past. In an unexpected twist, she said the toasts she did were all positive. It was a purging and a welcome to new things. Great idea right? An uplifting funeral? So many break ups are about cursing the other person afterwards. I say we institute Relationship Funerals for everyone, and maybe trademark that shit right now.
Afterwards, my friend jaunted off to a club on the east side to perhaps put the moves on a hot young man. She was nervous, since she'd been away from singledom for a few years. Fortified with the aforementioned shots -- she took twice as many as I did -- and my pack of gum, off she went into the future.
At a bar on the Lower East Side the next night, I finally caught up with a friend about his relationship. A few months ago he'd introduced us to someone new and then said "He's my boyfriend." All nonchalant and just like that. I was taken aback because this friend hasn't called anyone his significant other in quite awhile. So yesterday we talked about how that was going, what he's learning and experiencing. We are similar in some ways, as we tend to be good at being friends but possibly not so good at being in relationships. It was an enlightening and warm talk, long overdue.
When I say we "talked about it," what we were actually doing was comparing notes. Doing my best to imitate my friend's nonchalantness and absolute fact of it all way, I'm here to say: I have a girlfriend. (I haven't said that since 2007.) We go on dates, I wore a knit tie once, she said "yes," I bought flowers, it's quite something.
There's a lot of stuff I'm trying to wrap my head around, mostly the idea of actually being together with someone. It feels foreign and familiar at once. Given my track record with relationships, there's some trepidation for all parties involved. But hey, you don't know till you try right?
- Aziz Ansari gets candid about love: "elusive and sadly ephemeral"
- New Love: A Short Shelf Life (2012)
- Match.com Presents Singles in America 3
- Inside OK Cupid: The Math of Online Dating
- I Googled My Dates Until One Of Them Googled Me (2010)
One of the first blogs I followed, and possibly anybody followed, was BluishOrange, who won Best Designed Weblog way back in 2002. Alison came back after a long hiatus with a post reviewing her twenties. I sort of tried to do something similar a couple of years ago, but that was for a reading and the end result was very tongue in cheek. I think I'll give it another shot -- focusing on relationships perhaps -- even though I'm far past that bridge. I must have learned something during that decade though...
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