Female Freindship (*hint, hint)
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of herself, must be in want of a girl friend.” - Jane Austen Pride & Prejudice, a L. Ford remix
For most of my life I’ve been more comfortable being friends with boys. Men. Whatever. MALES. I always found them easier to get along with. They were easy-going and laid back like me. There was never any shade to navigate through, back-handed compliments, and one-up-manship (though now I wonder if that last bit was because of the patriarchy and that I didn’t even register as social competition. I definitely didn’t play that game). Though thinking back on this, it’s revisionist history - my three BFFs in high school were women.
But somewhere along the line, in my true adulthood, I started to have female friends. It was after I started dating Fionn and had moved up to LA from The OC (don’t call it that). As I began to work on more stage management teams and show crews, the women I was working with just began to click in my life. I found my laid-back, no nonsense folx. Women I’ve been friends with now for 10 years. (SKY! 10 YEARS, MY BOO! Even if I don’t remember you being on the crew for Ruined!)
2 out of my 4 BFFs are women and all of them are folx I met after I moved to Southern California.
I’ve never been very good at friends, being a friend. I’m pretty introverted in the way that I’m perfectly happy not interacting with people and I need to recharge after social engagements. Being social rarely energizes me. My ideal day is sitting in a comfy place, where I can stretch out, with indirect lighting, where I can read a book all day long. Basically, I’m a literate house cat and I like my interactions to be consensual, just like a cat too. I don’t reach out to hang, but I love to plan. I’m terrible at remembering your birthday, but I love a calendar and can take a note. I will never send you a thank you card but I am so very thankful for you in my life.
In the same way as down the line of living in LA I gained female friends, somehow during COVID my female friendships became special to me; more important. My first two recurring, and still occurring, weekly zoom meet-ups are an all female book club with Sky and my all female cast of SEVEN (we were on tour when COVID started - our tour was cut short).
Last night for Rosh Hashanah Eve, three actors and the director of SEVEN (hi Lex, Eleven, Laila, Tess!) met up in Griffith Park to make our weekly zoom LIVE. And remember how I said social engagements don’t energize me? This one did. I was sitting there and I talked as much as I listened. They cheer me on in this writing endeavor (“forcing me” to read our new and improved query letter aloud to them), talked about how excited they are to read the Beta, and introduced me to the idea of hard pants (jeans, khakis - boo) vs soft pants WITH POCKETS (yay!). We laughed, bitched, and communed for three hours. And it was easy. No emotional labor. I just showed up (with everything a Stage Manager might need for a picnic: cutting board, knife, cups, bowls, napkins, speaker, blanket, booze) and enjoyed them and enjoyed myself.
But I think the most special friendship to come out of COVID is the one I now have with Sky. She was excited enough about my joke that we should write a book and trusting and loving enough of me, who I am, to go on this journey with me.
Before COVID we would text a good amount. Fits and starts, but she was always on the first page of text messages. We’d see each other on occasion for Monday Night Dinners, Bris’, holidays and of course, she’s always my plus one to the theater. But now we text a hundred times a day, every day. We video chat at least twice a week.
But I think the way I know this friendship has deepened is that we disagree now. Which we never really did before. And it doesn’t/hasn’t changed our friendship in the slightest. We apologize immediately or work through whatever it was and move on because in the grand scheme of everything, we love each other.
I love you, Sky.
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” - Jane Austen, Emma
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Duuuude! (I know I have the most eloquent and gentle ways of handling emotions). Right back at ya!
It has been lovely being on this journey with you. Lovely and challenging and confusing, but lovely. It is work, but it feels like sacred work. Needed and soul-cleansing. And I agree, that fighting is the sign that our relationship has left the plain of mere acquaintance. You have a piece of my soul now. Be gentle with it and I will guard the piece of yours I managed to snag. I love you back Ford.