friends – Paloma Cruz

I’m too sober for this

“I can beat that,” I tell my friend, laughing too loud even for the too loud cafe. We’ve been entertaining each other with funny and funny-because-they’re-sad stories from work. I know my next story will win the undeclared competition: “My boss came up to me at a Christmas party and honked my boobs.”

I can tell I have her attention by the abrupt silence and wide eyes. “A guy?” she asks me, I think already knowing the answer.

“Nope,” I tell her. “It was a woman.” And I smile and pause. “She was very very drunk, but that’s what she did. She came up to me and, well, honked my boobs.”

“What did you do?” she asks me, her tone a mixture of disbelief and disgust.

“She realized what she did and apologized. And I moved away from her quickly. If it had been a guy I might have made a bigger deal about it. I wasn’t actually sure what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to react. It wasn’t sexual, but it was inappropriate.” I sigh and add, “It didn’t help that I was completely sober. I thought my face was going to burst into flames I turned so red with embarrassment. And I couldn’t even hide behind a nice buzz.”

My friend and I talk a bit, marveling at the awkward situation I just told her about … and she’d been the first person to hear that story, except of course for the dozen or so people who actually saw the boob-honking happen. And now, all of you.

“I should have realized then and there that our working relationship was doomed, when she honked my boobs and thought a laughing drunken apology would wipe the slate clean. Because, really, how do you get past something like that?”

And, of course, I win the worst-story-from-work contest we’ve got going. But, in this case, I really don’t think that’s a good thing.

The things my friends may not know about me

I’m easily distracted. I’ll pick up my phone to look for something and realize ten minutes later, after putting it down, that I didn’t look for the item.

I’m very bad with money. I get a little bit and the compulsion to spend it is immediate and often almost overwhelming. I’m shocked I’ve managed to save any money at all.

I don’t remember what I wore yesterday, or last week, or to the last gala. When I work in an office I keep a journal documenting what I wore and when. Otherwise I run the risk of wearing the same outfit two weeks in a row. While that doesn’t bother me, it seems to matter to others.

At least 30% of the time I have to drive back to my house after leaving because I can’t remember if I closed the garage door. Usually I’ve only made it a block or so from the house, but I just can’t remember doing it. I’ve never found the garage door open when going back to check.

I have a hard time remembering faces or names. I worked with someone for 12 years and can’t tell you the names of her parents, siblings, or nieces and nephews. And she talked about them all the time. I met someone on at least six different occasions and still couldn’t recognize her the next time I saw her; once I clued in on who she was, the details of the conversation are easy to remember. This happens to me all the time.

I consider lies to be acceptable as long as they are for the greater good. Sometimes my convenience qualifies as the greater good.

Every time I do something there’s a thought in the back of my head telling me I will fail. The bigger the project or task, the louder it gets.

I am colder than you think.

When I lived alone I often realized that I had spent the entire weekend without speaking to another human being. Sometimes I realized that I hadn’t spoken out loud, at all, in those two days.

I have a mild hoarding problem. I once had a panic attack over the thought of throwing out a box of things I didn’t need. I made myself do it anyway.

I’m a horrid housekeeper. One of the main reasons I don’t have people over more often is that I’ll never get the house clean enough for company. If I truly cared, I’d clean better. I just don’t want to be judged.

I’m not comfortable with the way I look. I hate that I buy into it, but there’s always going to be a part of me that wants to look closer to the ideal of beauty.

I have three closets full of clothes. Yes, three.

I own more than a 20 shades of lipstick, and at least half of then are some variation of red. I rarely wear them, now.

I can be mean and petty. And I’m fine with it.

I obsess over big decisions.

I have weird sleeping patterns … which means I find myself writing blog posts at 4 a.m.

Image source: realworkhard / Pixabay

My Sex and the City Lunch

2013.12 girl-91143_1920 Along the way we realized that the two good looking guys in the table next to ours were quiet, riveted by our conversation. Of course, we were a group of women discussing breast size and boob jobs without using our indoor voices. I think we can forgive them.

This was my semi-yearly lunch with what I call my “brunch friends.” We almost only ever get together for lunch or brunch, and the occasional drink. More than acquaintances, but not quite “visit you when you’re sick” friends. I think we average two or three lunches a year. Amazing how little it takes to keep a friendship alive.

Our conversations are lively, varied and often unforgettable. We have shocked many a waiter by being in the middle of a talk about sex, relationships, cheating, our bosses, our exes… our lives in general. On this particular day we were discussing, in a crowded restaurant, my friend’s recent lift. Or rather, we were discussing one friend’s sudden realization of another’s boob job.

“Oh my god, when did you get those?!?!” The Exclaimer asked, loudly. All our mutual friend had done was sit down at the table and take off her sweater. Underneath she was wearing a fitted blouse that looked great on her. And this resulted in having her business announced to the whole restaurant.

I hadn’t realized anything was different until the outburst. I don’t look at other women’s boobs that closely.

The Denier tried to play it off. She pretended not to know what The Exclaimer was talking about. She smiled coyly. She gave token resistance to our friend’s insistence. Then she talked. The lunch was, after all, an unveiling.

“I actually got this done last year,” she said. “But I wasn’t comfortable enough to dress showy.” Which of course means that she got a boob job but didn’t want anyone to notice it.

And thus proceeded an hour-long conversation on how much it cost, how she chose her doctor, who she chose, how she decided on size, what the recovery is like, what the impact was to her partner, etc., etc. And I sat there for an hour, bobbing my head from one side to the other following the interrogation: question, answer, question, answer, question, answer… and so on, and so on.

Through it all my friends seemed to have forgotten we were in a restaurant where they place the tables so close you almost couldn’t walk between them. And the tables around us got quieter as the two of them became more involved in the conversation.

Eventually, I put a stop to it. I mean, there’s something just wrong with talking about your friend’s boobs over lunch. And everyone around us was paying way too much attention to the conversation I was inexplicably roped into.

And I realized that I was in an episode of Sex in the City, or the closest thing I could imagine to one. I think that says a lot about my life.

Can you keep a secret?

I love to talk. If you’ve ever met me, you know that I love love love to talk. It’s a family trait. We learn to speak early; we master complete sentences fast; we incorporate sarcasm seamlessly (at four years old, I think). We love to talk. And we’re very loud when we do it. A family conversation can dominate an entire restaurant, whether we meant to do that or not. (We are that annoying family.)

And, yes, that means I love to gossip. I love to dish and tell and hear the inside scoop (was that mixing metaphors?). I love to know what’s going on. I love to find out the back story, the parts that don’t make it to the public. I enjoying being on the inside, knowing what fueled this or that event. I enjoy knowing that I know things others don’t.

Is it any surprise I work in public relations?

But I can keep a secret. I rarely choose to keep them, especially for myself, but I can. In spite of all the words that come tumbling out of me, some that make sense and some that don’t, written and verbal… I don’t tell everyone everything.

Keeping secrets, holding onto knowledge (especially “hot stuff”) is harder than you think. Keeping confidential information confidential is an essential part of what I do, but I watch others fail at it frequently. I’ve seen people literally blurt out something they were asked to keep to themselves. It’s almost as if the mere act of asking them to hold onto that piece of information makes it too heavy, or too important, to keep. It’s sometimes amusing to watch some people as they try not to stumble into the topic they were asked to avoid.

Can you keep a secret?

***** Written on my ipad. I promise to proof and edit it later (maybe). ******

I think we’re not friends any more

At what point do you stop being friends with someone? What’s your line in the sand?

She asked me what my size is, casually, because she’s lost all this weight and has clothes she needs to get rid of now. The clothing is size -X2 (ie., two sizes smaller than I am now; note I am “X”).

I told her what my size is. This is something I wouldn’t tell my sister, wouldn’t answer to practically anyone. But I’ve been friends with her for more than a decade, good friends, “hold your hand while your parent dies” friends. And though it seems that we’ve hit a rough patch, this is info that I would automatically share.

“Oh, no,” she says, stating that the clothes won’t fit me. I tell her that I think that they’ll fit my sister-in-law.

Then she waves on my direction, “Too big,” she says. And, dumb me, I really think she’s talking about the dress I’m wearing. I even say so.

“No, dear, you’re too big.”

Wait. Did she just call me fat? Did she just say to me that I’m too fat?

Is that allowed?

I nod and say that I know. But what I really want to do is yell at her, scream that that’s not something you say to a friend, that I don’t call her on her shit and she doesn’t call me on mine.

My size, my fatness, apparently, is my line in the sand.

Are we still friends?

Photo courtesy of Yasmin Falahat via http://www.flickr.com/photos/31629983@N02/3429853778/.Â