| It was one of those Sex and the City style brunches. Except we only manage them about once a year as opposed to the idyllic weekly gab-and-gush sessions Carrie and the girls managed in the fantasy world of TV girlfriends. The same world in which high-powered lawyers like Miranda can go out drinking martinis all night and still get up for work and look fabulous, whined A, a lawyer with a martini night followed by an early work morning still a little too fresh in her mind.
"Yeah, and I sit around in my underwear, smoking cigarettes, writing my column," I piped in. OK, the underwear part might be true, but I don’t smoke and my underwear isn’t nearly as cute as Carrie’s.
Anyway, it’d been awhile since the four of us had done brunch. And a lot had happened. I got married, but it was only year one so things were still shiny and new. I was jonesing for some drama. The gals, as always, didn’t disappoint.
A’d shrunk to half her size on a sensible diet – that didn’t involve throwing up – and finally resigned herself to her sexless marriage.
"He’s my best friend in the world and I love him to death," she shrugged.
So she’d just have to continue to rely on affairs for her sex. Hey, if it ain’t broke….
S’s affair had broke – twice. First her husband found out, which was bad enough. But then she decides to have lunch with her affair’s wife (yes, she knows it was dumb, but she planned to leave her hubby to be with him and when Affair didn’t leave his wife, I guess she thought she’d, I dunno, buy her off with lunch?). Anyway, Wife ends up making S cry when she tells S she caught her husband (Wife’s husband, not S’s – stay with me here people) doing S’s former secretary in their parking garage – the same garage in which S and Affair used to fuck. S is hysterical and Wife tries to calm her down about the fact that her husband is fucking yet another person.
"She even convinced me it was OK because he wasn’t fucking her in the car," laughs S, who, after about two weeks of obsessing about killing the guy, had luckily come out the other side by now and could finally relish in the absurdity of it all. Which is not to say she, like most of us girls, didn’t want some closure and some answers.
"I know, you never really find out the truth," S admits. But of course, she tried. Only, rather than approach Affair about it, S arranges several more "business-style" meetings with Wife during which they review Affair’s final month of e-mails to S.
"Oh yes, and I also find out about the cocaine," S tosses in.
S is finally over it all. Life is finally good on her own (she did leave her husband) and she looked fantastic. Her only lingering resentment is that Affair works at the same job as she does, but makes twice the money.
And unfortunately, S isn’t a big believer in "what goes around comes around."
"I just wish he had a little cancer or a small accident," she confesses.
I tell her it’s very sweet she only wants him to suffer a "small" tragedy.
By comparison, T’s life seems almost quaint. She’s a new mom. A successful, sexy chick with a take-charge attitude who took her ovaries into her own hands and decided, come hell or high water, she wanted a baby at 40. Hell and high water came in the form of B, the father of her child and currently the bane of her existence.
"You said going in, that no matter what happened between you two, you still wanted to do this," we all chimed in during lulls in her complaining about what a disappointment he was being as a partner.
"I guess I’d hoped he’d get his act together when we had the kid," she admitted.
It was hard to believe that just a few years ago, T and I were both single and swapping dating horror stories.
I was glad to see our lives were no less interesting.
In fact, hearing the girls and their life dramas, I found myself almost longing for a crisis or simply an affair so I’d have some drama to bring to the table. OK, I don’t really want that, but there is something delicious and familiar about the complicatedness that we can all laugh about and commiserate on. It was female bonding at its best.
It’s not that I wish difficulty upon any of us, but I love the fact that our lives are real, and that we’re realistic about them. I’ve never bought into the happily-ever-after fairy tale version of life. The real one is way too interesting.
I love our messy, complicated lives.
It reminds me that no one’s life is simple or perfect. And I thank whoever’s in charge that I have my girlfriends to ride with me over every bump along the way.
Besides, if things were less complicated, what would we talk about over brunch?
Ladies, what’s your pleasure?
A University of Guelph grad student is researching women’s sexual pleasure and is looking for women to respond to her survey. Ladies, if you'd like to help her out, go to the following address: https://www.uoguelph.ca/~jwentlan/introgen.htm
I’ll be sure and share some of her results in the column. |
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