Ladies' Afternoon Drinking Club

So, say you're in the middle of one of those phone calls you really wish had never happened, a phone call from your ex boyfriends' recently ex girlfriend, and she's all upset, and asking you for help with a situation that you a) were never involved with in the first place and b) even if you were it was 7 odd years (very odd years) ago and you have nothing, really, to add to this conversation because, let's face it honey, the 80s are a blur, the 90s even more so and really? Last week? It's a bit fuzzzzzzy.

The phone rang and I told my caller, oops, it's a work call. The work call is sacred in America; it's like a direct line from Jesus himself; it cannot be denied. You can deny your dying mother, your brother in the throes of the LA police department, your child being killed on a playground, but the work call is sacrosanct. So I took my "work" call and thank all the gods of this or any other universe, it was my old college friend E screaming, "We're getting drunk! Join us!" Which I did. Because, you know, far be it from me to abandon a friend in need.

It's been a long time since I started drinking at 3 in the afternoon of a beautiful Friday, and now it's 8, and I can't quite figure out what to do next, but really, I recommend this afternoon thing. We started at the Flying Frog and moved on to E's beautiful West Asheville back porch. There was a lot of laughing, a lot of drinking, and apparently I have to go to a sex toy party tomorrow afternoon. "No!" I tried to say, "I grew up Catholic! We don't do that stuff!" All to no avail. "There's free wine!" they said, and before I knew it I was committed.

So, gentle readers, tomorrow evening I'm going to a sex toy party. Be afraid. God knows I am. I just called all my girlfrriends and told them they were coming with me, including my daughter, who's bringing her friends. This is verging into the realm of the seriously weird, but you know, what can one do? There's no fighting heredity, or, apparently, the friends you make at 20. I made a laughing reference this afternoon to the nerdish tendencies of my son. "Oh," said my friends, who have known me for 20+ years, "He's just like you were!"

I had been going along happily for eons in this belief that my nerdiness was internal and unviewed, that no one knew I was a closet nerd. Alas. Turns out that eveyone thought knew I was a nerd and just liked me anyway. Go figure. Some things, like obsessive rereading of the Silmarillion and the accompanying ability to speak Elvish, can't be hidden. Damn.