Meet some of my friends!
Layla goes to New York and gets dramatic about friendship.
I’d do anything to see the people I love.
Anything, like snagging a Spirit airlines ticket with a horrible layover so that I can spend literally only 48 hours with Maura and Cortney in NYC.
Maura is mauve and orange. Detailed Spotify playlists and Still Woozy. Paper Towns and sorority houses and a car that’s been broken into (more than once) because she refuses to lock it. That’s just not how she grew up, they didn’t lock cars, it’s not a big deal Lay baby. That’s what she calls me, Lay baby, I don’t know where or when it started.
Cortney is “this song will make you want to sob, go listen to it” and black mini skirts with a going-out top. Film photography and Dolly Parton and meticulously planned house parties. Sonic and Coke and tight hugs and I bet I could pick the bouncer of that club up. Like physically pick him up. I’m going to try it, he’ll let me try. Yeah, I’m sure.
I’d do anything to stay in NYC longer than 48 hours, post-Cortney’s untimely departure back to NC (“I have to work” “I have a job” Okay, whatever, I’ll just cry on the subway about it I guess).
Anything, like wake up at 6am to take the train (with a transfer!) into Manhattan from Brooklyn (it’s 45 minutes if you do it right and just under 1.5 hours if you accidentally take the D to Coney Island) so that I can work from Rockefeller Plaza for a week instead of the Universal Lot (bless NBCUniversal for having two home bases).
Anything to stay on Maura’s air mattress for longer, so that we can spend the few hours we have after we’re both done with work eating takeout Chinese food and talking about nothing and everything until we pass out from exhaustion.
Rinse. Repeat.
But one night we muster up the courage to meet her friends at a bar instead of the usual “Turn 30 Rock On To Get Layla Into The ‘Kenneth Spirit’ Just To Ignore The TV And Talk Over It Instead.” After all, it’s Texas Tuesday, and the bar is playing country music, and we probably need that southern energy to stay balanced, maintain homeostasis, etc. Plus, I can be brave and meet strangers when they’re Maura’s strangers.
But as we walk towards the outdoor patio where Maura’s friends are stationed, I hear “Layla?!”
And it’s Elizabeth, who I met while studying in Greece. Who I shared a bedroom with on the tiny island of Poros. Who hailed the taxi that sped through winding hills to get us on the last ferry out of Agena when I miscalculated how long it would take to see a particularly pretty ruin temple on the top of a particularly tall hill.
Elizabeth is the art of splitting a croissant and Disney Channel Original Movies and painting pictures for her fridge – turned painting every inch of our exposed skin under a blaring sun, wondering if we’ll get weird tan lines from it. Elizabeth is “you’ll be okay” while I was living at home panicking over unemployment post-grad, and I sort of even believed her because she’s Elizabeth and I’d trust her with my life.
So wtf is she doing here?!?
Well Elizabeth is friends with one of Maura’s friends (unbeknownst to Maura) because they met while being au pairs in Paris. And that friend met another friend in the bathroom of a club. Who met another on a Facebook Group for Girls Who Moved To NYC. And that girl had a friend in college who met another friend because she was dating a girl in Maura’s sorority, which was also my sorority, although we had met previous to that working at a literary and arts magazine.
And anyway, now these five girls meet up at this bar in Brooklyn every Texas Tuesday, and they have inside jokes and outside jokes and they’re honestly, just lovely.
And as it turns out, none of these girls are strangers to me. In one strange(r) way or another, I already knew them all.
Post-incidental run in, I get dinner with Molly and Elizabeth on a previously planned agreement.
Molly is ocean blue and octopuses. Leatherbound journals and writing on a non-air conditioned bus. Mama Mia! and homemade chocolate cake and white sneakers and that one time she saved my life when I started falling down the side of an cliff while hiking. Yeah, like an actual cliff. No, it’s not a joke.
Molly just moved to the city, Elizabeth just finished hiking the Appalachian trail and ended her backpacking in NY, and I guess I work at 30 Rock now, so we HAD to see each other, even if it’s only for two hours over fancy salads and juice. Even if it meant another chaotic train ride. And wow, I really am bad at trains.
(But I’d really do anything to see my friends.)
And, on a previously planned agreement, Elizabeth brings a friend along to our dinner whom she’s known since childhood. Well as it turns out, that girl went to the college that much of Molly’s high school went to. So really, they already know each other.
They know the same people, and they’ve heard the same drama about them, and they fill in the gaps on all the ways that they’re already, basically, friends. And Elizabeth and I watch them do what I just did two days earlier over country music at a bar in Brooklyn.
I take the train back to Crown Heights after dinner to return to my blow up mattress and (more importantly) Maura, who had to grab a shift at the bar she works at. I do what I do best, and put myself to work at a job I don’t have, dropping condiments into to-go bags and stapling them shut.
A man comes up to order. As it turns out, he’s the host of a live music community event that Maura attended her first weekend in the city. Matt, right? And as it turns out, they ran into each other much later, chatted, and then tried to follow eachother on IG, but Maura was already following him from that event weeks ago. Guess they’re already friends.
Matt gets a milkshake, waffle fries, and a chicken sandwich, but he eats at the tiny ordering counter so that we can tell him about a messy weekend we had at the beach and mistakes that make great stories while I staple bags and Maura takes orders. Turns out, he’s hosting another community music event in LA next month, so I’ll see him then? Of course you will. I’ll bring my roommates, you’ll love them.
I've never truly met a stranger. I’m not convinced any of us have. We just need to take some time to figure out how we’re already friends.
Maybe I don’t have to do anything to see the people I love. As it turns out, they turn up on their own.
(But I still will do anything, anyway).
This month’s survey: https://forms.gle/sVcYjaXPNFMpTv4u8
Love,
Lay
*This month’s poof of life is just us being girls. That’s all.
