More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Other classmates’ homes were decorated with framed paintings of mild New England-y things, like trees with leaves changing colors along the Charles River. In our living room, we had large framed tapestries of buxom Indian women dancing in saris.
It was perfectly me: pleasant enough, and then receding from immediate concern.
What about hanging decorations and then photographing them to make sure they seemed homespun and not too store-bought-looking?
Why is it that chatting with friends is energizing, but making small talk with acquaintances takes such monumental effort? And you know what’s even worse than engaging in small talk? Ending a conversation.
The problem was I didn’t want just anyone’s company. I wanted the company of funny, smart, like-minded people. That’s when I realized something about myself: I would rather be lonely than bored.
I had dreams of conquering my social anxiety and being a part of an inseparable group of girlfriends in Los Angeles. We would have stylish Sunday brunches with free-flowing Bellinis and, when one of us got engaged, a bachelorette night spent cruising down Sunset screaming woo-hoo from the back of a long white limousine. We would help each other through breakups and be instrumental to setups, but men would never be as important to us as one another. If that all seems basic, it’s because it is! It’s a basic human right for women to have female friends.
the hills above Beachwood Canyon (where every male comedian lives for some reason),
They were all working actresses in their midtwenties (you would recognize some of them now),
To my surprise, for some reason they laughed like I was Kevin Hart.
It took, no exaggeration, twenty minutes for the other six girls to communicate a satisfactory level of detail to the waiter about their very picky individual brunch orders. I noticed that each one was waiting for the other to order so she could choose something even healthier and tinier than the previous person. Then the previous person would revise her order to compete with the healthiness and tininess of the new order.
I felt huge and crass like the Kool-Aid Man, loudly breaking the unspoken food etiquette walls of this friend group.
I was Casper the Flaky Ghost.
So my second realization was that I would rather be lonely than be friends with non-friends. Losing friends is hard, but losing fake friends, as it turns out, is pretty damn easy.
He knows I crave company but don’t like most people.
though I appear to be the more easygoing of the two of us, the truth is, I’m just better at seeming cheerful than he is.
On the chessboard of life, B.J. is Kasparov and I’m . . . still me.
a magician (very for me, but maybe a better experience if you had a gummy or a joint);
We were like Roman emperors being entertained in every way imaginable; every time I turned my head, there was some new and exciting spectacle to behold. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised to see two men locked in gladiatorial combat for B.J.’s pleasure as he gave a thumbs-down and chose which one had to die.
That’s right, I was Kanye West’d by Wade Boggs.
