A New Beginning, or Doomed to Repeat My Mistakes?

Approximately two years ago the first column I sent from London was published. At the time I had embarked on my second semester abroad with a renewed commitment to exploring everything the city had to offer, most importantly its men. Ironically, the column was about masturbation.

At heart, like any regular reader of my column would note, I am overwhelmingly independent. My college years were spent floating not just from city to city, or even from man to man, but also through varying circles of friends. More significantly than my ever changing hairstyles, my progress can be charted each semester, stage, and year of my life through the company I kept.

Tonight I re-watched one of my favorite episodes of Will and Grace. Will and Grace had decided to have a child together, but Grace backs out before she becomes pregnant to pursue a man she had recently met. At the end of the episode they have a dramatic fight that lays bare the underlying corrosive nature of their co-dependency on each other, and how Will delights in Grace’s misery that results from failed relationships. It is scary for me to watch not just because as viewers we become invested in the characters’ lives, happiness, and relationship, but because it hits so eerily close to home.

Though no one girl or guy best friend can be singled out as my Grace, I can see my tendency to inwardly celebrate the friends whom are single, and place a wall between my friends who become involved. Never committing to a boyfriend myself, I move like a yenta or parasite from single best friend to the next available host body, attaching them to myself as my newest and most prized accessory. The old best friends become like worn out necklaces one begrudgingly puts on when nothing else will do for the night.

When had I become so cynical about friends taking significant others, and reevaluated their commitment to me on these criteria? Although I could guess, this would be impossible to pinpoint. Every wedding I have attended recites the same biblical verse about the time coming for a man to leave his mother and cling to his wife, but it is more the case of leaving one’s friends to cling to a partner. This ultimate transition from adolescence to adulthood had somehow consistently eluded me, and I am someone who places maturity next to intelligence and on humor on my list of attributes.

Now my life begins in a new city, my circle of friends mostly (ok, almost wholly) populated by unattached young professionals like myself. What will it take to break from my habit of clinging platonically to the arm of my single best friends, and find comfort in holding the hand of another? If I can’t make it happen here, can I make it anywhere? Or is this blog just fucked from the start?

Please peruse my archived columns from the first two years of ‘Everybody Does It,’ and come back often to read updates on my adventures (or lack there of) in the Big Apple.