Girl and City

On Sunday, while I was out shopping for a money belt, BI texted me the following in three separate messages:
Two things.
I miss you.
Where’s a good place for brunch in The City?

When I received the first two messages, I thought she was drunk-texting me. I have never been drunk-texted by a girl, much less on Sunday morning, so I was quite amused.
The Drake Hotel, I texted back.
She asked if I could join her for brunch.
I am with some guys from last night but they are leaving, she said.
I raised an eyebrow but only texted back, No problem.

Two hours later, CMA and I arrived at The Drake Hotel (I invited CMA at the last minute because she was a classmate of ours that had just moved to The City and I knew she was dying for me to take her to The Drake, or anywhere for that matter). I spotted BI immediately, lounging with – not one, not two – but four guys on the couches by the window. (more…)

During dinner with my high school friends over the holidays, an interesting question popped up.

“SG, will you be a surrogate for me?” OBF asked me.
Somehow, we had started talking about surrogacy, which is defined by Wikipedia as: “a method of reproduction whereby a woman agrees to become pregnant and deliver a child for a contracted party.” It is important to note, however, that (at least in Canada), it is against the law to compensate (in monetary or other terms) a surrogate mother. That is to reduce potential abuse of someone offering a large sum of money for someone else to be a surrogate. So, in Canada, you would have to volunteer to be a surrogate without receiving anything in return. My friends were debating whether that was fair, given that you would have to be either incredibly nice or incredibly empathetic or both to volunteer to carry someone’s baby for nine months and risk complications related to pregnancy and giving birth.

I was not actively participating in this discussion when OBF suddenly turned to me and asked, “If MS and I can’t conceive, would you be willing to be our surrogate?”

I spat out my drink and laughed. Then, when I realized she was asking in earnest, I practically shouted, “Um, NO! I don’t even want to carry my own baby, why would I want to carry someone else’s?!”
Her eyes widened. There was suddenly silence around the table as everyone’s face matched hers. Wait, did I say something wrong? Did they honestly think I was going to say, “Yes! Please let me be your baby incubator!”?

“Really?” She asked disbelieving, as if I would change my mind on second thought. “If there was something wrong with my uterus, you wouldn’t have my baby?” Her eyes were so wide I thought they were going to pop out of their sockets.
“Well…” I chuckled awkwardly, “I hope it doesn’t come to that. I mean, I hope you and MS are both healthy and fertile.” Then I added, “If you want to be.”
Still, no one said a word.
I looked around the table. If wanting a baby and being physically equipped to have one was the equation for happiness in their mind, I didn’t want to leave anyone out. So I extended my wish to everyone as an afterthought, “I hope you’re all fertile, if you want to be.”

It was awkward. Oh, it was awkward.

Luckily, someone started to chuckle and relieved me of the spotlight.

But seriously, pregnancy? Not on my list of things I have to experience in life, thankyouverymuch. Even if I wanted a baby, I would probably adopt. So why in the world would I volunteer to be someone else’s baby incubator, even if the couple in question were my oldest friends? There are a lot of things I am willing to do for my friends – hold their hair up when they’re throwing up, go along with their crazy plans to seduce an older/married/otherwise unavailable man, make comfort food for them when they’re sad, and even go skydiving if that’s what it takes to cheer them up – but I will not have their baby, no sirree.

What are your thoughts on surrogacy? Would you have your best friend’s baby if she asked you to?

MFL and I are like Carrie and Mr. Big¹, Rachel and Ross², Sydney and Vaughan³.
Except in all those cases, the two end up together. So maybe not such great examples.

The point is, it feels like the time we’ve known and spent with each other could be a lifetime in itself. Sometimes I think about the time when we were together and I am almost surprised that it’s my past. It feels like it happened in a past-life, or in a vivid dream, or in a story I read in a book somewhere.

Everything has changed now. But some things never change.

And therein lies the problem.

Putting aside the question of whether we might still love each other, we certainly care about each other. And when a man cares about a woman, or vice versa, things are no longer cut and dry.
Which begs the question, can men and women truly just be friends? In fact, a better question is, can exes truly just be friends?
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1. Sex and the City. [↩]
2. Friends. [↩]
3. Alias. [↩]

The weather was perfect on Saturday. OBF and I met downtown for lunch at a fancy restaurant that I’d been looking forward to since I’d started following the chef on Twitter. Unfortunately, the meal was a horrendous disappointment, but OBF and I had a surprisingly good afternoon of bonding.

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“Girls Night Out or Girls Gone Wild?” was the question I was trying to answer this Saturday night with WAF. We’d been planning a staycation for this weekend because we both needed to let out some steam. To get the best bang for our buck, we booked one night at a hostel¹ and planned to start the weekend off right, with shopping and cocktails, followed by pre-drinking at a lounge and ending the night at a club.

At noon on Friday, we were just finalizing our plans via a flurry of excited emails² when I received an email from LawyerMan asking if I still wanted to work for him as a legal assistant at his firm. I hadn’t heard from him since the interview, where he had made it abundantly clear that I was grossly underqualified for the position. I had interpreted the lack of communication as “I am too busy to even email you to let you know that, like I said at the interview, I don’t want you,” and left it at that. When I read his email, a simple one-liner asking if I was still interested in the position, I jumped at the opportunity and immediately said yes. I asked him when he wanted me to start. He said Monday.

Keep in mind that not only was I currently working, but I was in a different city! What kind of employer emails you on Friday afternoon to tell you to come in on Monday? Did he think I’d been sitting on my ass, twiddling my thumbs for the entire four weeks since the interview?
But of course I said yes, because I was afraid he’d change his mind. After all, this was the sort of opportunity that could really help me with my career, even if the opportunity came with an inconsiderate boss.
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1. two summers ago, I had stayed at hostel with Zee and ER so I was comfortable with it, but this time we were staying at a different hostel, so I wasn’t sure if it would be sketchy or not. It turned out to be quite clean, although the location was a bit sketchy. [↩]
2. Both of us were at work and, apparently, not that dedicated to our jobs. [↩]