“I don’t actually know,” I said. “Their avatar is a dolphin.”
Then Victor pointed out that it didn’t really count as being “great friends with someone” if you didn’t know whether they were a boy, a girl, or a dolphin. I had to admit he had a point, so I decided to get out of the house and meet a fellow mom blogger named Laura for lunch, whom I’d bonded with online over the mutual terror of raising a toddler. It was surprisingly awesome, but it was also a slippery slope that led to meeting more and more people. My anxiety-ridden personality clashed with the very idea of making friends, especially girlfriends. Laura tried to convince me that there were actually interesting and fairly nonjudgmental women who wouldn’t make fun of the fact that I often had to hide under tables when I was overwhelmed. I didn’t believe her, but I took a deep breath and decided to trust her, because if nothing else, this would be the perfect experiment to prove my theory that most grown women are just as dangerous as the kids on the playground who wouldn’t let you play tetherball with them because you didn’t have Wonder Woman Underoos.
Over the next two years, I became tentative friends with the bloggers Laura introduced me to, and I was eventually invited to go to a weekend all-girl retreat in California wine country for a small group of bloggers. It would include wine tasting and group yoga, and I could not have been less enthused, but Laura was one of the hostesses and told me I was being ridiculous. “Besides,” she reminded me, “you did tell me that one of your goals this year was to make friends with girls.” She was right, but at the same time she reminded me why girls make both great and terrible friends: They actually listen to your goals, even when you’re too drunk to know what you’re saying. I had said that I felt I needed to try to find girlfriends, but what I really wanted were down-to-earth chicks who drank Strawberry Hill slushees nonironically, and who would respond to an invitation of “Let’s go to a wine tasting and a day spa” with the same sort of horrified reaction as if someone had said, “Let’s go join the circus and then burn it to the ground.”
Laura stared at me as I tried to come up with an excuse. “It’s true, I did say I wanted girlfriends,” I capitulated hesitantly, “but couldn’t we start with something smaller and less terrifying? Like maybe spend a weekend at a crack house? I heard those people are very nonjudgmental, and if you accidentally say something offensive you can just blame it on their hallucinations.”
“Tempting . . .” Laura replied, “but let’s try this first. We can always check out the crack house later.”
The four-day getaway was headed up by a blogger named Maggie, whom I knew in passing, and who had recently gotten a giant corporation to sponsor her life list. She’d been to Greece, had a giant public food fight, and swum in Puerto Rico, all paid for by the sponsor, and possibly by selling her soul. Next on her list was hosting a small girls’ retreat, and so she’d decided to host The Broad Summit, so named because we were a bunch of broads. I can only assume The Vagina Venue was taken.
Women scare me enough, but bloggers can be even more frightening to deal with. Most bloggers are emotionally unstable and are often awkward in social situations, which is why so many of us turned to blogging in the first place. Also, they are always looking for something to write about, so if you fuck something up it will be blogged, Facebooked, and retweeted until your death. It would be lot like Lindsay Lohan spending a weekend with TMZ and the National Enquirer, and I suspect that one day my gravestone will simply read: JENNY LAWSON: SHE WAS MISQUOTED ON TWITTER.
I assume that to most people wine country sounds wonderful, but it’s not my thing. Wine tastings and massages and facials and pajama parties at a small hotel sounded like something that would be fun for rich people who weren’t me, and who actually owned pajamas. I was trying to think up excuses to get out of this party when my invitation arrived: It was a small wine box with a bottle of booze and a crazy straw. Victor saw it and encouraged me to go and make new friends, and I RSVPed “yes” because I got drunk on the invitation. Then I spent the next week regretting that decision.
A conversation with my sister three days before the event:
ME: I’m going to Napa Valley for a party and I’m terrified. Everyone at this retreat is probably fashionable and hip, and a lot of them are designers, and I don’t have anything designer to wear.
MY SISTER: Just pretend to be bohemian, and they’ll think you’re avant-garde.
ME: Well, I do have a fancy purse, but I’ve never used it. This sex company sent me a giant metal dildo wrapped in a Kate Spade bag in hopes that I’d blog about it.