integration

bringing a new boy around is a delicate thing.

you don't want to jinx things, or rush him into the circle before he's ready- let's face it, even the most fun, laid-back, non-judgemental group of girlfriends can send a man unprepared for that sort of thing sprinting off in the opposite direction.

but if you're practically the last single girl standing, surrounded by a group of loyal and supportive women who have spent months if not years patiently deconstructing all of you date stories, picking out your outfits, and themselves getting dragged through the emotional wringer of repeated, failed relationships, you owe it to your friends to let them, "examine the merchandise" as my israeli colleagued so eloquently put it.

and let's be honest, by the time it's the tiniest bit appropriate to start introducing the new guy, you're so wrapped up in the glee of "ohmygod-i-have-a-boyfriend," that you're dying to muzzle the little voice in your head that's telling you to take it slow.

but even those prone to excessive analysis of these interactions can find themselves surprised by how things are unfolding.

i wouldn't have predicted, for example, that the first suggestion of meeting the friends would come from him, and that said meeting would be "like ripping off a bandaid," since it would occur at his 30th birthday, to be attended by, as far as i could gather, everyone he had ever met. lucky for me, i got permission to bring my own entourage. open bar also tends to be a helpful backdrop in such a setting - when the somewhat inebriated friend of a friend backs you into a corner, sloshing her martini at you, demanding to know where you are in the 10 steps of love it's helpful to also be a bit under the influence.

to be fair, my fear of this event turned out to be way out of proportion to its scariness. 10 steps of love notwithstanding, i had a great time, and on some level it had to have been easier than having to show up at my friends' brunch the next day, wretchedly hung over, knowing full well that no one was buying the the rumpled shirt and sport coat as a calculated sunday morning fashion statement. it turned out that he was almost as nervous as i had been about the inevitable scrutiny of protective friends. i suppose you'd have to already know my blogmate to realize that you can only score more points by looking that rough and still managing to put down two bloody mary's.

as usual, the moral of the story appears to be that we're nothing without our friends, and that there's always a story to tell.