The *other* kind of girl-date

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post in which I put forth the following operational definition for the term "girl-date":

A girl-date is when two women who are relatively unfamiliar with one another decide they want to explore a more meaningful friendship outside of their current circumstances and do so by setting up a meeting whereby the potential for said meaningful friendship can be more deeply explored.

Eloquently crafted as it may be, I don't think this definition is as tightly written as I originally thought it was. What brought about this second-look analysis was the pop-up reminder I received this morning from my Outlook calendar that read, "girl-date: dinner at Nooshi with L."

The girl-date I have tonight, just like the one I had with E two Thursdays ago, is still a "date" in the sense we're meeting one-on-one, an alcoholic beverage or two will be imbibed, I took extra care to distribute the glimmer on my legs and wore a skirt to show off that fact and we'll no doubt engage in a back-and-forth discussion of how little sex - "little" being a generous description in my case - we're having these days. But unlike E, L doesn't fall into the "relatively unfamiliar" category, nor was this meeting set up to "more deeply explore" the "potential" for a "meaningful friendship." On the contrary, L has been a mainstay in my social calendar for years, and tonight's meeting, just like handfuls and handfuls of others we've shared since I arrived fresh from the oil fields of glorious Daqing three years ago, will be of the more comfortable, familiar sort. To put it in celebri-tard terms, if I'm Paris Hilton, E is my Kim Kardashian (gratuitous picture below) while L is my Nicole Richie. Minus that whole driving-the-wrong-way-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-highway "misunderstanding," of course.

Like Nicole to Paris, L has known me as someone's long-term girlfriend; she's known me pre-puppy-whipped when I would actually refer to dogs by the gender-neutral "it" and say things like, "I would never let something that licked its own junk sleep in my bed"; she's known me before I fell in love with New York and everything in it; she's known me long before this blog took over my life and increased what I had thought at the time was an already high threshold for undignified, irreverent humor; and yes, L has even been around long enough to earn the distinct privilege of being on the receiving end of my mother's monthly at-least-25-pounds care packages, which, depending on what was on sale at Meijer, could include a swag-bag filled with anything from triple-berry muffin mix to Magic Erasers to an Eclipse gum Big-E-Pak dispenser to blocks and blocks of pepper-jack cheese. Yes, cheese. Surprising even myself, on one occasion, I decided to give L one of my prized family-size boxes of antibacterial lotion-infused Puffs Plus. It may not seem like much, but I cry on average something like four times a day, so the sacrifice went well-beyond the $4 sticker price.

And of course, because she's L, she understood that.

So tonight might not carry with it the nervous stomach-flutters, the am-I-looking-her-in-the-eye-too-often? inner-dialogue, or the obligatory "who's the one you'll never get over?" conversation-starter, but sometimes that's just as well. Sometimes, all that first-date drama is too much to bear on a 90-degree hump-day when your bits are still tender from last week's Brazilian and the ulcer you're sure is forming as a result of the can't-get-it-off-your-mind dress-indecision for Monday night's dinner in Manhattan with your ultra-stylish college BFF only compounds the discomfort you feel with every crossing and re-crossing of the legs.

Sometimes there's nothing more motivating to get you through the work day than the knowledge that come 5:30 you'll be in the presence of a cold Tsingtao and someone with whom first impressions are a done-deal. Just an hour and a half of being around a friend who has already accepted - and even enjoys - the fact you send her bi-daily e-mails with attached pictures of clothes and shoes you can't afford, celebrities with whom you wish you could change places just so you could have access to their clothes and shoes, and more often than not, the little man in your life who, despite his junk-licking tendencies, is the most welcome of any beast in your Indonesian-teak queen-size -- sometimes, that's the kind of girl-date a girl needs most.

We hit it. Hit it off, that is.

With its antique wooden window frames cranked open for the season and its mix of young professionals sipping martinis, journalists and sources talking more than imbibing, lawyers not-so-subtley looking for wife number two and super-tanned, in-for-just-the-day Miami businessmen, Spezie on a mid-May day is about as lovely a happy hour setting as you'll find in Northwest DC.

And the perfect backdrop for a promising first date.

From the second I walked in the wine bar's familiar set of double-doors and was greeted on my left side - my good side - by the large bevelled mirror that not once in all the times I've had lunch, drinks and dinner there has been spoiled by a single fingerprint or failed to elicit from me a tilt-of-the-head and a wistfully sighed, "I so wish I had that in my bedroom," I knew my decision to spend the evening out on the town instead of in on the couch would be well worth the wrath I'd incur from my used-to-having-Mommy-home-all-night-every-night 13lb dollop of wonderful.

Before I'd even finished my quick eyeliner touch up in another large mirror - this one through a second set of doors by the hostess' podium - I was approached rather aggressively by a very nervous, very sweaty man in his mid-30s.

"Are you Christine? Excuse me, miss, are you Christine?"

"Wha...what? Am I Christine?" I asked the man, startled at the urgency in his voice.

"You're Christine? Oh god, good. Hi, I'm..."

"No, I'm not Christine," I said, finally grasping the situation, "I'm Johanna, but it's nice to..."

"Shit."

After he plodded off, I stood stunned for a minute until the devilishly handsome, looks-like-he-should-be-a-bit-character-on-The-Sopranos owner approached me, nodded as hosts do when they recognize a regular customer, and said, "Your companion, he is on his way, no?" in a way that implied he knew the answer before he'd even asked the question.

"No, actually he's not...we're not...I have different company tonight."

"Oh. Well, you such a pretty girl, no wonder you have different company. Keep it spicy, yes?"

Not wanting to enter into a conversation that would require more than the length of the walk from where I was to where I needed to be, I offered him my best it-was-his-decision-not-mine smile, a dull attempt at coyness with, "Well, spicy is better than bland, isn't it?" and began to navigate my way through the dining room to where I now saw E sitting perched on a stool at the bar.

E: hair down, Riesling, black shirtdress, black stiletto slingbacks, fabulous pearl cocktail ring.

J: hair pulled tightly back, Bellini, red and black wrapdress, black stiletto peeptoes, fabulous Indonesian spinel cocktail ring.

Before we even started in on the get-to-know-yous, it was clear our subtle differences aroused curiosity while our similarities put us both at ease. In short, we were a perfect girl-girl complement.

"Did that guy ask you if you were Christine?" E asked as I looped my daybag's double-shoulder-straps around the jut of the barstool.

"He did, why, did he ask you, too?"

"Mmmhmm, I think it's an Internet date. An Internet date that's not starting off so well."

"That's so sad."

"I know."

And in perfect Olsen-twin unison, the two of us turned and tilted our heads toward the gentleman's table and conjured up our most sympathetic "it happens to all of us" look, not thinking ahead of time how the extra attention might exacerbate his already apparent hyper-anxiety.

"So..." I started off, "tell me what it is you do over there at that consulting firm of yours."

And thus the girl-date began, just like a regular date, with back-and-forth questions about that day's happenings, recent bad dates (she'd had a dinner date with a guy who decided to eat before he picked her up; I'd had a date with a guy who ordered apple martinis with Diet Coke chasers), siblings, parents, did-she-know-this-person-at-her-college?, did-I-know-that-person-at-my-university? and so on and so on.

About three sips into our second round, we had our first pause, and it was clear that subject was no longer avoidable.

So we dove in, head-first, each reciprocating after the other had her turn, not in an obligatory you-went-now-it's-my-turn kind of way but in a completely genuine, completely equal, give-and-take fashion.

Not one to bring specific personal woes into the public fold, I shant divulge much of what was discussed during our intense, nearly two-hour, why-does-that-Rachael-Yamagata-lyric-resonate-so-strongly-with-you? conversation, but I will say that like our jobs, our shoe preferences and our seats in our colleges' Varsity eights, E and I are that rare match where we're vastly different in some ways but extraordinarily similar in the more important ones, a fact I knew right away when I discovered we both, at 27, still send our parents Valentines.

A second date? For sure. And this one might even involve that riding crop I didn't get to use tonight.

Not with her, anyway.

The only kind of date I stress about is the *girl-date*

L knew right away what I meant when she asked what my post-work plans were this week and I responded, "Monday - run, Tuesday - drinks with the ex, Wednesday - anniversary celebration with a half-gallon of Neapolitan and Serendipity, and Thursday...Thursday, oh right, I have a girl-date."

Men, on the other hand, in part out of ignorance and in part out of the undeniable reality that their default thoughts are synonymous with their most sought after but most likely - and unfortunately - unconsummated fantasy, tend not to assign the words "girl-date" to a let's-talk-about-work-and-men Carrie/Charlotte/Miranda/Samantha-esque happy hour but rather to a of scantily-clad, Champagne-inspired Gina-Gershon-and-Jennifer-Tilly-in-Bound (shown above) scenario.

But obviously (or perhaps, not so obviously given all the Monica fawning and gratuitous rack commentary), "girl-date," in the context in which I was referring to it per my conversation with L, falls into the former, less tawdry category.

For those male readers who aren't quite sure what a girl-date is, at least the kind of girl-date I'll be going on later this week, let me offer you a rough operational definition:

A girl-date is when two women who are relatively unfamiliar with one another (in my case, we met at a party) decide they want to explore a more meaningful friendship outside of their current circumstances (in my case, e-mail correspondence) and do so by setting up a meeting whereby the potential for said meaningful friendship can be more deeply explored.

For me, these dates, the dates when I might discover a new shoulder to cry on, a new acid-tongued wingwoman to have my back when I'm dragged to horrific places like Rumors, or a new number to dial when I find a mis-marked DVF wrapdress in her size buried at the bottom of a clearance bin, are much more consequential and much more anticipatory than the other kinds of dates I'm "enjoying" in my present social schedule.

But the question is...what to wear?

I have four days to decide on that perfect, not-too-sexy, not-too-trendy, not-too-trying-too-hard ensemble that will represent me without looking like I spent as much effort as I did assembling it.

Final decision - and reactions thereto - to be shared with you all on Friday morning.