Apologies for the radio silence. I spent last weekend rocking out in Las Vegas with a friend from Major Metropolitan University and a bunch of her friends from the MBA program she attended afterward.
It was my very first trip to Vegas and officially the furthest West I've ever been. I had a really good time...the trip started out with more of our friends from college, but they dropped out during the planning stages. So it turned out to be just me with a bunch of these young professional, MBA, high stakes kind of people.
Don't get me wrong, all of them were exceptionally nice to me. They asked a number of times where My Husband was and why I didn't bring him (as I said before, when I booked it it was supposed to be a girls-weekend thing) and asking me about myself and my life. In fact, for most of the first day I was without the mutual buffer that is my college friend.
The only real issue we came up against was money. Everyone there had been working for years...and we're talking actual PROFESSIONS...Adidas Corporate, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Bank of America, etc. They've got money. I don't. I never really have.
But they never ever, let me feel left out. Between airfare and food and clubbing and all that, though, I'm still dealing with a trip that cost more than $500 a day. Even if it was an amazing trip (at LAVO, we had our own table with our own security guard. How cool is that?).
On another note, it was pretty illuminating to see my friend from college and how easy she was with this group, almost all of which was men. I've never been able to have long-lasting, affectionate and platonic relationships with men. I've tried. For some reason, it just doesn't work for me.
I'm assuming it's my fault. Until I went to college I thought it was unacceptable to share a bed with a guy when you weren't planning to sleep with him. I hadn't the slightest clue what "cuddling" was. Frankly, all my interactions with straight men had to do with them trying to get my clothes off (and before you sneer at my overconfidence, it was less because of the way I looked and more because I was a well-known virgin and a worthwhile conquest).
I had two major attempts to have male friends in college. The first was from junior to senior year...a guy I worked with at the university's sports arena and I became close enough to hang out together outside the office. We saw movies, we went to parties, we had fun at events. We had a bunch of mutual friends, so that helped. The last Tuesday before graduation, he got drunk at a bar we were at and told me I was the biggest tease he'd ever met and he wondered aloud why I needed everyone to be in love with me. I haven't spoken to him since.
After that, I made friends with the graduate student speaker at our commencement (I was the undergrad speaker). As we were going our separate ways, we stayed in touch via email for months. That is until I sent him an email about my boyfriend (now My Husband) and he simply stopped contacting me. Just like that.
So I haven't tried since. I know guys...most of them are dating female friends of mine or they're friends of the guys dating female friends of mine. But that's it. And I always used to tell myself men and women couldn't be real friends without wanting to hook up with one another or already having hooked up with one another. Seeing the goings on in Las Vegas, that's just not true.
My sisters have had male friends. Like, real male friends they can call and talk to...ones who buy them birthday presents and send them Facebook messages. And they grew up the exact same way I did.
But not me. What's wrong with me?
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