Gaggles of Girls

I have always found hanging out with women to be entertaining. This weekend I spent time with four women who were out on the town. My friends Jeri and Erica live here in Portland and are both graphic designers. Meredith is a budding chef and a friend both of them who I met at Erica's wedding last summer. She brought Shari, a high school friend who she reconnected with recently in Seattle. They were reuniting because Meredith had decided to move back to Iowa to be closer with her family, at least in the short term. Eventually, Chicago or another city in the midwest would be her future home if all went according to plan. It had probably been awhile since I had been with a group that was tight knit and comfortable, that had conversation come so naturally between them. I had forgotten how much I thrived on that interaction, whether as an active participant or an included outsider.

We men have a lot of similarities with women when taken separately as a group. We talk about and make fun of each other, talk about things we wouldn't say in mixed company, and love to laugh. The differences in these dynamics is really only the subject matter. Women might prefer to talk about clothes, men about sports. Both talk about the opposite sex in direct and often cutting ways.

I love talking sports or any other male subject, but having grown up with three sisters I also crave a little female group interaction from time to time. I think it keeps me energized, balanced. I also get reminded about what women truly find funny; not just giggle-in-front-of-the-boys funny, but laughing deep from their guts funny. I don't like to do it all the time, as you take risk of becoming the boy who is hanging out with the girls - not my scene. But a good dose of estrogen by association is often entertaining if you allow it to be.

When groups of men and women get together things change. Each side (save a select few mavericks) becomes more conservative in their speech, eyes up their opposites, and either engages or retreats. Men, being visual, usually make their decisions faster as we become attracted at first glance. I used to think that women operated the same way as men did, just in reverse. Oh how wrong I was. Women look to identify those who they might truly have a connection with. They'll become excited by conversation, or even by a single thing a guy says; looks are definitely secondary in most cases.

In mixed groups of single people who know each other well, the interaction returns to a more comfortable level. Both sexes speak freely again with little concern for impressing or offending the others. These groups often form "urban tribes". Urban tribes are best defined as groups of urban professional friends who develop into familial-like units, providing emotional support for each other in place of their more distant (geographically or otherwise) real families. I was in the middle of one and enjoying it.

We all went out on Saturday night for drinks and dinner (though I smartly ate first), then to a strip club - totally normal in Portland, unheard of for mixed company in most other cities. The conversation was good, but it really wasn't until the next morning that the estrogen really began to flow. Against my gut, I met the girls for brunch. This was going to be a little challenge to my masculinity; Easter Sunday brunch at an expensive restaurant with four women who are completely dressed down. I needed to be comfortable in my skin - I wasn't worried, just aware of what the morning would entail.

They all got alcoholic drinks, I abstained - it was Sunday and I certainly didn't need a drink today (strike one against my maleness). The real fun began as they caused problems for our male server by asking for soy milk, artichokes on the side, and adding goat cheese. I ordered straight up with no fluff. They tortured most anyone walking into the restaurant for their Easter outfits, and I helped out (strike two); some of those outfits were amazingly bad. They loved talking about our waiter, and how he put up with them or even liked them.

It was pretty much the same thing I would have done with my friends, though we probably would have done it at a cheap diner, ordered directly off the menu, and ripped on our waitress. Differences between men and women among friends? Just semantics. And maybe a little estrogen.