A German friend I met during my college years told me that there is a word in his language to describe your love partner of the moment: Lebensabschnittspartner. Now there’s a mouthful. When he told me this word years ago, I doubled over in delighted laughter, because how useful is this, and why don’t we have such a word in English? He did mention that this word was used ironically, with perhaps an edge of snark. In a recent email, he said that a kinder, gentler word more commonly used is: Lebensabschnittsgefährte, with that last bit meaning “companion,” and maybe even a good friend of a certain time of life. Just as much of a mouthful and as fun to say and no snark…so thank you to this friend, who has now been my friend for many decades.
It means a lot to me to hold friendship over time and distance. I have friends I haven’t seen in years for any number of reasons but I still feel emotionally close to them because of times we shared in the past. Sometimes, I get a whiff of their presence and the sensation—that I cannot scientifically confirm—that we are thinking about each other at the same moment, despite the time change.
As I’ve moved around in life, I’ve made new friends. Other friendships have slipped away. In a few cases, I still don’t know what went wrong, though I’ve puzzled, lost sleep, and cried a lot in therapy sessions.
Recently, I was talking about friendship with my kid, O, when we both realized that we’ve succumbed to the re-runs of Sex and the City (currently streaming on Netflix*), a guilty pleasure if ever there was one. Some of the show has dated in ways that are cringey. Clothes are sometimes questionable. Shoes are always amazing, if unwearable by normal people who have to walk. I still don’t understand what Carrie sees in Big. From today’s perspective, he comes off as a well-dressed, mercurial boor. O and I are definitely Team Aiden. We both think Miranda’s Steve is the best—kind, cute in glasses. We love his New York accent, he’s not an asshole, and he tries hard.
For those who missed the show the first time around, it follows a quartet of female friends who represent four possible fantasy manifestations of late 1990s White Woman of Inexplicable Affluence in Her Thirties in New York City. All four have fabulous careers and apartments, and even Carrie, the narrator with the least Yuppie job is able to pay for endless outfit changes and Manolo heels on a writer’s fees. She uses her oven as storage; they all eat out daily. Let’s just say that when I was in my thirties in New York City, I was no longer scrounging, but I never lived anything like their lives. One thing I have in common with Carrie: we both loved smoking. I’d smoke now if it weren’t so gross and fatal.
For me, highlights of the show are the restaurant scenes when the four friends banter about men and sex and the struggle to live as a woman with ambition.
It’s remarkable how little has changed. It has not gotten easier to live in a female body, despite a younger generation’s admirable effort to blur rigid definitions of gender. We are experiencing a shocking reversal of freedom as conservative groups and the majority of our current Supreme Court try to return us to a time before reproductive choice. We must hide out in blue states or at least blue cities to feel like the architects of our lives.
My kid loves that all four—even prissy Charlotte—are unabashed sluts and I use that word without shame or judgment, as they do. In one episode, Miranda and Steve compare how many sex partners they’ve each had. He “wins” but only because his bartending job affords him endless access to so many options. These women have sex with whomever, without apology, even though Samantha is meant to be the “promiscuous” one whose partner count fills a thick book. At the end of one episode, Samantha leaves her posh apartment where she feels neighbors are judging her sexy life for the Meat Packing District; we see her cheerfully greeting a line-up of prostitutes as she enters her new building.
O and I talked about how you never really find out how these four friends met. We don’t need to know. You don’t see their families or hear much about them. The four friends are their own family, loyal and reliable.
At times, I moved in friend pods like this. One group, also a foursome, met for afternoon tea on occasional Fridays. Sometimes we dressed up and went to the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel or the oval tea room at the Pierre Hotel, other times we chose more cozy places downtown. When we met, we were all in our late twenties, then our thirties. Later, misfortune and challenges came for us in waves. One of us was diagnosed with cancer, two became young widows, one remarried, one got sober. Two of us became mothers, a game-changer; where once we had all been in sync, our parental responsibilities changed the tempo of daily life, creating a misalignment, like a twig jamming bicycle gears. We needed time to find a new rhythm, a new speed setting. Sex and the City imagined that no one would ever voluntarily leave New York City, but as the years passed, we four made choices, we dispersed, and the group fell apart. From a distance, I wish them all well.
Some friends are gone—as in permanently—lost to sudden tragedy or illness. I know this will happen more often as time passes. Moments with these friends return at random, sparked by a familiar sight or flavor, or upon waking from a dream in which they appear, as if we were thinking of each other and they, no longer constrained by time and space, were able to visit me from the beyond.
Years ago, when I traveled with my new husband to Malawi, we met a man who had solved that problem to his satisfaction. Outside his home, a colorful creation made of salvaged sections of sheet metal, windows, car parts, and other detritus, he had laid out a cemetery, including a grave and marker for his future resting place. He had also set up a table with a bright red telephone that wasn’t connected to any power source. We were, in fact, in a part of the country without electricity. When I asked about his phone, he laughed and explained that he used it to call his departed family and friends. Of course, I thought, of course. Maybe, he was out of his mind, or maybe not at all. He lifted the receiver to show us how his phone worked. Tethered to my own notion of reality, I laughed, nervously. And then I thought: why not embrace this man’s magical world in which past, present, and future were forever connected?
*Fun fact: in the aftermath of the writer’s strike, media companies are still wary of greenlighting new projects, so we are being fed a steady diet of re-runs. I’m here for it, because I’m a nostalgic creature. Also in my re-run category is the hilarious Brooklyn Nine-Nine that follows a group of detectives and their captain in my old Brooklyn neighborhood’s police precinct. It’s a workplace show, like The Office, and also about a family of friends. I want to be as badass as Rosa Diaz (grumpy, leather motorcycle jacket, and the motorcycle), but acknowledge that I share Amy’s deep need to please others and organize life in folders. If any of you are re-watching either show, I’d love to hear which character you think you are!
Thank you for reading and as with all posts here, I’d love to hear from you! More to follow each Friday at noon. I hope you’ll subscribe and share with other readers. You can find out more about my memoirs Perfection and Eva and Eve here and purchase here. I work privately with writers on creative non-fiction projects. If you are interested, you can contact me through my website: juliemetz.com. A first consultation is free of charge.
I love that phone to talk to the departed!
Grateful for a reflection that engenders mine...friendships twine present and past in wondrous ways...