It sucks being a girl. Correction: in the generation to which I reluctantly belong, it sucks being a girl.
[This, I think, is not the case now. I could be wrong, but by all accounts, nowadays it sucks being a guy, but that's another post.]
But. . .for my generation, it still sucks being a girl.
A few weeks ago I had this once again confirmed. Charming husband and I were attending a funeral (for the parent of a college friend) that attracted lots of old friends from out of town. The night, as these nights tend to do, drifted to a bar, at least for the usual suspects (meaning me and the guys—pretty much the story of my life—something to do with growing up always being the "new" girl, and being the only girl on the high-school math team, and not really ever being too sure how to be a girl, none of these situations ever materializing into what one would imagine would be a gift of an opportunity to sleep with nerdy sex-starved but eventually-to-be-cool Steve Jobs' type geeks due to the pretty much universal rule that EVERY teenage girl of my generation believed she was the most un-datable, awkward, ugly girl to ever grace the school hall [Note to parents: it is your job to ensure that girls of every generation continue to feel this way.] plus me being the only girl because all other couples we know, but charming husband and me, have young kids (hence the rest of the "it sucks being a girl" wives having to go home and tend to kids).
These nights inevitably lead to reminiscing about the "old days" when charming husband and two other guys (during a period in which they were earning their 7 year PhDs in first-year studies) shared a house dubbed Club 910. Every weekend B (a local boy who spent his summers working at the beer factory and attended a very mediocre college across the border in the States, but whom I, anyway, thought was quite brilliant in a very lazy way), came home and spent the entire weekend at Club 910 until the inevitable late-Sunday-afternoon call from his mother asking if B was maybe "in town that weekend", and, if so, could B deign to come home for dinner.
B and I became really good friends. Mostly we spent weekends sitting in the living room of Club 910 (a living room that afforded an excellent view of the comings and goings of the local catholic church) drinking beer. This view led to very interesting discussions about philosophy and religion, discussions that eventually digressed into current events, our friends, school, Americans vs. Canadians, sports (well actually not sports since he was woefully uninformed), who could drink the most beer, and all other manner of topic, conversations becoming less coherent as the weekend progressed. Sometimes, in fact, B and I would become so engrossed in these conversations that we failed to notice that a) charming boyfriend and roommates were no longer in the house or b) a party had grown around us to which we were oblivious.
Back to the present, and getting toward the end of the funeral evening, we were down to four: son of the recently deceased, charming husband, B and me. I was starting to feel that kind of nostalgia that comes on when you've been drinking and turned to B and said: Hey, miss you lots, why don't we go out for lunch some time? From there the conversation went something like this (and I blame Rob Reiner for having embedded said conversation into our collective psyche, indelibly cementing it with Meg's "I'll have what she's having" deli orgasm):
B (emphatically): Absolutely no way. Impossible, in fact.
Me (kinda insulted): wtf?
B: Nope, wouldn't look right; can't do it.
Me: Whaddu ya mean?
B: Nope, can't do it. You're a girl. (He says, stating the obvious. We have had a fair bit to drink.). I can't do lunch with a girl unless I work with her.
Me: Well that's ridiculous, charming husband has lunch with girls all the time.
Charming husband (helpfully): Yup, probably at least once a week. I LIKE GIRLS.
B: Those aren't girls; those are colleagues.
Me: Stuff and nonsense. (Actually, I don't really say things like that.) Take S for example, she's a colleague of charming husband's but she's also one of charming husband's best friends and they go for lunch all the time and I don't mind. (This is a tiny bit of a lie as at first I did mind, but then I got to know S and she is pretty fabulous, and now I am plotting how to steal her from charming husband.)
B (and he is clearly now Billy Crystal and providing a tired argument): It is impossible for a guy and girl to be friends because any girl a guy likes enough to be friends with he wants to sleep with.
Me: Immaterial. (I think I am very good at arguing. It occurs to me that this is part of why B liked me in the first place.) You cannot deny that we were super good friends, even if you did want to sleep with me. It's not like you were husband-tuning me out not hearing a word I said all those years.
B: long silent pause (B has a very good sense of humour!)
After this a long boring in no way Rob Reiner-clever discussion lasts long into the night in which I remind B that I was there when he met his wife, that she would in no way mind if we had lunch together, etc. etc. B and son of deceased are adamant that married men and women cannot be friends, cannot have lunch, cannot, in fact, be seen together without their respective spouses. Charming husband and I are kinda stunned. Is this the effing 1950s? But, we cannot convince them otherwise and I realize that, for my generation, it does suck being a girl.
So clearly the only thing to do is to look for a real job so I can find myself some male colleagues!
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