::Shebytches::

A few days ago, I was sitting in a bar with some friends and I told them a story about my three flakiest friends in the world and how they managed to ruin my last birthday in Montreal. My new friends thought this was a great story and that I should write about it. So if you hate this story, blame them.

Prologue: Cast of Characters

It was summer 2000 in Montreal and I was on a strict deadline to complete my Master's Thesis and move to Toronto. I was depending on my friends for moral support, but they decided to spaz on me. In retrospect, I realize that they all resembled characters from that craptastic show, "Sex And The City." Despite the fact that these three friends of mine were intelligent, accomplished women in their own right, they felt they needed men to be complete. There was the naive-er one, whom I shall call "Charlotte," who wanted a well-to-do husband so she could live well. There was the hard-nosed bitchy one, who will be known as "Miranda." And finally, there was "Carrie," the super-flakiest, most self-obsessed, clueless one who just needed Mr.Big to come and save her from all of life's troubles and tribulations.

The Story: A Tale of a Night Gone Wrong

It was coming up to my 26th birthday and it looked like I was going to be getting thesis revisions back on my birthday. To make matters worse Charlotte, Miranda and Carrie had become completely unreliable. Their lives had been absorbed by their boyfriends. They never went anywhere without them. They deferred decisions to them. They were Stepford Wives! Carrie especially had this problem. At the time, she was dating a right bastard. He was the kind of bastard who would kiss Carrie and then grab my thigh and suggest a threesome. Carrie would giggle, "He's so funny!" When I'd tell the other two brainiacs that the guy was bad news, they'd say, "Sandra, don't be silly! He isn't propositioning you; he's just European."

As my birthday approached, I made three requests of my friends:

We go out a week before my actual birthday because of the whole revision situation.
That we go get drinks at this bar I really liked.
No boyfriends because I didn't want to spend my evening fending off "Euro-Boy."

My friends said they'd take care of everything and I trusted them because my judgment was clouded by the bright lights of my computer screen. I'm sure you can guess where this is going. We ended up going out on the day of my birthday ("Of course we'll go out on your birthday, Sandra!"), with boyfriends ("Why are you into girls-only nights, Sandra? Men are good too.") and we didn't go to the bar I wanted to go to ("Miranda doesn't like smoke and loud music."). We went to a cafe in Montreal's Gay Village (the cafe that was featured in "Mambo Italiano," in fact) and I ended up being the 7th wheel on a group date.

I love Montreal's Gay Village, but I like it with my gay friends. I like the Gay Village a lot less with three heterosexual couples who can't keep their hands off each other. I spent my time watching my friends make-out with their slimy boyfriends. Occasionally I'd fend off Carrie's boyfriend's advances while all my friends laughed at how funny he and I were. The other patrons didn't find the situation quite as amusing. Can you say "mortified?"

At 11pm, after enduring my friends for three hours, I decided I'd had enough. I told everyone I needed to get home and do my revisions. They protested profusely, but I insisted. On our way to the metro (a.k.a. the subway), my friends kept dawdling. At one point Charlotte and her boyfriend stopped to admire the wares in a shop window. There were platform, glitter stilettos and multi-coloured wigs on display. Charlotte turned to her boyfriend and said, "This is a store for prostitutes." "No," I said, "this is a store for drag queens. How many seven-foot-tall prostitutes do you see running around in two-foot-high, blue beehives?" Charlotte and the others were duly disgusted by the thought of a man dressing as a woman and had a few good giggles about it. Meanwhile, I waited for a few burly gay men to beat them up.

When we finally arrived at the metro station, Carrie said to me, "We're really sorry, but your gift never showed up. Nolé was supposed to come back from South America tonight and meet us here. We were hoping you guys would get together." "Nolé" was our bisexual friend who lived in the Gay Village. He was a great guy and I had fun with him, but I didn't want to date him. And then it all became clear. This whole outing had been a ruse to pair me with someone so I would no longer be the boyfriendless one. And by pairing me up with Nolé, Nolé would have a girlfriend and be totally presentable in public.

I was furious. I wanted to yell at the lot of them, but I was too tired to care anymore. I just wanted to go home and have a drink.

Epilogue: It's Been Real

Carrie married the slimebag she was dating. I ended up pushing the slimebag rather violently one night after he decided to rub-up against me during a party. Charlotte and Carrie, who had witnessed the whole thing, thought I had overreacted to his "European" behaviour and my relationship with them was never the same after that. Carrie and I eventually had a giant falling out over him because he kept telling her I was jealous of their relationship. She came around, though, after he hit her and they got divorced. Who would have thought he was an abusive bastard, she asked.

Miranda and Charlotte ended up not talking to each other for two-and-a-half years after Charlotte's boyfriend disagreed with Miranda's boyfriend about something at a dinner party at Carrie's (a dinner party I wasn't invited to because I wasn't paired-up with someone). I eventually mediated a ceasefire, but now Miranda's no longer talking to me.

Charlotte broke up with her boyfriend and is now looking for someone more "high class." She confided to me that they always thought it was a bit weird that I would want to go out with just the girls. They suspected it was because I was bisexual.

Sandra and Nolé moved to different cities and both settled down with men.