The Man at Girls’ Night
by Liz Wykcoff
Girls’ Night was an inappropriate title for the party for several reasons. For one thing, eight women, and no girls, were invited. For another thing, a man attended.
He was the boyfriend (manfriend?) of one of the women in attendance, 
and a good friend to us all. He was a welcome man. But because of his presence, I saw everything at Girls’ Night through a slightly different lens.
This kind of thing happens every time someone from one aspect of my life turns up in another. As Angela Chase so eloquently put it: “What I like, dread, is when people who know you in completely different ways end up in the same area. And you have to develop, this like, combination you, on the spot.”
And that’s exactly what I did.
For example, at Girls’ Night, we used nailpolish, nailpolish remover, and cotton balls while watching Love Actually. Several women disappeared into the bathroom and emerged wearing the kind of exfoliating masks that coat your face like a sheet of Glad cling-wrap.
This was exactly the kind of stuff I expected to find at Girls’ Night. Mulled wine, homemade cookies, chocolate-covered macadamia nuts? Not surprising. Footspas with bubbles? Embarrassingly obvious. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw bacon-wrapped dates on a plate. Then cringed when someone told me the man had brought them.
I should have been thrilled when our hostess came into the living room holding a hot tray of pigs in a blanket, but at that point, it seemed so cliché that I almost wanted to cry.
If I hadn’t been so busy developing a combination me on the spot, I would have been having great fun. The women told stories about baking disasters—how they’d hidden things inside their ovens, then forgotten about them and burned them to a crisp. Later, one woman told a post-break-up story about eating multiple spray tubes full of blue frosting.
But, throughout it all, the man sat smiling on the carpet. He ate some pigs in a blanket. He inhaled toxic fumes without comment. And, at the end of the night, he turned to me and said, “I have to admit, I think Love Actually is pretty good.” I knew then that I could finally act like myself again.
Thankfully, I can’t stand that goddamn movie.
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