My grandmother told me once that you are the company that you keep, so I wonder what it says about me, at 30, that most of my best friends are freaks?
Recently, a good friend of mine told me that she went to a swinger's club with her ex-boyfriend where she performed oral sex on strangers. This news would have been more shocking to me if she would have been the first friend to tell me some cray-cray stuff like this. My homies have been sharing tales with me along these lines, literally, since I was in middle school. Being the solid core in the midst of my friends' hedonistic, alternative lifestyles, I am brought back to my granny's words. What does having friends like this make me?
My old boss is one of those people that sums people up by their "energies", whatever that means; one of those "open-minded" people that gets acupuncture and makes decisions based on the zodiac. She used to tell me consistently that she felt that I was a freak. Somehow my energy was communicating this to her as I sat at home, irritated, editing some of the most grammatically impossible magazine articles you could ever imagine.
"What does all of this mean?" I asked a girlfriend last week over lunch. "Have all my friends always been freaks and I just never noticed? Is it on me now to lead us all to Jesus, or is it not them but me? Am I like the queen freak and just don't see it?"
"I think that it just means that the people around you are just young and living their lives," she said as she stuffed her face with french toast.
What would she know? She's a freak too.
My Muslim friend P, who arguably was a freak himself until he found Alah, would say that this is all just a sign of the times. Somehow we have gotten all turned around, led away from the light of The Creator. Walking off the beaten path, we somehow forgot that hell is hot.
I guess.
I look at myself in comparison to my friends and the one difference to me that is clear is that my boundaries are a little bit more concrete. And as someone who watches the trends, I can say honestly that sexual boundaries for single gals is about as out as satin gaucho pants.
"There is a little freak in all of us," another friend pointed out to me over the phone. Maybe she is right. If so, I like to believe my freak is much like the real me: sexually embarrassed and ready to take a nap, just to be on the safe side.
