Barbara Pym Meets Sex and the City

Since the bridesmaids were all under 12, we decided not to have a bachelorette party.  But I decided to have a girls’ night at the house and invited Karen and Nikki.  Ed graciously agreed to take Josh camping.  I should have known how the evening was going to go when the first thing Karen said was, “I got a lavender heart cake.  I was going to get one shaped like a vagina, but then I remembered the girls would be here.”  (Never mind my current and future mothers-in-law.)  “Anyway, I was too embarrassed to order it.”

“This is daring enough,” I said. “The lady at the bakery probably thought you were a Lesbian.”

Karen looked pleased.  Then she looked sheepish.  “Actually, I was going to order one for after the girls went to bed, but the lady asked me if I wanted it with or without coconut.”

“What for?”

“Well, did I want the cake to have a Brazilian or not.  I couldn’t go through with it.  And anyway, I didn’t know.”

Thank goodness she didn’t call Janet to ask.  “Oh . . . Well, what do you want to drink?”

I’d picked up a lot of fancy intellectual, finger food from the deli that all the professors use and Nikki brought cheese and crackers and grapes.  We had four kinds of potato chips for the kids (plain, onion, barbecue, and salt and vinegar) with spinach-vegetable and classic onion dips.  I put out some olives, too.  As my mother always said, “Olives are so festive.”

Karen and Nikki had never met Kate, and they were surprised when she hugged them.  They’d never been to an Episcopal service and experienced The Peace.

By the time we’d sent the girls to bed and opened the third bottle of wine, we had stopped watching our language.  Nikki asked Kate if her collars were plastic or what.  I’d tell you, but I don’t remember.

“So, how did you meet?”

“Well,” Janet said, “I was at a conference about poverty or something and Kate was on a panel on    ‘How do we really feel about the poor and what can we do about it?’  Afterwards, I went up to her and said, ‘When you take your collar off, do you take the stick out, too?’”

“What stick?” I asked. 

“You know,” Nikki whispered in my ear.  “The one up her butt.”

Kate didn’t even blush.  “I said, ‘It depends.’  An hour later we were making out in the ladies’ room.  It was one of those single ones,” she added quickly.

Janet did blush.  “Just kissing.”

“If I remember correctly, there was some tongue.”    That was when we all started squealing.  Betsey and Cilla came down complaining that we were keeping them up.

“Good one,” I said.

So we all had a contest to see who could eat the most salt and vinegar chips without having something to drink.