Feeding the Soul

One Friday every month, I invite my girlfriends over to my little apartment and I cook for them. All I ask them to bring is the beverage of their choice and their sweet selves. I started hosting these dinner parties a couple of months after I moved here to DC; I was missing my wonderful circle of friends in New York City, and beginning to feel a little socially starved. 

The list of invitees has grown from two old college friends, a coworker, and a nice girl I met in the grocery store (that’s a great story! Some other time…) to the dozen or so girls I now call my friends.

It’s an eclectic group, to say the least. Among us, there’s a law student, a photographer, a refugee worker, a girl who works in national security (ssssh!), a scientist, and a flight attendant. We’ve even got a virgin and a vegetarian!

The girls start trickling in around 6 p.m., and one or two come directly from work, eager to end the week and begin relaxing. They’ll sit in the living room and unwrap brie, arrange a plate of crudités, or flip through my anemic collection of CDs, while I fuss with whatever is cooking in the kitchen. Most girls come at the appointed 6:30 to 7 p.m., buzzing my intercom from the lobby, coming in with bottle in hand, ready to hug the girl closest to the door. There’s always a latecomer or two, who barrel in just after we’ve tucked into the main dish.

At first, I had to make introductions every month: “This is L. She’s a friend of Scott’s from grad school.” These surface introductions morphed into, “You remember A., right? She’s the one who’s got the hots for her younger coworker.” The memory settles in and the low-level banter begins. Now that the girls know one another, there’s a month’s worth of catching up to do: How was that job interview? And your trip to Kenya? Whatever happened with that guy you met at the Irish pub?