When you decide to move to a new city and leave behind everything and everyone you know, the hardest thing to do isn't finding out who has the best late night Chinese food or finding out where the hottest place to be on Saturday night is. No. The hardest thing to do is making new friends.Sure, I don't really need new friends, since my old friends back home will always be there for me, but it's not the same when you can only talk to them through a web cam or the phone. As a society, we need human interaction. Yes, to the non-socializers, being able to be alone with one's thoughts has immense appeal, but it's not enough to survive and grow as a person.
The only thing is, I don't know how to make a new friend. Before, in the past, I made new friends through school, work, that sorta thing. And before then, it was even easier when you just had to go up someone on the playground and tell them they would be your "best-est friend". But now, as an adult? It just gets harder. Especially in a city like Milwaukee.
During my brief stint of living here, I've come to the conclusion that there are two types of people living in this city. People that were born here and continue to live here and the people who moved to live here. The latter are really friendly and open to meeting new people, but the former, who are friendly as well, are very clique-y and their friendliness is just for show. For them, it seems that their lives are set. As if they've accepted that along with their native friends, they were born into the cold, will live in the cold and die with the cold.
My suspicions were confirmed, last Saturday night when my roommate Gwen and I went to the über edgy sports bar, Zim's, a sports bar that had every one of its plasma flat screen TV's on mute, so as not to disturb the pulsating club music playing through the sound system. It was there that we met Christy, a thirtysomething friend of a friend that knew Gwen. Christy moved to the city over a decade ago, when she decided to follow her heart and marry her college sweetheart, which resulted in a baby girl and a divorce. Gwen gave us the low down of the city, from how low the crime rate has dropped, to where to get the best sushi. It was a crash course in Milwaukee 101, which even included my theory of Milwaukee natives and non-natives.Turns out I was right.Which makes sense, if you think about the people Gwen and I have met. There's, Sara, who grew up in Michigan and went to the University of Arizona for her bachelor's degree in Child Pyschology. There's Adam, who grew up in Atlanta and attended college with Sara at the U of A, and his girlfriend Beth, who grew up in Boston and now studies law at the University of Wisconsin. Then, there's the infamous Jack, who grew up in Milwaukee and went to school in Atlanta with a friend who knows Adam, but recently moved back to Milwaukee to work for his father's advertising company. Out of all our new friends, guess which one is the least friendliest?
Sure, Jack and Gwen share a recent history of a one-night stand gone horribly wrong (on Gwen's part, anyways), which could explain the cold shoulder and the slim possibilty of Jack becoming our friend. However, a week after bumping their uglies together, Jack started texting Gwen. Short, simple texts, with an occasional phone call that asked how her day was going, how work was going, yada, yada, yada. The text messages then evolved into future plans, like asking Gwen out for dinner or just to hang out, but each and every time, Jack cancels, saying "a friend dropped by unexpectedly" or "I'm so wiped." And each and every time, Gwen, who puts so much hope and emotion into each and every text message, becomes devastatingly crushed.So, now, I am on a quest to find some new friends, preferably ones that aren't drama. The only problem, is, how? I'm not working yet, since the store isn't open yet, it's too late to sign up for classes at the university and too cold to meet anyone on the street. Craigslist? M seeking M/W, platonically?
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