Girls Just Wanna...

They sit together in the living room. Their bellies full from the meal they’ve just shared, their spirits high from the wine they’ve enjoyed with it. They are a gathering of smart, sophisticated, professional women, brought together in celebration of friendship and birthdays shared. They are the kinds of women who go to work all week long and make important decisions. They are dependable and reliable. Some manage teams of employees who look to them for guidance. Most of them pay their bills on time. Some of them are parents and are responsible for guiding their children through life. All normally conduct themselves with grace and dignity. They are the kinds of people who appear to have it all together.

The hostess turns on the CD player and inserts a collection of 80s tunes for the group’s listening pleasure. Most of the women remember this music from high school dances or University pub-crawls. Madonna’s “Holiday” comes on and a few of them get up to dance goofily for the amusement of their friends. Holding imaginary microphones, they belt out the song while doing their best material girl imitations. Everyone laughs. “You spin me right ‘round” comes on, everyone says “oh, yeah!” and a few more get up to join the dancing. More wine is opened, more singing follows, more dance moves are broken out. Someone does the moonwalk. Someone does a bridge. Someone starts a congo line and everyone joins in.

Three have taken stripping classes and break out their stripper moves. A stripping lesson follows. Everyone participates with varying degrees of flexibility and ease. People fall. Someone leaves the room and comes back wearing a pair of hockey pants. Someone wraps a pashmina around her head like a turban and moves across the floor. Someone else thinks that’s the best thing she’s ever seen and does the same. Someone leaps onto the couch, arms spread wide and says, “look at me, I’m Tom Cruise!” Two women exit the bedroom wearing bikinis on top of their jeans and t-shirts. Everyone applauds.

Eight women are dancing with reckless abandon, sweating their hearts out and laughing so hard that each occasionally has to stop dancing to watch her friends reach new heights of silliness while she catches her breath. It is pure amusement. It is happiness unleashed. More than once, a dancer stops to shout out “I love my friends” and everyone agrees. It is a night that recalls memories decades old and yet is so different. Gone is the angst of the teenager. Gone is the self-consciousness of adolescence. Instead, there is only the joy of knowing who you are and how lucky you are to have people in your life who will shake their maracas with you for the sheer pleasure of it. Indeed, I love my friends.