Christina: Population 21
My closest friends are from Maryland, Connecticut, Marin, Alaska, Pomona, Minnesota, and San Jose. We met by way of cleaning the bathrooms and playing mud-Frisbee in co-ops at Stanford University. For two years, we baked bread, ate vegan chocolate cake, and shared our space with 45 other people. By senior year, my friends and I opted to live in a smaller setting; eight of us moved to a house off-campus.
This “small” house included two laundry lines, eight bedrooms, a rotating composting bin, and our own bike rack. We shortened our house’s hippie name, “Touch of Grey,” to its acronym “TOG.” We shared food communally and often cooked together.
Over group dinners, senior-year-questions arose: What would our jobs be? Where would we live? Even if we didn’t have all the answers, we knew that the questions were better together. We decided to move New York City en masse.
Why? Physical proximity and friendship intensity seem to be directly correlated. Ease often wins. You end up befriending the people in your freshman dorm and losing contact with high school friends. You go to the movies with a dull co-worker instead of a favorite friend who lives eighty blocks uptown.
So, for two years, four of us shared a cramped Brooklyn three-bedroom. We made sushi, curry, and lasagna dinners. We traded stories of our crazy co-workers. We swapped gossip about our dates. Sometimes we dated our co-workers, and the stories overlapped.
But after two years, we needed new things, or we missed home, or New York was too expensive, or we weren’t in love with our jobs, or we were in love with somebody, or we were off to more school, or all of the above. Lindsay settled in Spain for a few months; I moved home to California; Susan went to Spain and then California; Rachel returned to Minneapolis; and Sarah still lives in our first apartment in Brooklyn.
So what do you do when your girlfriend lives in New York, your old roommate lives in Minneapolis, and your mom lives outside San Francisco? Cry. Write letters. Spend half your paycheck on airfare. Declare a TOG reunion.
Rachel, Susan, Lindsay, Leo, Paula, Sarah, and I took over Rachel’s brother’s place in San Francisco (he was at a bachelor party in Vegas). We made burritos. We danced beneath his disco ball, we threw a Frisbee in the park.
On the last night of our three-day reunion, six of us stayed up contemplating the idea of TOG Part III. We missed each other. Could we find a way to move together again? While we all have the privilege of being mobile and adventurous, what would we sacrifice to be together?
To stop the friendship diaspora, I would start a city: Christina, Population 15 23 45
My dream is to gather as many loved ones as possible, tuck them in my pockets, and drag them and their loved ones to a livable place—cheap, nice climate, a good coffee shop, a library, and neighborly people.
In my ideal city, we won’t all live in the same house, we won’t eat wheat germ and tofu, and we don’t have day-long consensus meetings. We’ll ride bikes between each other’s houses; we’ll plant gardens; we’ll talk about our jobs; we’ll have potlucks; we’ll start an art center; we’ll help raise the neighborhood kids.
Until I settle on my plot of land and the pilgrimage begins, I’ll just keep reminding my family and friends: I don’t want it all. I just want to live next door to you.
