I could feel the sweat pooling in my underarms and all the other crevices of my body. The voices of the other guests droned on as I squirmed about on a bright orange lumpy sofa trying to find the perfect spot to be comfortable. “Dominique, what do you think?” pulls me out of my losing battle with the sofa and I’m met with eight sets of eyes all trained on me.
“Oh, I um, don’t know,” I say softly as I try to hide my discomfort. Not only was it stuffy – It’s been 100F every day in Madrid since I landed nearly a month ago – I also didn’t like the book. In fact, I read it years ago and hated it. Yet here I was forcing myself to participate in a book club with a bunch of strangers all in the hopes of making friends.
When I first saw which book was selected for the book club, I immediately checked Goodreads. I couldn’t be the only person who absolutely despised this book, I thought to myself. But as the page slowly loaded, I saw that it had an average rating of 4.2/5 with over half a million reviews. I was the odd one out. As I scrolled through the countless positive reviews, I thought to myself, if so many people could enjoy and even love this, why couldn’t I? I had originally read the book almost five years ago. I’ve grown as a reader, haven’t I?
So, I grabbed a copy of the book and set to work reading the required sections before the fated book club meeting. The same thoughts and feelings I had nearly five years ago when I first read the book came flooding back as I sloughed through the opaque passages. Every time I wanted to stop, I thought about the reward I would surely get for finishing this doubly terrible book, friends! I may even have prayed to the gods of knowledge and wisdom to grant me the ability to enjoy or understand this book as others have. My prayers were not answered. Perhaps having to do with the fact that I’m an atheist.
As the moderator went around in a circle, asking each person a question, I could feel the noose getting tighter. Soon it would be my turn, again. “What do you think the trees represent?” the moderator asked. I tried to come up with something – anything – relevant, poignant, or even just funny to say. But nothing came. Not even bullshit.
I could feel myself moving further and further away from the universe that was the book club as I struggled to come up with anything interesting to say. The room felt warmer and smaller, but I felt miles away from everyone.
After sitting through what felt like Dante’s seventh circle of hell and multiple rounds of interrogation – “What is the significance of the toy boat? Why do you think the main character made this choice?” – I was freed from the shackles of the book club. “Well did you make any friends at least?” my partner asked me as I retold him the events of the night and everything that went wrong. “No,” I said emphatically. I went through torture and didn’t even make a single friend.
I don’t know about you, but I miss the magic of childhood. Every year as a child, I would go to the beach with my grandparents and every year without fail I would become friends with a boy around the same age at the hotel pool or at the beach. I couldn’t tell you what made us connect and decide to orbit each other – promising to meet up at a certain time to swim together or build sandcastles every day – but the surety of the friendship was natural and comfortable. I didn’t have to put myself out there, joining dozens of Facebook groups for people with similar interests or going to countless events where I didn’t know anyone, in the hopes of making a friend. I was never nervous or self-conscious because just being another child at the beach was enough.
As an adult, making friends sometimes feels like a chore, one where you have to be a little bit uncomfortable or do things you might not usually jump at to do like going to see a foreign film that doesn’t really interest you, going to a classical music concert at the French embassy, going to a book club where you don’t like the book, in the hopes of making connections. Add to that moving to a new city where you don’t feel at home, and you find yourself in even more ridiculous situations than you could have imagined.
But as the days went on and I reflected on what happened, I realized that I was happy that I had gone. Making friends as an adult is hard and sometimes it requires being uncomfortable. It means, sometimes, failing.
Because sometimes putting yourself out there can lead to something wonderful. And sometimes it means sitting in a stuffy room wondering if you can grab some snacks from the delectable charcuterie board before making a hasty exit.
And you can’t know beforehand which one you’re going to get.