The Kind of Girl Who … is, like, oh my god, a total Samantha, you guys!

NTKOG #4: The kind of girl who drinks over-priced “martinis” with The Girls — especially when The Girls are in fact random girls met online for the express purpose of doing a lame Sex and the City impersonation.

I am: fond of hanging out with my lovely female friends, that’s true, and not adverse to the occasional tipple, but prefer bro-ing out with my ladies: catching a quesadilla, getting drunk and rowdy, wingmanning. I mean, we’re girls and we hang and that’s awesome on its own, but…

I am not: one to non-ironically demand an estrogen-heavy LAYDEEEZ NITE!

The Scene: I know it’s only four days into the move, but, feeling daring and preemptively fearing loneliness, I decided to take my social life into my own hands. Okay, full-disclosure, I am basically online dating for new friends. Current breeding grounds: meetup.com, where members are brought together by common interests other than an increasing terror of dying alone and unnoticed. I mean. Ostensibly. Amidst all the writing, crafting and nerd-movie-athon groups, I joined one or two with embarrassing monikers like “Boston Ladies With Moxie!” and “Boston Single Ladies’ Night!” One of them advertised an event for this evening:

Martinis and Mini Burgers!, it said.

Wear your Manolos, I scoffed.

But it’s hard to let go of that kernel of desire: what if, just by chance, there exists someone in the world like me, and I should meet her? Shouldn’t I at least give finding a Boston bff a shot? So I RSVP-ed yes and dug through the one suitcase I’ve unpacked for my SJPiest frock.

Nine other girls wrote that they’d show up to the hang-out (held at a semi-swanky place in a quasi-funky neighborhood, with a $5 entree ladies’ nite and notoriously small portions); it starts at 7:00pm, and, by a cursed trick of fate and MBTA miscalculation, I show up at 7:05pm. I debate texting coolly for twenty-five minutes outside, but the desire for a friggin’ drink wins out, and I walk in, glance around and see an optimistically large banquet table, seating one lonely frock-clad lady.

“Hey, someone’s here!” she shrieked, getting up to faux-hug me, slamming my face with an olfactory wave of salon-quality product. Yeah. Someone.

We gossip uneventfully for twenty minutes until finally another girl shows up, a glamorous but chubby blonde Harvard grad — Funhouse Mirror Barbie, clad in sequined halter and lugging a gym bag. A Harvard girl! I perked up momentarily. But her charm was lost somewhere in the vortex between her affected Valley Girl accent and aggressive, oft-mentioned disdain for all things Californian. Like, um, me?

Fifteen more minutes and the organizer’s quiet co-worker shows up, crowding out our table to almost one-quarter full. The conversation is lively and vapid (where did you go to undergrad? what did you study? don’t you hate it when your bangs start growing out?) while the organizer, one ear on the convo, periodically jerks upward out of her squat, ready to pounce on any single ladies looking to join our group. Somehow the conversation is bright enough to drown out the elephantini at the table: what is so wrong with us, that we’re reduced to meeting friends online?

Around 8:15, we finally give up hope, commenting agreeably around the table. I turn my attention to the overpriced “martini” menu, and am met with a wave of resistance: oh, my trainer and i hope to be able to work the calories back into my food budget, someday; i didn’t start drinking until i was 21, and i guess it was too late to acquire a taste for it; i only drink on special occasions, although now that you mention it, i do rarely find occasions special enough. Jiminy. Fucking. Christmas. Ladies.

So I snort back a brandy sidecar, the special-occasion drinker orders a mango-tini and takes two ceremonial snuffles, and we LADIES NIGHT IT UP on sliders and some fairly rockin’ onion rings. Funhouse Mirror Barbie texts distractedly, offers me some condescending winter fashion advice, then dashes off in one fluid continuation of her last swallow, throwing a few bills on the table and berating herself for being a social menace, all while hailing a taxi through the plate glass window.

I stay a bit and chat with the other girls, about all-consuming matters like hair care, subway lines, and whether apples taste better when you pick them from the orchard yourself.

The Verdict: Finally, we pay the bill and all walk out together onto the street. “We’ll have to get together for more meet-ups!” the organizer grins. “Maybe something in Salem for Halloween.”

“Definitely,” I tell her. “This was really fun.”

And, y’know, it was. Or at least it wasn’t bad. I’ll admit, a small secret part of me was praying I’d meet my total Boston soulmate, that we’d fall into a whirlwind bromance and spend an inseparable week together watching musicals and discussing Nabokov and gigglingly cooking s’mores over a gas range. But hey, buck up, it didn’t happen. What did happen was a very pleasant night spent with three (um, maybe two and a half) extremely nice girls with whom, who knows, I might one day click into some sort of genuine friendship.

So am I That Kind of Girl? Mixed: definitely no on the faux martinis (ie: sour mix + vodka), and not a huge fan of the vapid female bonding, but it turns out the awkward online friend-dating wasn’t as terrible as I feared. I’m going to keep trying it — if nothing else, then to placate my deep platonic-romantic. And as an excuse to eat the occasional round o’ onion rings.

Tagged as: boston, ladies night, martinis, meet-up, meetup.com, online dating, SATC, sex and the city, vapid