Hey, thanks so much for coming tonight. I’ve just checked with everyone else at the party, and we’re all in agreement that you behaved really normally and didn’t say anything weird or worrying at all.
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Even though your face looks alarmingly like a mole’s in that picture I just tagged you in, at no point in the course of the evening did I look over at you and think, “Wow, she looks like a mole.”
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It’s been on my mind and I need to apologize: I’m sorry I didn’t laugh at that joke you made about how your emails should be called “me-mails.” It’s because I was achingly jealous. And just to clarify, re: any other jokes I didn’t laugh at—I didn’t hear them. You were right to repeat the jokes twice.
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Let’s hop on a video call this week so you can ask me any questions you have about my offhand comments. I can carve out forty-five minutes to explain what I really meant when I said that thing about your inner child.
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[Reassuring platitude.] [Reassuring platitude.] [Reassuring platitude.]
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After what happened tonight, I’ve decided to name my firstborn child after you. I’m sure you can understand why.
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I did see that bit of spit that landed on your chin when you bit into those pistachios, but I didn’t find it gross. If anything, it was endearingly human.
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I know we’ve been friends for ten years now, so I can understand your need to hear this: I like you and enjoy your company.
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When you interrupted my story with a story about yourself, I was so, so glad.
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It is the human condition to agonize about the vast gap between who you want to be—who you think you are—and how you actually come across. I will not reduce you to the things you said over the course of a single evening, or that weird laugh you did after the pistachio-thing. I understand that you are not a decision you have made about yourself. And yes, you can take back the chips you brought that we didn’t get around to opening.
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Tonight was fun—let’s do it again soon!
