Outside, the world was quiet but alive. There were echoes of nearby conversations and the motors of cars passing by but mostly, the world felt like it was getting ready for bed. It was a quarter past midnight and I was walking through Barcelona’s long streets to meet some friends at Tandem Cocktail Bar.
“It’s a place where you describe the type of drink you want and they make a special drink just for you. There’s no menu,” my friend described. A place of surprises.
Tandem Cocktail Bar sits on a lively street in Barcelona. Carrer d’Aribau, 86, 08036 to be exact. Even so, it can be easy to miss. The door to Tandem looks unassuming, squished in-between two larger more imposing businesses. Like Narnia’s wardrobe, such simplicity hides a seemingly different dimension: the stools are a velvety red; the wooden bar is a deep rich brown; and it’s bartenders are dressed in fitted suits. And then of course the music– a peaceful jazz and classical ensemble– ties the knot. For a quieter more pensive Sunday, Tandem Bar could not have been the more perfect end to the night.
I had spent a large portion of my day getting to know the steep sides of Northern Barcelona by Parque Güell, taking advantage of the free access to Centro de Cultura de Barcelona, and then eating at a paella restaurant and jumping from one Irish pub to another with my roomie. Even though I was tired after so many excursions, I knew that I wanted to catch up with friends from Jaén who were also coincidentally in Barcelona. So when I received the eventual text for where to meet, I didn’t think twice in putting on a cute outfit and wrapping myself up in a warm jacket to step out into the chilly Barcelona night.
As I entered the intimate bar, I saw my three friends sitting side by side, chatting and sipping their individually made cocktails. “Hiii,” my voice came out deep and whispery, a little insecure but thankful to be invited to such a gathering.
We all shared a love for travel, and our conversation naturally veered towards talking about our dream cities and the parts of Spain we had seen or we hoped to see. It was a moment that felt surreal, so pinch-me and yet so simple. In the bar, there was no glitzy modernist architecture to marvel at. There was no ornate interior design to study. There wasn’t even a dish to pick at. No distractions from conversation.
We imagined who our mature alter-egos were: maybe a rich divorcee who is traveling the world or a lonely famous writer. We talked about who we were when we were sixteen and nineteen and twenty one– long before either of us even knew who each other were nonetheless that we would all be together on a Sunday night in Barcelona.
All I can say is that it felt very “grown-up.”
It reminded me of a scene from ‘Anne of Green Gables’ by Lucy Maude Montgomery when Anne Shirley hosted Diana Barry, her best friend, over for their first tea party together. Initially, the two best friends tried to speak in the most adult-like voices that they could muster for two 13-year-olders, but they quickly forgot the whole façade and confessed how excited they were.
I am ten years older than Anne was in this scene and yet, sitting at such a lush bar, it made me think of how much time has passed since I was a young girl. There is a performance to my adulthood and yet, like Anne growing up in each novel, there is a naturalness to it that surprises me sometimes. Sitting next to those women who are all my age, sipping all too expensive cocktails and talking about our life aspirations, I reflected on the female friendships I have had throughout my life.
Middle School
As a child, Anne Shirley accompanied me everywhere. She drove my passion for reading and learning but she also taught me something more important: the fortitude of female friendship. At Anne and Diana’s age in the first novel, I was in middle school and most of my days were spent flying across monkey bars and balancing precariously on jungle gyms. My friends and I were younger versions of Blaire Waldorf and Serena Van Der Woodson. Our tongues may have been a little too quick to gossip (xoxo) but if something happened to one of us, we were always by each other’s sides.
We played hopscotch and double dutch. We compiled quarters and dollar bills to buy snacks at the local gas station. We put eye shadow, sticky lip gloss and dark eye liner before class photos…and for me, some tissue paper in my trainer bra. We posed with duck faces for our impromptu photoshoots on the 2008 MacBooks in our school’s computer lab. And of course, we wet paper towels and hurled them onto yellowed bathroom ceilings.
In fifth and sixth grade just as we had transitioned into the awkward preteen phase, the piercing gaze of older boys had already begun to estimate whether my friends could be potential sexual partners. For those whose bodies had developed quicker than others, this natural development was seen even more as an invitation, an excuse to approach. What did it matter that my friends were 12 so long as they could wear wired bras? At the time it was exciting, risqué even. Over heated debates on which lunch from the free public school lunch program was better (clearly chicken nuggets and tater tots), we talked about these older boys and sex and grinding and how to shake it “like a rednose.” Looking back now more than a decade later, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
In middle school, I did not have a vocabulary to truly describe all that was happening, and I don’t think many people at large were talking about the nuances of girlhood and definitely not Black and Brown girlhood. I am indebted to writers and creators who are now giving life to the complexities of this really vulnerable time period.
One that comes to mind is French director Maïmouna Doucouré who had the courage to air out the dirty laundry of the sexualization of young girls in her debut 2020 film “Cuties.” The movie follows 11-year-old Amy whose Muslim Senagalese background clashes with her growing interest in joining a dancing troupe of fellow eleven-year-olds who call themselves, “Mignonnes,”– meaning “cute and petite” in French.
Although not strictly autobiographical, Doucouré describes the movie as her “own story,” as well as a testament to the journeys young girls go through as they navigate puberty, childhood, race and gender expectations. The movie was met with significant pushback from the US public when it was put on Netflix in 2020 (although Doucouré had received the Directing Award at Sundance Film Festival only months prior). Even so, ‘Cuties’ was the first time I had ever seen something that really represented how confusing middle school was: the fragility, the insecurity and the beauty of adolescence.
Unfortunately, most of those precious connections forged in middle school did not last much longer than eighth grade graduation. But for those that did and even for those that didn’t, I am grateful.
High School
In high school, friendships morphed into something more long-lasting: sisterhood. Philadelphia became home just for monthly weekend visits and the upper middle class lifestyle of suburban Pennsylvania marked the beginning of a new chapter in my now adolescent journey. Under red brick buildings and light blue skies, I turned fifteen and felt that the world was truly infinite. My friends and I pranced through our school’s 800 acres with flower crowns on our heads and lightness in our feet. We played hide and seek and snuck through our school’s hallways like the new progressive versions of 007. We sang songs on random stairwells and then made music videos of them. What we lost through our transition into boarding school, we replaced with new found meaning: a more expansive definition of family and love.
High school also gave me the words to talk about my experience with socioeconomic class and race (sexuality and gender would still need some time). Over gooey cheesey omeletes, my friends and I discussed Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, the privatization of education in the United States (of which we had clearly benefited from), and the ethics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In that same breath, we talked about the dread of college applications, our speculations on which teachers were hooking up with each other and about our crushes on subpar boys.
High school was a time of absolutes: Who were you? What was your sexuality? What was your take on a certain political issue? These were the questions our liberal private high school would ask us about identity to make up for the fact that it costed $52,000 to attend. Of course, most of my friends didn’t belong in this upper economic bracket, but some did. These differences in both class background, nationality and race shed a light on the myriad ways femalehood looks. And also the tensions that arise when differences in privilege become a part of the conversation.
When my friends who were not apart of this White rich majority spoke out against White Feminism at school, they were vilified for their activism. It was a wake up call to those who thought conversations on womanhood could just exist untouched by race, class, diverse gender identity, etc. Female friendship is a beautiful thing but it is not devoid of hierarchies and it should not be seen as such.
This is not to state that I am not thankful for the education I received, but I am most thankful for the people I met there. It was through late night conversations and heated debates on loft beds, that I truly learned more about the world and the ways in which my opinions still needed/needs much more time to grow. The connections that I made make me think about the relationship between Maeve Wiley and Aimee Gibbs, two titular characters in the British comedy-drama Sex Education.
Sex Education follows the lives of students at fictional Moordale Secondary school. Although as one can probably assume from the title, one of the larger premises of the series is on how these fictional teenagers understand and grapple with their varying relationships with sex. And naturally, interwined with these stories are conversations on Queerness, socioeconomic background, gender identity and cultural heritage. But besides the more sex-oriented focus, the show also does a spectacular job at celebrating the deep bonds of friendship, between all genders.
In a heartfelt scene between Aimee and Maeve, Aimee says to her best friend, someone who has had a much different upbringing than herself, “I know you don’t like emotional sh*t, but I’ve been thinking about how you don’t really have a proper mum, and I wanted you to know that even though my mum has money, she’s also crap sometimes too. So I was thinking that maybe we could be each other’s mums.”
As my “hermana” from high school wittily put, “I didn’t really make friends, I made family.”
College
College friendships felt different, everything did. Rural life replaced suburbia. Intellectualism took the place of vulnerability. Happiness became elusive. And while the lightness of high school gave way to a heavier disposition, my female friends (in addition to a few guy friends) truly carried the torch that guided me through that dark tunnel. We blasted music and danced freely in unoccupied dance rooms. We road bikes in Florida and stopped by beaches to make animals in the sand. We played soccer, rowed and ran together. And though my experience in college was hampered by my own disdain for the institution I attended, my classmates and also my professors were consistent beacons of positivity in my life.
Such bonds between adult women have now (thankfully) become more appreciated and celebrated in mainstream media, primarily thanks to women directors, screenwriters and producers who have demanded more complex storylines for female characters.
One show that I have always felt an affinity towards has been HBO’s Insecure created by Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore. Insecure was one of the shows that one close friend and I bonded over on on our first friend date in our college dining hall. Eating scooped coffee ice cream with chocolate sprinkles, we did not hold back in our conversation, asking, “who should Issa end up with?” Followers of the show know that Issa, the protagonist, has gone through a lot when it comes to the males in her life. But besides romance, the true foundation of the show is female friendship. The show’s two lead female characters, Issa (Issa Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji), have gone through all stages of best friendshipness, including months of not talking to one another. And yet even points of tension demonstrate how rich and complex the bond between two women can be.
*Spoilers ahead*
Who can forget one of the last scenes in the finale season when Issa helps Molly, a character who had turbulent relationships with her romantic and platonic partners throughout the entire show, out of her wedding dress after the special ceremony?
With only the two of them together, Molly says:
“Thank you so much for everything, Issa…For everything, just for being you and for loving me while I was me. I don’t know where life is gonna take us. But I just know that as long as you’re around I’mma be okay.”
Issa responds, “Me too.”
It’s one of the most tender moments of the entire show. As GQ article, “Insecure Was About the Messiness of Love, and That’s Why the Finale Was Perfect,” puts it perfectly, Issa and Molly’s deep bond throughout all five seasons is “the true love story of the show.” The emotionally-wrenching interaction between Molly and Issa demonstrates the persistent nature of their relationship, the ways in which regardless of whether they were physically together, they always wanted the best for each other.
Insecure also highlights friendship between women who have already been in the workforce for years. While one might expect that the leading ladies would have everything together, the show expertly shows that at whatever age, you can still feel lost and unsure of yourself, and that regardless of your success or your failures, your friends will always be by your side.
Making friends outside of a structure like high school or college is a difficult journey. It can feel almost foreign to think back to elementary school when all you had to was say hi to someone and you would automatically become best friends. As a young adult, making friends can feel like a landmine of not wanting to present too clingy or too distant or too whatever.
But with time, I’ve realized that the most I can do is take things step by step. Sometimes I feel like I should have more friends, that I’m not putting myself out there enough and that I should have a solidified friend group. I don’t think that’s an unfair judgement. I think it’s important to push oneself. But I also recognize that I am constantly changing, and that this evolution into the unknown is a scary but precious process.
For instance, up until recently, I hadn’t realized how nice it was to have someone who waits with you in long bus lines or who cracks a joke at 4:30 am as you get the cheapest flight or who waves at you through a store glass window just cause you took too long to decide between purchasing dates or a chicken empanada.
Sitting in front of my roommate at a cafeteria in Barcelona (a now sacred tradition of ordering pan au chocolate together) I confessed how nice it is to have someone with me on these adventures.
I experienced a similar feeling when one of the girls I had met at Tandem had previously said that she was excited to meet me after our mutual friend had talked about me. If I could blush, I would have. Or after having delicious burgers and fries with two girls that we had met at our hostel in Barcelona, one of them shyly asked if she could visit Jaén… which of course prompted an, “absolutely!” from both me and my roommate.
All of these relationships and interactions are so special even though I don’t know how long they will last. I’m sure there are some people who I will never see again. And I’m equally sure that there are others who will stick with me forever. Like Anne brightly says, “kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
And so regardless of the outcome, I know that that first timid, “hello,” between two potential friends is all that is needed to open a world of dear kindred spirits.
Where in the world 
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