Friends with the ex

People around me are breaking up. It's that time of year. Good resolutions or something. This makes me really sad because there is always the problem when you have two friends together, that your friendship with one of the couple will crumble after the separation. When X left me, we joked that we would share custody of the friends we had in common, and never make them feel they had to choose. And this worked out pretty well.

Now the tables are turned, since the man I'm seeing is best friends with his ex. After years of explaining to people that it was foolish to feel threatened by my exes, and that we now only shared friendship, I'm on the other side of the fence.
And...I have no problem with this. Shocking, yeah? I like it. I like that he can go beyond tension and sadness and create a great bond with someone really awesome. And yes, I've met her.

Somehow I feel this sounds stereotypically French. I should be wearing a stripey T-shirt with effortless style, while eating croissants with my ex-husband's new wife, and smoking filterless cigarettes while accordeon music wafts through the open window.

Anyone here friends with their ex(es)?

I hosted a stew party (and I liked it)

Or should it be, lived to tell the tale.

I wanted to reciprocate all the kind invitations I've got these past few months so I invited sixty people to my parents' house, coaxing them with the sweet, fragrant promise of stew (vegetarian and goulash), masses of cheese and homemade cookies. Twenty-five people accepted and since I am still a student, still at the stage where forcing people to sit on the floor does not automatically mean dislocated disks or terrible pain, and since I appear to be completely wacked-out insane , I thought this would work out quite well.

Being a hostess is hard, y'all. Not only are you supposed to slave to make your place look nice, cook batches of food for famished and often allergy-ridden ingrates, but you are then to enjoy your own party, or at least, make it look effortless. This three-tier cream cake with sugar rosebuds? Oh, it's so easy to bake! That Ming vase your kid just wrecked? Just an annoying knick-knack that was a pain to dust. Oooh, look: someone is lonely and bored in a corner of the living-room! Must entertain them! You then abandon Promising Hot Man and go talk to Shy Young Lady while your erstwhile prospect goes away.

Plus we had the following situation: I invited people from my new university and old friends together. As we all know, this doesn't always work out. The old friends arrive full of inside-jokes, the new ones want to talk about classes the old ones don't know anything about, and you're in the middle, trying to pelt new conversation topics at people randomly, hoping one will stick. This usually means a newsworthy topic which annoys half your guests and creates a screaming match.

We also had my ex-boyfriend turned best friend and my oldest friend (thirteen years, people) meeting my Fling for the first time.

A recipe for disaster, you say. I was curiously calm during the whole thing, especially considering that I was fresh off the Eurostar, so to speak. I made huge amounts of food. I bought amazing cheese. I baked cookies (but, ahem, not from scratch. Give me a break! I was tired!). I opened the wine bottles to let them breathe. And then I put on clean trousers, smudged my eyeliner and waited for people to come.

It went really well. Everyone loved the party, and I did not turn into a Tazmanian Hostess, whirling around snatching plates from people, forcing dessert on everyone and laughing in a manic way. "HAVE SOME MORE? NO? ARE YOU SURE? HAHAHAHA!"

Magic moments of being a grown-up party-person:

* The wine talk. People talk about wine, instead of comparing cheap beer experiences. We're OLD.
*Someone asked me if they could smoke pot in my apartment and I said no problem. No one wanted to share though.
*No one started necking in my bathroom.
*No one robbed me.
*No one drunkenly slow-danced and then passed out into a coma.

OLD.

I am officially a hostess.

Impetuous

I can't sleep. I'm nervous about all the finals, papers and Christmas gifts I'll never have the time to purchase.
My phone vibrates.
"Are you sleeping? Want to watch a movie at my place?"

It's one in the morning. I ponder for half a second, then slip out of bed, throw on a pair of jeans and a warm sweater, don't even bother to prettify my sleepy countenance, and go off in the cold, silent streets.

He has the requisite tiny student apartment, but it's so tidy and stylish, it looks more like a catalogue student apartment. I look around.
"Do you actually live here?"
He laughs.
"Yeah, I do, but since I've been interning and going out quite a lot, I have no food in the fridge to prove it."

I settle on his couch and we start talking. It's a desultory conversation, filled with un-awkward silences and the occasional yawn. We're both tired but I can tell he doesn't want to break off now, because the flow of words feels good. We talk about everything, the way you do when you get to know someone you're attracted to.

The inevitable tension settles in, and it becomes less if, than when one of us will lean in to kiss the other. But as the conversation goes on, there's no hurry. We both know, and we're old enough to enjoy the slowness, the flirtatiousness of this early morning conversation, and the curious feeling that whispering can give to perfectly innocuous words. Every movement feels momentous. Every smile feels like a secret shared. It's pretty much perfect.

And when I fell asleep in his arms, still in my jeans and sweater, it felt like the best impetuous decision I had made in a long time.