Almost four years ago I met Noah. Shortly thereafter I met his friends. He had told me about them during our many long phone conversations, so I thought I had a picture. It didn�t do them justice. The first night I met them I made Jaime come over too, and at one point we left to get more ice we didn�t really need just to get away.

(Clarification point: Noah has two sets of friends, owing to the fact that he changed schools in high school. The newer set is slightly more reasonable as a group, but also more distant, and are still freaky in certain ways. As anyone who really knows most of my friends knows, people tend to gravitate toward the same kind of people in any given environment. Anyway, with the exception of Amber who is now my friend, they all have issues too. But the first group has known Noah since he was six, and that makes them think they own him, on top of being freaky.)

Okay. So the first group consists of :

J.E.: He�s Noah�s best friend, was his best man and Noah was his. He is incapable of socializing in groups larger than three people, worse if he doesn�t actually know all three. He loves Noah very much, and I have sometimes suggested that he has stronger feelings than friendship for him. But in all truth I think his dodgy family life led him to rely on Noah and his family so much that they are a weird mixture now: friends, brothers, mentor (Noah) and mentee (J.E.). He has never liked any of Noah�s girlfriends, but he really likes me. He does have an odd way of showing it, but mostly I love him, in the way you love a little brother who often resembles a cartoon character.

Steve: I didn�t meet him that first night, as he was out of town. In fact, he hasn�t been around very much until very recently. He was in his last year at the University of Minnesota in Morris when I came on the scene, and that was followed by law school at Duke. So we only saw him on visits. He�s the one member of this group Noah has really been able to have real conversations with, which I like. And his particular brand of smug, arrogant condescension is amusing to me, so we got along fun. Now he has moved home, which means friend dynamics are changing between the guys. And anything that happens that seems like a slight to Noah makes me angry, so there have been issues lately.

Dan: There were originally four guys in the crew, but this one has just about dropped out. He cracks me up, he play lots more video games than the rest but couldn�t care less about sports. I think he and I would have been like Tom and I (without the, uh, complications that is) if I ever had a chance to spend any real time with him. But no. More on that later. He and Noah have a lot of fun together, but he hasn�t been around.

These guys come with women, of course.

Cassie: J.E.�s wife (just married in July). She has no idea what he is really like. She thinks he acts differently in front of his friends, and she never gets his jokes. She spends every weekend in the town in Wisconsin where she grew up, hardly ever spending time with him, and even less with us. In general I am neutral on her, as I�m sure she is with me. I don�t agree with her relationship theories, but it�s really none of my business. And I would never choose her as a friend if I met her on the street, but she�s nice enough when I randomly see her. And we agree that being with best friends doesn�t mean we have to be friends.

It�s worth noting here that Steve has not had very much success with women. Now his three best friends are married, and he�s still single. He has a new girlfriend, a friend of Cassie�s, who might not be able to handle his intensity. Lately he has been spending all his time with her.

Laure: She is Dan�s wife, and the reason for a lot of ridiculous drama in this group. Apparently she was once cool, according to the others (I never knew her at that stage). But after she and Dan had been dating a while she started to get weird. She dropped out of school, stopped hanging out with most of her friends, and basically became a Dan disciple. By the time I came around, things were getting out of hand. The guys could not hang out with Dan without Laure tagging along. Then she would complain about them doing nothing but playing video games. That�s what they do�besides the fact that no one invited her. The problem was that no one was saying anything to Dan, so it kept on. Truthfully, I was a little intimidated by her at first. And I think it made her happy to sense that, at least she did everything she could to take advantage of it. But then I realized she was not one of Noah�s friends, but a girlfriend of a friend. Then I was free to not like her, which was already true. However, I disliked her in private, I never said anything to her. I was under a gag rule, just like all of Dan�s friends. She however, has always been allowed to say whatever she wants. And she gets increasingly mean as time goes on. There have been a lot of episodes of craziness, and a ton of times that I have said I was never going to deal with her again. I have threatened to tell her how I feel, but Noah always convinces me to let it go. They are so afraid they will never see Dan again if she decides to hate us all, which she could do if I misbehave. Dan is not allowed out without her, she hates me, and her insanity has been running our lives ,at least in terms of our friends. Dan hasn�t really been around.

After all this typing I realize it is a hard situation to describe succinctly. There are a lot of emotions involved, and it�s hard to get a picture of her without any good examples. Here�s a brief list: she shakes her glass of ice when her drink is empty so that Dan will hop up and get her another one. She makes him stay home or tags along and makes everyone miserable. She makes judgments, loudly, about other people�s decisions � Cassie�s wedding, Noah�s job, my school. Meanwhile she got married in Hawaii with none of Dan�s families and friends present because they hate her, didn�t go to college, and can�t keep a job for more than six months. She convinced hom to dropout of college and threaten his boss to get a raise so they could buy a house. Yeah. Then the final straw was last Christmas, when she heard that I soon wanted to try having a baby. She told me to try getting a dog first. Then, after I was gone, she told those still present that I was so competitive for wanting to have a kid first. What?? She�s a crazy bitch. I thought I was done.

Lately, Noah has been feeling bad about the transition from being kid friends to being adult friends. As I mentioned, Steve being home full time for the first time in seven years is throwing the dynamic off. With him gone and Dan being antisocial, Noah and J.E. spent a lot of time together. Now Steve is back and J.E., with his part time wife, is always available. And Noah, in an actual happy marriage, is sometimes busy. Sothe two of them have done everything together, without him. The three dynamic is always bad. So Noah decided to speak up. He called all three of them and they talked.

Okay, back up a little. At J.E.�s wedding I tried to talk to Dan, to tell him his friends were missing him and that I, despite a lack of knowledge as to why his wife�s vitriol is so often directed at me, would be willing to give it another go so that the guys can be friends. He seemed to know that there was a problem, and said he wished he could do more, and we left it at that. A month or so later, Noah and I had a barbecue and we invited them. They didn�t come.

Then, Steve started up with this girl, Joni. He started acted vaguely Dan-like�with her all the time, making his plans based on her plans, blowing off plans already made because of her. This was a part of the whole drama that caused Noah to have a talkwith all three of them. Apparently, all three were responsive, and seemed to agree that the adult transition was not proceeding smoothly.

Then Dan called and invited everyone over to their house this Saturday. It was a response, I�m sure, to Noah�s call. And we decided that we would go, and respond back. I thought I could take Laure for one night if the whole gang was there. (Although, I also thought that at Christmas and it turned out�not well.) But then J.E. and Cassie said no because they�d be out of town. Steve said Joni had plans with other friends and so they couldn�t go. He made me feel shitty by the way, by saying that another part of the reason they weren�t going was because J.E. and Cassie weren�t going � he didn�t want Joni to have to deal with Laure without a buffer. What am I, chopped liver? I know they are friends and I don�t know Joni real well, but I would definitely help shield her from crazy bitch.

So then I finally got really pissed and said I wasn�t going. What�s the point of dealing with her on my own after no one else wants to? Then Noah and I had a big talk and I told him that I am sick of his friends. I have always been open to them and their weirdness, I have always been okay with him hanging out (unlike Laure) and have also been willing to hang out with them (unlike Cassie). And I�m sick of it, because they suck anyway. After a long discussion, we got a call from Steve, saying that after talking to me he talked to Joni and now they are going. So of course I now have to go, because I made such a big deal. Then I made a deal with Noah. I�ll go, but if she starts up I am saying something. And not just something, everything. If she acts like herself, I am done with giving in and keeping quiet. He agreed.

I had been planning on calling Amber and discussing with her the pros and cons of going, but since Steve called the decision had been made. Then Bryan called. I had forgotten that we planned to have him stay with us while he was in the cities for a big outdoor expo thingy. Suddenly, the thought of someone like Bryan in the same room with Laure was just too much. I didn�t know if I was amused or terrified. So I told him about it and asked him to come along and keep his muzzle on.