When I first moved to California, I was so depressed that I spent most of my time curled in the fetal position crying. I was SO homesick and pined away constantly for Ann Arbor, my family, and my friends back in the Midwest. I told my husband in no uncertain terms that we were moving back to Michigan. I had no friends, no family, nothing for myself out here, and it seriously freaked me out. Plus I kept thinking, “there is no way in hell I will ever find people that I have anything in common with out here in Orange freakin’ County!!!” I’m sure I was a major delight for my husband to be around, since all I did was cry and wax nostalgic about things back home.
And this continued UNTIL I decided to copy my friends Stephanie and Birgit from back home and start a book club. They seemed to be having a lot of fun with their group and I figured that this may be a chance for me to meet some chics that I may actually have something in common with, so I posted an ad on Craigslist. And it was the smartest thing that I ever did. It started off sort of lame – small group meetings in a Starbucks and it actually was sort of a traditional book club at first. I got responses from women who actually did seem to want to read books and talk about them (that’s great and everything, but I was just really looking for some friends).But then something miraculous happened – other girls who had just moved here from out-of-state started to show up and they were all as miserable as me. And then a few girls who had been here for a while and learned to like it showed up too. And suddenly I found myself surrounded by this hilarious, inappropriate, amazing group of women.
I’ll be very honest that we are not the book club for everyone. For one thing, we don’t often get around to reading the books that we pick. When we do the reading, we spend about two minutes talking about the book and then move on to eating and talking about sex, drinking, and personal grooming habits (in inappropriate detail). And we are all far too opinionated, crass, and immature for many of the recruits who have shown up and promptly dropped out of the group in disgust. I’ve recently posted another Craigslist ad advertising us for what we really are – a book club that doesn’t really discuss books, but rather a group of women who sits around eating and talking shit. And we’ve actually gotten an amazing response.
We call ourselves the Bad-Ass Book Enthusiasts (aka BABES). And thanks to BABES I’m now officially a life-long Californian because I guarantee that without these girls I’d have been on my way back to Michigan long ago.
