We would love to tell you that after we returned home from our sad spa weekend we quickly patched things up and got on with our legendary friendship. But the truth is, it took a really long time and a lot of false starts. Five years later, we are still figuring out how to stay centered in each other’s lives. We are still searching for the right words. And honestly, we have a lot of compassion for our past selves, stewing in those separate mud baths. We understand why it was so hard for us to figure out what was happening to us. At a cultural level, there is a lot of lip service about friendship being wonderful and important, but not a lot of social support for protecting what’s precious about it. Even deep, lasting friendships like ours need protection—and, sometimes, repair.
So how did we go from being the most important people in each other’s lives to near strangers and back again? And why would anyone put themselves through the torture of trying to stay in a complicated friendship for the long haul?
That’s the story we are about to tell you.
We are telling it with one voice, and in one narrative thread, because we want you to always feel secure that, hey, we are still friends. (And we are!) Figuring out how to share our story in a “we” voice also helped us find the overlap in our experiences. There are, of course, some clear differences between us, and places where our stories diverge. So in these places, we refer to ourselves as “Aminatou” and “Ann” separately.
We are not sharing our story because we think it’s exceptional. Quite the opposite. We’ve spent so much time examining our friendship because we believe many of its joys and pitfalls are pretty common. We hope that you won’t think of us as experts (you’ll soon find out why we aren’t), but rather as two people who love each other very much. Two friends who, 10 years in, are still finding so much delight and mystery at the heart of their relationship. Who are searching together for the words to describe both the expansive possibilities and the painful challenges of friendship. Who are obsessing over the question of how to stay in each other’s lives forever.
We have been enlightened and humbled to tell this story to each other. And now we are honored to tell it to you.
ONE
The Spark
Like any great American love story, ours began at prom. OK, actually, it was the prom episode of Gossip Girl. In 2009, like all pop-culture obsessives, we were dedicated viewers of this trashy teen soap opera set in the world of wealthy Manhattan private schools. Our mutual friend Dayo decided to host a viewing party, and we were both invited to watch the melodramatic scenes unfold from a semicircle of ratty couches in the old DC row house where she lived with several roommates.
Aminatou recognized a few names on the email invitation but had never met any of the other guests. It felt a little intimidating to meet up with this already-established group, but she knew that if she was going to make new friends, she had to get out of the house and be proactive about showing up to things. And she had the perfect thing to wear: a T-shirt that said “CHUCK+BLAIR,” the brattiest teen couple on the show. Her college bestie Brittany had made it for her.
That night Ann noticed Aminatou’s shirt right away and was impressed by her level of dedication to the party theme. As Ann sipped her manhattan—a nod to the show’s setting and a deliberately “chic” cocktail chosen by Dayo to match the Gossip Girl aesthetic—she noted that the snappiest rejoinders to the on-screen action seemed to be coming from Aminatou. Ann was used to spending time with people who had jobs at the intersection of media and politics, so the commentary and banter always flowed easily in her friend group. But that night Ann hung on to Aminatou’s every word and laughed extra hard at all of her jokes.
“How did you two meet?” When we find ourselves at a party, our favorite ice breaker is asking a pair of friends how they know each other. Romantic couples are probably asked this question most often. But friendship origin stories are no less powerful. A look of excitement crosses friends’ faces when they’re especially pleased with their own version of events. And even if they’re reluctant to open up, with a little prodding people will usually confess what they thought of the other person before befriending them. We love the accounts jointly told by friends who finish each other’s sentences or fill in the blanks, trading off as they tell their familiar story at a rapid-fire clip. And we love it almost as much when it’s clear the friends have never been asked to reflect on this, and we get to hear their story as they’re telling it for the first time.
We can learn so much about someone by the way they talk about their friends. And we can learn a lot about a friendship from a joint recounting of its beginning. Are they brand-new friends who are obsessed with each other right now? Have they known each other for decades? Did they used to be lovers? Is there some unevenness to their narratives, as if one person is more invested than the other? It’s all revealed in the telling of their story.
We have told our own origin story dozens of times, and we often talk about our meet-cute like it was dumb luck. But the truth is, it may have been inevitable. Aminatou’s apartment was a 15-minute walk away from Ann’s. We worked a few blocks apart too. Although there is a three-year age gap between us, we were both in our mid-20s and moved in overlapping social circles. We were at the same party on the same night because we had a lot of people in common—including our friend Dayo.
Ann had been introduced to Dayo the previous year and quickly noticed her declarative opinions, easy laugh, and gorgeous handbag. It seems stupid to mention the handbag, but among her peers—all underpaid political journalists—there were only canvas tote bags and backpacks. No one had a nice leather bag. Wherever this woman was going, Ann wanted to tag along. She and Dayo soon saw each other regularly at group dinners and TV viewing nights, when they piled into the living room of a friend who had cable. Dayo was a small-talk queen with irrepressible energy who somehow managed to turn boring “How’s work going?” questions into intense philosophical debates. Often, before what would invariably turn out to be a disappointing house party on a Saturday night, Ann would head to Dayo’s early and arrange herself on top of a pile of rejected outfits, sipping a whiskey while Dayo finished getting dressed. “There’s no skirt too short if you’re wearing tights,” Dayo once trilled, slipping into a miniskirt in the depths of winter. With Dayo, Ann always felt like she should be taking notes, recording the hilarious aphorisms that dropped from her mouth.
Meanwhile, Aminatou knew Dayo from work. Or rather, she knew of Dayo. Aminatou was on staff at a think tank, often at the front desk greeting visitors, and Dayo had a fellowship there, which meant she dropped by the office only every so often. They hadn’t crossed paths yet, but Aminatou had been called “Dayo” more than once. Aminatou was annoyed at the mistake, but she was dying to meet the mysterious other Black woman with the Nigerian name. When they finally got together, over bowls of ramen, they shared a knowing laugh about the doppelgänger situation—they looked nothing alike. They debated African diaspora issues. They realized they were into the same foreign movies and music. Clearly, this was going somewhere.
Oh my god, you need to meet my friend Ann, Dayo thought. A few weeks later, she sent Ann a message about organizing a Gossip Girl viewing party.