To Karen

Tonight I met Karen, Lauren, Jo, and Halle at Gin Lane to bid adieu to our Karen. In the tradition of Sex and the City, she has quit her gallery gig and is moving in with her French boyfriend--into his studio in Paris, that is. The first of the tea girls to leave the island.

Sitting on that brown,leather, pin cushion ottoman, I can't help but think of the Karen I had met 8.5 years ago...sitting demurely in an uncomfortable seat while the rest of my pledge class milled around the classroom acquainting themselves with one another and the rum punch. She had finishing school written all over her. It took me a full year to realize she was Jewish and from Chicago--not some WASP from Connecticut. She partied harder than most of the other girls and she was always the last one up--even later than me.

We bonded over sleeping in, slacking off, and drinking too much but a friendship was forged when she took to calling me out of the blue to ask me to join the gaggle when I fell off the face of the Earth between dating V and running the sorority. I never forgot that. I tried to return the favor when she fell off the face of the Earth when she started dating her toxic i-banker boyfriend who moved to New York and promptly dropped her for some ballerina.

Karen had matured into a woman who still follows The Rules but now she follows them with a purpose all her own. She had stopped saying things like, "I voted for Bush because Daddy said people who have a lot of money need to protect their assets." But she is still a Park Avenue Pollyanna underneath it all and that will always be what I love about her. Her fashion sense is less eclectic and more exact. Her look is classic, her style impeccable. With her high cheekbones, fair complexion, dark hair and eyes perfectly made up...I have never seen her completely ruffled--not even during a walk of shame on a sunday afternoon from the seediest of frat houses. I've seen her cry and I've heard her squeal, but now all of that is in the past as she embarks on the next phase of her life.

With Karen's departure I feel a looming sense of loss. I mourn all my girlfriends who now live with their boyfriends and are lost to me in that single girlfriend way that closeness is bred by commiseration. I am happy for each of them, of course, but I'm sad to have lost all of them so soon. I guess on some level to be the last one standing is lonely. I don't lament my single-dom, on the contrary I cherish it...but I wish I had someone left to share in the trials in lieu of living vicariously through my torrid tales.

As Karen boards her plane in the sitcom of my life, Cat Stevens's Wild World comes to a crescendo as she takes a final look back at New York. Finally, she pushes her Anne-Hathaway-The-Devil-Wears-Prada-bangs out of her face and bravely steps onto the carrier to her future--in Paris with Frenchie sans job sans girlfriends--Manhattan past tense!