Ain’t No Bromance Like a Lady Bromance: The 4 Most Hilarious Jayne & Tatiana Moments

Now, I know that as supportive and entertained as you all may be (pffft, “may”? Who am I kidding? You ARE, obviously), some of you are probably scrolling through our posts with skeptical smirks and being all like, “Lady bromance, huh? Sounds like just a fancy, DOUCHEY way of saying they’re best friends.” And while normally, my response would be a hearty, “YOU KNOW WHAT, WE DON’T NEED YOU ANYWAY! YOU’LL SEE! YOU AAAAAAAALL SEE!”, I’m going to evolve (right now, before your very eyes – WHAT UP, DARWIN?) and actually agree with you. (Except the “douchey” part – I think you meant, “brilliant” and “utterly nuanced, I wish I’d thought of that.” It’s okay – I understand and I forgive you.)

T and I can’t possibly be the only set of best friends whose ladydates literally revolve around where and when we’re going to eat. We’re not the only ones who retreat to a small-town cottage for two weeks every year to indulge in nightly movie marathons, booze (and this year, motherfucking Schofferhofer Grapefruit beer because I am all about that shit!), and gluttonous amounts of corn dogs (oh, and writing – but, damn, those corn dogs…). We are not the only girls who point and laugh at anything even vaguely phallic, take every opportunity to make a sexual pun, and can have an entire conversation where the word, “boobies” is the most valuable player. In other words, we’re not the only set of best friends who openly, willingly, and enthusiastically indulge in the kind of stupidity you most often see in the male friendships represented by bromantic movies such as I Love You, Man and Superbad.

But aye, there’s the rub. Because while we’re not the only girls who behave the way we do, the media representation for the kind of friendship we have is sadly lacking, and quite frankly, better represented by the standard for male friendships.

More often than not, chick best friends are expected to sit around during sleepovers wearing footie pajamas like over-grown five-year-olds, scheming about boys, railing against other girls, and trying on each other’s clothes. And while T and I love men, are occasionally appalled by our fellow women, and are pretty much always down for retail therapy (though this is mostly online for me – I have this thing about crowds, where I hate them) we’d also gladly trade in any of the aforementioned activities for a burrito run. So…why “lady bromance”? Why the need for a new term? Because chick friends can be just as fun, just as stupid, and just as motherfucking random as our male counterparts- and the whole world needs to know it.

Take as a shining example, the following list of four of our most hilarious, lady bromantic moments. Then grab your boo, and together make some of your own!

1. The Case of the Accidental Hand-Hold

I have no idea why, but jay-walking is just one of those things that causes me a considerable amount of anxiety. I can climb fences and set lockers on fire (we’ll save that story for another time, kids), but this – this I cannot do. T has come to terms with this and the assortment of hesitant wails that inevitably erupt from my person whenever jay-walking is on the horizon (though I’m sure she thinks I’m certifiably nuts). She knows that as long as she takes the lead, I’ll trust and follow (shouting obscenities the whole way). One night, we hopped out of her car and were making our way to one of our favorite bars (not the bar, but still a pretty great one with cheap and delicious margaritas), when it suddenly came time to jay-walk. I sucked in a breath and said my usual, “Fuck this shit, we’re gonna die!” and T, as always, stepped in front of me and simply looked down either side of the street like a reasonable human being. She held an arm out in front of me, I guess to stop me from walking out too soon. Only at the time, I thought she was reaching out to hold my hand – so, completely on instinct and guided just the slightest bit by my panic, I grabbed it and clung on. We darted across the street, arms a-swingin’ like we were mid-song in some low-budget musical, and it wasn’t until we were at the door of the bar that we noticed our still conjoined hands, laughed coolly, and shrugged that shit off.

2. The Mouse Incident (or, “How Jayne Lost 23 years of Hard-Earned Bad-Ass Points”)

The first year T and I went away together for a writing retreat, we were house-sitting in a large, villa-like mansion in the middle of fucking nowhere. In addition to a vineyard, a gym, a hot-tub, a home theater, and a kick-ass pool that we never swam in because I don’t know how to swim and I’m too young to die, there were dogs, cats, crows, turkeys, and other such wildlife. Now, the Wild and I have a mutual understanding, which is basically that we both stay the hell away from each other for both of our sakes. And for the fist few nights of our stay, we stuck to it. And then one night, while T and I were camped out on our respective sofas, passionately typing away on our laptops (okay, no, more like she was passionately typing away, and I was procrastinating excellently by watching Jersey Shore [it was such a guilty pleasure, and you watched it too, don’t even try to lie to me!]), the Wild snuck in.

“Whoa,” T suddenly said, sitting straight up in her seat and looking down at the floor. “Did you see that?”

“What?” I pulled my earbuds out of my ears and looked back and forth between her and my computer screen, where Snooki or one of them fools had just said or done something to counteract the whole history of human progress.

Then she yelped, placing her laptop on the table in front of us and yanking her legs up to get into a crouching position. She pointed at the bottom of the couch I was sitting on.

“Mouse! There’s a mouse under there!”

I like to think of myself as a person for whom there is no kryptonite. I am unshakeable, unbreakable, indestructible, and, in all dire circumstances, solid and calm. But in that moment, my whole identity was DESTROYED, my motor functions rendered non-existent, and my mental capacity reduced to that of a gnat.

“Mouse, mouse, mouse, there’s a mouse,” was all I could seem to say as I wobbled around back and forth on the sofa like a cracked out tight-rope walker because stepping foot on the floor was no longer an option (are you crazy?!), and proceeded to text everyone I had ever met in my entire life – because for some reason I thought that was the solution.

Eventually T decided to recruit one of the cats.

I assented to this, but continued to do absolutely nothing but freak out and hop from sofa to sofa.

“Okay,” T said to Cat, kneeling on the floor (how is she doing that?! Why?!) and pointing. “Look! There’s a mouse! Go! Go get it!”

Cat was an outdoor cat, known for frequently bringing home the carcasses of the numerous animals she had hunted and consumed. But the second T brought her in, all she seemed to care about was the fact that she was allowed indoors for the first time in her entire life and COULD SOMEONE PLEASE CUDDLE HER?

T pointed again. “Look!”

Cat laid on her back on the carpet in a “LOOK! BELLY! PAT MY BELLY!” pose.

“Stop!” T turned her over and got her up again. “Look!”

Cat nuzzled her hand and started wiggling around on the floor invitingly.

Meanwhile, somewhere close but not altogether there, I was near-pee.

A few more minutes of that and T made an executive decision for us to head to the store and get some mousetraps. I continued to mumble incomprehensibly throughout the whole car ride and was generally a useless mess (sorry, T!) who briefly considered spending the rest of our vacation sleeping in T’s car. Somehow, T convinced me to simply line my doors with towels, and after I lied to myself and said that mice couldn’t possibly climb up my bedsheets, crawl under the covers, and nestle between my feet, I managed to calm down enough to realize that I had lost my Champion Bad-Ass title, and it was going to take a whole hell of a lot for me to get it back. (How am I doing, T?)

3. When T Believed We Were Louis and Clark

Our current yearly writing retreats take place in a loveable small town that vaguely resembles Hill Valley (complete with a clock tower!). One of our most sacred traditions is our long morning walks, which usually take us from one end of town to the other (once, we somehow ended up on the highway, which I like to think totally qualifies as a near-death experience). On this particular morning, T and I ended up on a long, winding, foresty kind of road, way the hell away from civilization with just a few scattered houses here and there. It was actually kind of cool, after I got over my fear of being mauled by deer, and there was something really peaceful about being in the quiet. Looking back, I’m pretty sure we were trespassing on private property or some shit, but oh the-hell well. After a good amount of time wandering in the woods and fantasizing about having our future co-author headshots be of us hanging out in the trees like two sad imitations of Tarzan, T suddenly looked up into the distance and, in a profound moment of pure discovery, said to me:

“Dude, I think I hear water!”

“Really?” I said, and I was excited because what the hell do I know about the Wild, and if T says she hears water then she probably totally hears water and that’s COOL!

She listened some more. “Yeah, it’s totally water! Like a stream or something! I think it’s coming from over there!”

We wandered like two eager explorers into some random part of the woods, and for a while it felt real epic, like getting in touch with nature and, like, doing what the Native Americans must’ve been doing before the colonizers came and fucked with their shit.

But turns out, all she’d heard was the wind.

It’s cool, though, T. It was fun while it lasted!

4. The Ride of Valkyries

One of the best things about being in a lady bromance with my boo, is that everything – literally, everything – can be turned into the best situation of all time, given the right attitude and the right tools. She was rushing to go pick up her car from her mechanic because he was being kind of complicated and there were all these factors in the way that were preventing her from picking it up at a more reasonable time frame the next day. So, we hauled ass. She was frantic and understandably pissed, and like a good boo, I wanted to be supportive and to cheer her up a little.

In a borrowed car on the way to the shop, I pulled out my phone and mumbled, “I feel like we should be playing The Ride of the Valkyries right now.”

So we did. It was blasting from my tiny-ass Blackberry’s tiny-ass speakers, but it was GRAND and it was SPECTACULAR and it would’ve been even more amazing if we hadn’t kept GETTING FUCKING STUCK AT ALL THE RED LIGHTS DURING ALL THE MOST INTENSE PARTS! But that’s okay. Because we repeated the song another three times and I paused it at the red lights so that every moment we spent driving down the street would feel GLORIOUS.

 

At the end of the day, that’s what being a good boo is all about. Being there, to make every moment as hilariously dumb and awesome as humanly possible, because your lady bromance is worth it.

– Jayne