Helen looking fab in red.

Every person needs a best-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world in life. There’s too much to experience in life without having someone with whom to share in all the highs and lows. So let me introduce you to mine. She’s the gal who’s been through thick and thin with me since we were 13. Her name is Helen. I think I have mentioned her once or twice before but this post is specifically about her, since we have such a grand old time together in our late 20s in continuing our long, fruitful and dear friendship.

While Helen is clearly at the top of my Favorite People list, she tops other people’s, as well. She touches many lives every single day and for those like me who know her on a deeper level, we are certainly blessed.

She’s the first person to tell you that yes, she’s got one eye that doesn’t look like it’s focusing on you, but it really is (see photo – it’s just slightly off center). But it just adds to her quirky charm. She’s “slightly off center” in a delightful way.

Helen is one of those unique, fun souls who does stuff like ‘skip’birthdays (she skipped 19 and was 18 for two years until she got to 20) and will go from being introverted to extroverted, just because she feels like it and/or she feels it might be fun or beneficial. She visited me last weekend and left Tuesday on one of our semi-annual Helen/Zoe get-togethers. It helped that the weather cooperated and we had the most gorgeous, humidity-free four days a person can ask for in this town. It’s now kinda cold and windy, so I’m truly aware of how awesome-as-ass our weather was.

In our friendship we agree on a lot of things in life, but we each bring our own unique perspective to the table. My practicality, tenacity and problem-solving skills are qualities she admires in me. I admire her ability to talk to anybody, her blasé way of offering anyone a cigarette, advice, kleenex, funny story, etc

Circa 2006

and her insanely generous tipping habit. Oh and I adore her loud laugh. Between the two of us I think we’d shake some walls if given the right humorous situation. One of my favorite things is when we reminisce about St. Louis (she resides in DC now) and revel in our Midwesternness. We want to go to St. Louis in the next year and do all the stuff we never did when we lived there as young, not-as-of-yet-independent people and just get a real adult experience of the place.

A lot of her ability to talk to just any old person comes from the fact that she’s a waitress/bartender and works for all the shades of people in the rainbow every single day. Particularly since she works in a pub, she gets to deal with a grittier, more “real” clientele. (She informed me of the type of customer who favors chicken wings versus those who go to a restaurant where they are not on the menu. Chicken wings are extremely popular where she works.)

Helen's karma

Helen is also one of the nicest, most genuine and generous people I know. It doesn’t get much better than her. If her karma were a credit score, it’d be a black American Express – no exaggeration.

As one of her favorite things to do is treat people to decadent meals since she is a fine dining junkie, we have eaten at some fantastic places in New York. There was also one very memorable birthday lunch (hers) that we had at Charlie Gitto’s on The Hill in St. Louis. Bar none they served me the best goddamn pasta primavera that side of the Mason Dixon line.

Side paragraph: for those of you who have never been to St. Louis, it’s not just some random, podunk midwestern town. It’s a very decent size (about a million people overall) with our own monument (it’s called The Arch, in case you didn’t know)

and some of the friendliest people you could ever hope to meet. I just want to state for the record that it’s a “real” city and just because it’s in Missouri, it doesn’t mean we all know each other. Once, a woman asked me if I knew who Kimora Lee Simmons is because she’s also from St. Louis, and don’t we St. Louisans hail her as a big celebrity? No, we sure don’t. At least not me. Her being from St. Louis has no bearing on my life or most anyone else’s.

Back to the point, which is that of Helen’s awesomeness. Last year, we had a very extravagant meal at Angelo & Maxie’s Steakhouse in Manhattan. It was one of those places where we waited so long for our reserved table (reserved for 9:15pm), that Helen felt compelled to bribe the maitre d’just to get us seated (and we’d already had a few drinks standing in the balls-to-the-wall packed waiting area/bar). That’s just how she rolls. If she really likes a server and makes some kind of a connection, she’ll tip what most people wish they made in one day. “It’s only money,” she’s fond of saying. I believe our waitress that night was also gluten intolerant, which Helen is, also. I don’t know of a greater injustice than her suddenly having an acute resistance to digesting gluten (wheat, barley, oats, malt, that type of stuff) in her early 20s. But we work well around it. So yes, she tipped our very friendly celiac waitress handsomely.

Now to an outsider, it sounds like the rest of us were being assholes for not paying. But Helen just loves treating people to decadent food and will only let you pay if you absolutely forcefully insist and/or you sneak a credit card to your server while she’s not looking. That’s about it. And even then, she’ll add a twenty, sometimes more, to the tip. When we’re older I will have saved up for something outrageously grand to which I will treat her. She has so utterly earned it.

We gab on the phone on a weekly basis. Sometimes it’s just on the way to work, sometimes she calls me when she gets off a shift early, and we make it a priority to talk on the weekends to check in. Being not too far from one another city-wise, we could easily drop whatever we had to if one of us needed to get to the other in a pinch. It’s worked out really nicely like that.

And so, with the good weather gracing our every step of last weekend, we were able to see and do more around this fair city, especially in Astoria. Two places to absolutely try are Cafe Bar and Grand Cafe. I know, there’s a running theme here with the word cafe. But it was purely by coincidence that we frequented both; Grand Cafe is on 30th Avenue while Cafe Bar is on 34th Avenue. There are tons of other places to go in Astoria, which I’m sure I’ll write about at some point down the line. But for now, I can highly recommend those two – great food, drinks AND atmosphere….AND Cafe Bar has the extra plus of not being overly slammed, so there’s no outrageous 45 minute wait on a Sunday for breakfast or brunch. There aren’t too many, if any, places in Manhattan that can boast the same.

I’m getting way off fucking track, as per uge. The point is that whether Helen and I discuss politics, books, movies, clothes, shoes, men, jobs, vices or a gazillion other topics, we have a blast. Laughter permeates our friendship, as it should for most situations in this hectic, unknowing thing we call life. And no matter what happens, we’ll always have each other’s backs. I don’t have any sisters but if I did, I’d want one just like her. My sister for life. To Helen.

Thanks, girlfriend. For now and for always.