Everything changed the day J arrived. She transferred from another high school in our sophomore years, and came fully formed: married parents, a house in a gated neighborhood, a cute younger brother, tennis lessons, a shag haircut, a guitar, and an unrequited love with a straight girl.
My best friend K and I had been drifting apart. Her older sister, who dropped out of Amherst and cut off all her hair and didn’t wear a bra, took it upon herself to educate us: Heavenly Creatures, The Crying Game, But I’m a Cheerleader, and Velvet Goldmine. K and I had always slept in the same position in bed together, with our legs intertwined, in her attic room that was painted kelly green.
J was new and wanted friends, which I desperately wanted as well. We got to talking in math class, along with a girl I knew from the halls, S. The three of us struck a little kinship. At least I thought so, until I heard J was telling people that I was obsessed with her.
This felt particularly unfair because I felt I was the only one in school who wasn’t obsessed with her. A bonafide lesbian–a hot one–in our midst turned everyone upside down.
It was 2004, the same year that Massachusetts became the first US state to legalize same-sex marriage. Our home state of Missouri didn’t follow suit for another eleven years. We went to a public school in a liberal enclave. K started our first feminist club, which packed the classroom in which we met. The Gay Straight Alliance was the most popular club in school (even though it was almost entirely straight).
After J’s arrival, the demographics shifted; the straight girls were suddenly bi, and the bi girls were suddenly lesbians. Even the guys were in love with her. I was fading from J’s attention. S, I heard, had stuck up for me, saying that I was only trying to be nice. She was pretty and cool enough to be trusted, so I was allowed to stick around.
A group of girls congregated towards her, girls with film cameras who wore heels to AP English. All total, we were a disciplined twelve. We hung out at J’s house to watch The L Word, or gather around her feet as she covered Ani DiFranco songs, or played original ballads about her lost love at the old school.
Over time, our attentions shifted from J towards each other. We became better friends, hanging out at each others houses to do homework or listen to music. Some of us got boyfriends, who stayed on the periphery of the group, and some of us started dating each other, exploring true, horny, loving same-sex relationships. You would think that there would have been more drama than there was. It was mostly a lot of fun. We threw big parties in which we would get dangerously cross-faded, take off our clothes, draw on each other with glow-in-the-dark markers, and make out.
Bottoms, the new film directed and co-written by Emma Seligman, is about two high school lesbians who start a fight club to meet girls. Hijinks ensue. Lessons are learned.
The main characters, played by co-writer and producer Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri, are best friends, pulled together by not merely their sexuality, but their awkward deviance. It’s impressive how well they pull these roles off, considering how charismatic and effortlessly funny these actresses truly are. And in this lies the crux.
Bottoms borrows a little from so many coming-of-age rom-coms: Mean Girls (but weirder), Superbad (but smarter), Booksmart (but funnier), 10 Things I Hate About You (less sincere), and maybe even a tinge of Revenge of the Nerds (less creepy). And the sum is greater than the parts.
It’s so farcical that the closest approximation I could think of was Wet Hot American Summer.
This is a spoof movie, which seems to be the thing that all the negative reviews are missing (Richard Brody, you will be dealt with). Sennott and Edebiri play their roles like the movie is an inside joke that you’re in on. Of course everyone in the movie is too old to play high schoolers, of course they’re too hot to play the ugly characters, of course the ending makes no sense. Didn’t you realize the girl with glasses was hot all along? I bet she knew that too.
What Bottoms captures so sweetly is just how much fun it is to slap your friends. If you understand the true meaning of this sentiment, there is no way to enact it with complete earnestness. The movie rises to meet this absurd premise with equally absurd moves.
Tender touches express how much you like someone. But a consensual exchange of violence shows how much you deeply care. It can be a shockingly vulnerable act of solidarity or a playful bid for connection. Hollie and I hid in the bathroom of a party where her ex was at, taking slap shots and giggling. Matt and I took turns slapping each other while listening to Robyn. Many an evening of pleasure begins with a wrestle.
It was summer. S and I’s birthdays are a few days apart, so we threw a joint party in her backyard. The main event was a bikini wrestling contest. We inflated a kiddie pool and filled it with chocolate syrup. Some boys had heard about it and gathered at the fence to watch. We grappled with each other, some more seriously than others, but it was my birthday, and I was there to win. I made it to the final: me against J. We circled around each other before interlocking, our hands slipping off each other from the slimy syrup, as our friends crowded around and egged us on. Minutes went by. Our strength was equal. Eventually someone called it: a tie. I could accept that. I had to throw my paisley bikini away though.
A few years ago we had a little reunion. J, R, N, and I went to see J play a show in Brooklyn. J eventually got the girl from her old school; they’re married now. R’s wife asked her if R and I had ever made out, and Rachel said “yeah, probably.” Then we all got so wickedly drunk and rowdy that some guys started mocking us. We joined in their mocking until they started laughing.