Singles Club: 'Men are beneath us'

We are six women who arrive exactly at 7 pm to claim our reserved table at Clyde's in Georgetown, Washington DC. Tonight is Friday night and that is when we six ladies meet for our weekly dinner which I am in charge of for this month. We all take turns to avoid the raucous at the end of the dinner when the waiter brings the check. I, of course, researched all the top restaurants beforehand for I did not want to disappoint my club members. We are all singles in our group. My fellow club members nod in approval of my very fine choice and it has a cosmopolitan feel to it. The restaurant tonight also complements us as a group. We are a variety. We consist of a Bangladeshi, a Japanese, a South American, an Arab, an Indian and a Latin American. We are between the ages of 42 - 49 and still consider ourselves young. We are a group who are ridiculously wealthy and live a luxurious life in Washington DC. None of us seem to mind that we inherited our wealth by various means; through multiple divorces, huge life insurance money after the death of a spouse and, of course, family inheritance.
Poppy and I live in two row houses in Georgetown and three others live in gated communities in Fox Hall where one has to show an ID before getting in; they record your license plate number just in case you are intruding. The group's wealthiest, Saki Mai, lives in one of those fancy Georgetown mansions because she inherited a fortune from family assets. We all have similar stories that bond us together. However, two years ago we came together with the help of an advertisement that Radha had put in the Northwest Current that DC residents read for all kinds of simple solutions to their daily problems. What would they do without this paper? This paper is a lifesaver. Radha, newly divorced, moved from Silicon Valley in California to DC just to be far away from her cheating ex-husband. We all saw her ad and at the time we were also looking to belong to some group with whom we will have no discord in terms of shared interests in art and culture. Our shared love for foreign films and travel through Europe are the main reasons that got us all connected. We also decided to form a singles club because of our undeniable need for human companionship and to validate our need to belong. We all have fat pocket books. At our first meeting at Saki's we decided on a club motto. The motto was: "Men are beneath us." We agreed on no discussion of men unless we joked about them. We all raised our glasses and roared with simultaneous laughter. Then and there we became a clique. Within months we were an intimate group. In a short period of time we became the unbeatable, inseparable six. Three of us drive hybrid cars to protect the environment. The other four do not care that much and own the most expensive cars that money can buy. Radha's ex-husband, a CEO of an Internet start up company, ships her the latest Infinity to win her back. She doesn't return to him, and yet decides to keep the car. She justifies it as some sort of extra payment for all the suffering he put her through. We all agree with her, of course. We often go car shopping like other people go to get a quart of milk. We all celebrated getting Isabella's new Cadillac STS by pampering ourselves with new matching Prada purses.
Tonight at the restaurant we are at our best. We often get a new outfit for this dinner and spend hours prior to that on eBay to get a designer number or look into all the downtown boutiques just to outdo one another. This very night after we are seated and getting cocktails, we start to talk about our upcoming one week Monte Carlo trip in October. By now we have run out of ideas and places to go. We are exploring more of the exotic places now. This past summer we went to Holland. We went through all the invigorating sightseeing routes to exhibitions that the country has to offer. Poppy who we call the 'wiz' insisted that we take a cruise through the canals and see Amsterdam at its very best from the water. That was the most exciting holiday that I had ever experienced. Obviously, none of us spoke Dutch; but between English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Hindi, Portuguese and Arabic we barely managed. Of course, my Bengali proved to be useless. During that trip Isabella, an experienced ice skater, tried to make us promise that we will have to come back to Holland in the wintertime to explore the winter wonderland. None of us celebrate Xmas, being single and all and perhaps we will return in the winter for a mini vacation. Earlier in the year we all attended a Foreign Language Film symposium in Beverly Hills, California. We all loved the French movie The Class the best (directed by Laurent Canlet.) The jury is still out on the rest.
After deciding on our final destination for the October holiday and eating dinner and sipping wine the group starts to get a little tipsy and I watch them closely as I sip my sparkling mineral water. My stomach cannot handle hard liquor. I am often the designated driver for such nights. I see that we are not saying much. So I ask, "You girls read anything interesting lately?" Layla rolls her eyes and tells me for the group, "We all need to get a hobby." I look at her in disbelief and say, "Reading enriches your mind." She is too drunk to respond. Saki, the most conscientious one, never gets drunk even though she is into her fourth drink. She suggests that once a month we go and volunteer in DC's soup kitchen. We exchange ides as to how we are going to cook up a storm to feed DC's hungry. Saki gets very excited; she dominates the conversation and says, "We must use recipes from a Julia Child cookbook." Then we hear Isabella tinkering her glass with a spoon to call us to attention. She is the youngest in the group and has her feet on the ground at all times. She pipes up, "You girls are so spoiled. Don't you know that in a soup kitchen one doesn't use a recipe nor do they give French culinary delights to the hungry? "Oh, we forgot," all four of us say. I didn't want to voice anything to this intoxicated group. I think of the homeless and how they endure a long wait in a line just to get some warm soup that comes from cans good Samaritans donate during a food drive. Suddenly my stomach feels queasy with the filet mignon that I just ate. I help my friends to gather their things and drive them home after I leave a twenty-five percent tip for the waiter.
Poppy is the last girl that I drop off and I head towards my home at one A M. Suddenly my brand new Volvo SUV which seats eight, that still has the smell of leather, feels very uncomfortable. I feel I am in a huge ship and I am all alone! Then I think of the club motto and say it out loud three times and then tell myself I am fine by myself and redirect my thoughts to Monte Carlo. I can already see us cruising through the Mediterranean. Layla's uncle, a businessman, owns a luxurious yacht and she promised us that he would let us use it. I think of the famous opera house Salle Garnier, and make a mental note to surf the Internet to see what great performers would be there when we arrive. I drive slowly along Georgetown's cobblestone streets. I sort of crane my neck and see the Francis Scott Key bridge that we cross to go to Virginia where our favourite department store Neiman Marcus is! When we go there the store manager comes to greet us personally and offers us cool drinks. We became notoriously famous to all the store clerks after we bought six designer purses in one day. I can still see the saleswoman hyperventilating after she rang up each sale! I pass Oak Hill cemetery and within minutes reach home, a two hundred years old renovated row house. I feel a halo of happiness in me. I get into the house that Maria, a single mother of two, comes to clean every two weeks when I am out on a Friday night. I go into my spotless kitchen and put on the kettle to make myself a cup of masala tea. From the cabinet I take out the finest China cup to pour boiling water to my tea bag with the powdered mix of masala. I never drink from a mug, a very American thing. I sit on the kitchen table with my cup where I see my copy of The Great Gatsby that I started to read a few days ago. I grab my book and lose myself in it. The night is still young.

Dulari Rehman writes from Washington, DC.