Making friends as an adult isn’t as easy as it was when we were all trapped in the same classroom for hours every day. And when you move to a new city all by your lonesome, it’s easy to get in your head about finding your people. I didn’t realize how easy I had it when I moved to Tucson because grad school came with a built-in pod of people who had common interests and who were (mostly) all new to Arizona; moving to Portland afterwards was a rude awakening.
So this week we accompanied Luke—mustachio’d, tattooed, crowned with a tiny beanie—as he navigated the choppy waters of finding friendship and community in a new city. At first, the guy living in the other half of Luke’s duplex sure seemed like a perfect candidate, a bro of dreams. But alas—as you know, because this is a Normal Gossip story—relationships with neighbors can be… shall we say fraught?
Joining Kelsey this week to unravel Luke’s quest for adult friendship is Jasmine Guillory! Jasmine is the New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding Date, The Proposal, Drunk on Love, and more. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appetit, and Time, and she is a frequent book contributor on the Today show.
In this episode, Jasmine and Kelsey discussed the relationship between fiction and gossip, vomit-drafts, and the sacredness of tiny crushes. Then they ventured into the wilds of a star-crossed bromance, complete with bikes, growlers, and a dash of Democratic socialism.
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(The transcript for this week’s episode can be found here.)
And if you do have some good goss that you want us to hear, the email for that is normalgossip@defector.com, or phone it in to 2-6-7-9-GOSSIP.
Also, we have started announcing the guests for our tour this summer! Defector’s own Sabrina Imbler will kick off the tour with us on June 14 in NYC. Get tickets and get excited!
