5 Different Kinds Of Besties
For those of you who are confused by this phenomenon, allow me to outline the different kinds of best friends that exist here in Lady Town (a new city I am building filled with Lisa Frank pencils and spreadable goat cheese).
1. The Life-Long
This is a girl’s obvious, serious, not-messing-around best friend — the person she met while wearing ketchup-covered overalls, and who now, some two-digit-number-of-years later, is much more like her sister than her buddy. She doesn’t need to talk to this person every day; that would be like checking in with your sibling every 24 hours, which would probably just elicit a lot of silence and maybe start a fight. She only gets drunk with this person occasionally; mostly they just sit on her parents’ couch around the holidays and watch bad TV. This person will be her maid of honor, a fact which she obviously knows because in Lady Town, this is like knowing where the post office is.
2. The Almost-Life-Long
This person came into a girl’s life post-ketchupy-overalls but pre-college-graduation. Though she hasn’t known this person as long as she’s known The Life-Long, The Almost has been just as (if not more) involved in every single detail of her semi-adult life. Points of conversation include whether or not it’s appropriate to date a guy who disrespects The Backstreet Boys, where that shirt ran off to after the Vomit Cry Ex-Boyfriend Party of 2010, and whether a certain red-ish bump is a deathly genital wart or simply an ingrown hair. This person may not be quite like a sibling, but she is soulmate material for sure.
3. The Specific-Context
This person was a girl’s best friend during that weird year her parents sent her to private school or during that terrible hostessing job she held for seven months before deciding her cokehead manager’s antics weren’t worth the extra cash. She and this person bonded within the strange bubble in which they met, and they now spend most of their conversations rehashing the funny things they used to do, like aggressively pregaming staff meetings or sincerely and vigorously stalking a particular male science teacher. They probably only talk and/or see each other a couple times a year, but this does absolutely no harm and serves to keep things interesting.
4. The Guy Best Friend
This person is vitally important to a girl’s sanity — he brings a uniquely male perspective to the discussion of her petty problems, and he will totally tell her when she’s acting like an over-analyzing girly witch-monster, a point which most of her other friends can’t quite get up the balls to voice. This person thinks the girl in question is totally dateable and deserving of the world, but he would rather drink a large helping of cat urine than see her topless. This is a super rare quality, so it is imperative that the girl treat it accordingly, as if it were a precious gem or a pile of frozen yogurt made of Ryan Gosling’s torso.
5. The Right-Now
This person is a girl’s best friend right here, right now. Their companionship is hopefully permanent but maybe fleeting; it’s too soon to tell and too vital to the present moment to worry over. This person makes life easy — she and the girl live in the same city and run in similar circles, allowing for ease of storytelling without having to provide too much background information. After all, friends living across the country can’t quite understand the hilarity that is 2nd Avenue Dreadlock Poop Man shouting “I like your new haircut!” The Right-Now totally gets it, though, and for that, she is perfect (in Lady Town, that is — we hold a very specific, unique set of standards, you know). 
