Hello you glorious weirdos! The heat wave that has been
sweeping the nation finally hit Portland, Oregon. I’ve acquired a pretty decent
base tan (AKA burn) thanks to today’s spontaneous 12 mile amble. Luckily the
only blisters are on my poor feet. This past week Friend and I ambitiously
decided to expand our circle of friends. Since this requires meeting people, we
selected a handful of social events to attend. See, neither of us really understands
how this whole “meeting people” thing works.
Seriously. How do people connect with other people? There
used to be sports and classes and clubs. We were obligated to spend time with
people in the pursuit of mutual interests. Becoming friends with those people
just came with the territory, like a secondary benefit. We don’t really have
that anymore. Sure I can approach a stranger in a bar, but what happens next? I
don’t have the social skills to sustain a conversation without common ground. I
may have majored in Bullshit back at U of M, but two years post-graduation my
rhetoric skills are getting a little rusty.
In the spirit of complete honesty, I don’t generally like
meeting people. I think small talk is tedious and I’m not the best at feigning
interest. I guess I don’t want to meet people; I just want to know them. I want
to skip past the “Where are you from?” and the “What do you do?” and get straight
to the friendship stuff. I know it doesn’t work that way and you need to have a
solid foundation and so on and so forth... but that all takes so much time and
effort. Can’t somebody just do it for me?
Anyways. Friend and I started our socializing Tuesday night.
Every Tuesday C.C. Slaughter’s hosts a ladies night event optimistically dubbed
“Girltopia”. They’ve got a D.J. and $2 well drinks. We hopped the max down to
Old Town and got to C.C.’s by 10 o’ clock, which was our first mistake of the
night. There were about ten people in the whole bar: us, three girls playing
pool in the back corner, the bartenders, two tech-savvy gay boys texting at a
table and one girl standing at the bar drinking alone.
We sat at the bar across from Drinking Alone Girl (DAG) and
spent a good 45 minutes debating on whether we should try to approach her or
not. Was she there alone by choice? Was she waiting for people? What kind of
beer was she drinking? We calculated our odds of being able to sustain a
conversation after the preliminaries, weighed that against potential social
discomfort and opted against introducing ourselves. Besides, if we talked to
her we couldn’t talk about her, and then we’d have nothing. We spent the next
hour or so inventing potential lives for DAG and drawing unicorns on coasters.
Meanwhile, people started showing up.
Me: Did you see those
girls who just came in? They kind of scare me.
Friend: You mean the
one with the backwards hat and her friend in the bandana?
Me: Yeah, don’t they
seem super intense or something?
Friend: You realize
you could be describing us right now?
Me: Yeah. Maybe it’s
time to go.
So we hit the streets. Here’s an interesting thing: Friend
and I are wildly popular with the homeless population. One girl on the street
corner asked us “hippie girls” if we had an extra “nug” she could bum.
Apparently we look more Missoula than we actually are because it took us a good
three blocks to realize she was asking us for drugs. A few blocks later an
apparently homeless fella approached us with a box of Voodoo donuts. He swore
there was nothing wrong with them; he just couldn’t handle any more sugar. It’s
a testament to the appeal of Voodoo donuts that even dead sober I almost took
them. Luckily Friend has more street sense than I do.
We eventually stumbled into the Someday Lounge for a final
round of soda waters and encountered a scene that made me wish I’d smoked a nug
beforehand. Some electro-polka fusion band was on stage playing to an audience
of six or seven swing dancing fiends. Sometimes real life is too strange to be
entirely real. Friend and I stared open-mouthed until the set ended, then
mobbed back to the Max station. Where we realized the last train of the night had
come and gone. During our walk back to the Lloyd Center we witnessed a
moderate-speed police chase, which was startlingly anticlimactic, and discussed
how to make our friend conquests more successful.
Our next social opportunity presented itself Friday night.
Deep Cuts is “a monthly queer dance
party for the music enthusiast”. Also they offer free tarot readings. We
decided to get there early, since getting there late meant paying a $5 cover.
Same mistake, different dance party! We were literally the only people there at
9pm, so we got drinks and set up base camp on the deck. People started showing
up en masse around 11. Unfortunately, it appeared everybody knew everybody
else. We ended up claiming a bench in the corner assigning rugby positions
based on stranger’s size and potential strengths.
Me: OK, my front row would be
American Flag and Gray Dress propping… and my hooker hasn’t arrived yet. She
will though, just you wait.
Friend: I think what
we need is a third friend. Just the two of us sitting here is weird.
I thought free tarot was a really great idea until I
realized it would require actual interaction with a stranger. A stranger
wearing a romper. A stranger wearing a romper and nipple tassels which she
proudly displayed after a few shots. When the dance floor was still empty at
midnight we chalked it off as a loss and headed home.
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| http://www.creationsgalore.net/ |
Friend: What happens
when you’re in your mid-30s and everyone you know is married with kids and you’re
still alone? How do you meet people at that point? What do you do with
yourself?
Me: I think mostly you cry a lot. Alone. Or
you get a hobby?
Friend: Hobbies are
sad.
Last night was our final attempt at socialization. We
attended the 1st Annual Individual Super Mega Ultra Awesome
Northwest Poetry Slam Death Match Championship. Or something along those lines.
First I’d like to give kudos to all of the competitors. Some really great
poetry happened last night and I’m glad I could witness it! Amy Everhart, I am
in like with you. Second, I would like to say: who the hell was that band? Their
lyricist must have been a 5 year-old hopped up on too much sugar, and most of
their riffs were straight off a Blink-182 album. Luckily, the bar had Family
Guy and infomercials to keep me entertained while they were on the stage.
We didn’t even attempt conversation once we realized “cool”
at the slam meant wearing a tail. Seriously you guys, this is a trend that is
sweeping Portland and maybe the world.
Instead of socially embarrassing ourselves, we ate about 3 lbs. of fried potato
and bolted as soon as we knew who won. There was talk of going downtown again,
but sunburn makes me cranky so I rained on Friend’s parade and took us home.
So, we successfully made it through an entire week of social
events without making a single friend or even acquaintance. What I did learn
from this: you can’t force these things. Friendships happen of their own
accord. They have to, or I obvs wouldn’t know a single human being. Is it
possible we’ll have to join a scrapbooking club in 12 years? Absolutely. In the
meantime, I’ll take my cues from Sheila Heti’s article and enjoy my solitude. Because maybe sometimes being alone is exactly what it takes
to meet people.
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| http://nickfalkner.wordpress.com |
All my love! Happy Monday tomorrow. Do you all have big plans? I have another day off... Boom.
-b
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