I had had a pretty insular week after returning from my whirlwind boston excursion, so last night Aim and i decided to head down to South Street and see the Beta Band on extremely short notice just to get out of our respective houses. It was great to see Amy again; her presence has been super-lacking in my life since she started her new job and i got back to classes. But, anyway, that’s not the point.
The point is that i returned from Beta Band to find that the roomies were entertaining at the apartment. At first it was superfun… we had a bunch of people around who i don’t always get to chat with, and i was enjoying myself. I even had a beer.
When it comes to parties i am a floater… i very rarely have a strong connection to any person or conversation so i just mingle around until i get miserable and leave. That’s my modus operandi, and it’s inevitable; eventually i’m so frustrated with my inability to be connected to anyone else at all that i wander home and go to sleep. In my own home i figured it would be different… i wouldn’t be on the outskirts of the conversations because i would be in charge… i would be the host.
I was wrong. It turns out, as soon as you amass a big enough group i immediately turn off socially (even if i’m friends with them all individually). Even before everyone started wandering away to their own cliques in different rooms i had reduced myself to tiny inserted comments and laughing along with the crowd. I endured the typical jokes which i do not enjoy, and i mingled from room to room unable to connect to anything that was happening even though i owned the lamps and cushions people were clustered around. Eventually i just locked my door, stripped off my clothes, and went to sleep to Death Cab turned down so low that all i could hear were the upper registers of Ben Gibbard’s voice intoning “highway” over and over on the second track.
It’s not fair. I refuse to have my own home be a gathering place just so i can be trapped there without anywhere to escape to. I don’t know what our social future will turn out to be, but i’m starting to think that it’s out of my hands: i don’t have any say in it, but i’m not taking any responsibility for it either.