sotto voce

After college, I found little need to socialize/party/make new friends. I bet I can count with one hand how many new friends I’ve made since I graduated from college. OK, maybe not one hand, maybe two hands and half of a foot.

Still, I have very little motivation to drag myself out of my cozy bed to hang out on Fri/Sat nights. Having a confirmed lay makes alcohol a moot point and have you read this article?  Err… you know what shade of red I turn into after a sip of wine. So yeah… no alcohol for me, thank you very much.

Since alcohol is the cornerstone of many social gatherings, we only attend one out of every 4 parties we’re invited to. We figure that the best solution to not drink / waste money / have a hangover in the morning / waste my precious sleep time is to stay in, especially because it’s weird being the only one sober in the group and I can’t walk away from good beer on the tap.

However, the unfortunate, but obvious result of this self-imposed prohibition is a rusty social skills. I’m no longer able to think of witty comments in a milisecond and nowadays, I tend to let people’s banters flew by. I am definitely aware of this pathetic decline and the self awareness just makes me even more awkward. It becomes obvious that I’m trying too hard to not be awkward, which makes everything even more awkward. I guess I could just drink to remove the awkwardness and to prevent any recollections of whatever awkward moments I had, but I just can’t get rid of the throat cancer image from my head. I’d rather be awkward now than be awkward later due to throat cancer…

I can also go the other way and say "fuck this", I don’t need any of this stupid shit. But, for the purpose of my oh-so-brilliant future, I do need these social connections. I am not brilliant enough to be the anti-social genius who’s being sought by everyone despite hier amazing lack of social grace. Yep. Tried that whole misantrophe thing and… didn’t quite work out for me.

So here I am, trying to fit while ignoring the noisy creaks of my rusty social moves.