"It was nice to meet you, Jerry."

[jere7my]

We crept from our hole tonight and actually socialized with people, but probably should not have. It wasn't an utter disaster, but there were large painful wads of awkward. adfamiliares and I were twenty minutes late to the restaurant, due to trouble finding a functioning ATM, and when we arrived there was not really space for us at the table, nor was it immediately evident to anyone other than the person who'd invited us why we were there or who we were. Both of us were tired, both of us distracted by personal issues, and our food took over an hour to arrive, so we were starving—not the best situation to demonstrate our scintillating conversational skills, even if we hadn't been hanging out with five people who all more or less knew each other. adfamiliares did all right, but I felt prickly and paranoid the whole evening; my chief conversational gambit was to voice a disagreement about the habitat of wild swans. ("Yeah, she was nice," I'm sure they're saying to each other, "but what was up with that swan guy?") It was good of Laurie to invite us, but it just wasn't the situation to jump into tonight. Perhaps another time we will find social success.

On the plus side, my sushi was delicious and reasonably-priced (when it finally arrived), and we spent the walk to and from the restaurant having a profitable discussion about poly issues. (Her problems are now happily settled, one long phone call later, and it turns out I was "completely right, of course," sez she. "Well, yeah," sez me.)

I was feckin' right about the swans, too.

Comments

[adfamiliares.livejournal.com]

My main solace, other than contributing St. Maria Goretti to the conversation, was that the woman from History clearly didn't know anyone either and was almost as quiet as we were.

And they were totally on crack about the swans; something had to be said.

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

ooog I've been in those kinds of social situations, and it is NO fun. :( I hate that sensation that no one else knows why you are there. But I'm glad you got out and about! (And it sounds like the long walks were good for you too!)