Polite Company

So I've been hanging out with this girl from work named Marie and her sister Joann and some of their friends for like the last 3 Friday's in a row. It is weird because I haven't hung out with anyone for that amount of time, other than my family, for like 3 years. Since I left Humboldt in September 2002 to be exact. So over 3 years. Christ. Time flies when you do absolutely nothing.

I am totally socially inept. I always have been but I am more so now. I'm better than I expect. Sometimes I say things that make everybody laugh. Most times. I'm not all that inept. I can always make people laugh. But like last night I talked to this girl who loves all the same stuff I love, has seen all the same movies. She even brought over Cannibal:The Musical to watch. We ended up watching Saw and Event horizon instead because that is what the general consensus demanded. She was really funny and stuff but I was really just not interested in becoming best friends forever with her. I usually know within about 15 minutes if I really hit it off with someone and just having things in common doesn't work like it used to. Almost everybody I've really hit it off with I can remember the first time I ever met them. Or rather, the first conversation. In great detail. And there is more to it then just having stuff in common.

Anyway, I have been drinking almost every single weekend for like the last month too. Which is totally not like me. I am drinking a beer right now. When I met that guy I was hanging out with for a short while we drank because that is kind of what you do when you are young and single and trying to not be awkward. He was kind of pretentious so we drank a lot of wine. I got so I wanted to just start drinking as soon as we started hanging out because I couldn't stand the awkward soberness. Which is one of the reasons I decided the idea of spending any more time with him was unhealthy and unwise. Not to mention degrading and totally against everything I believe in as a feminist. Although I have been reevaluating that lately too. Not my being a feminist but how that actually applies to my life. Because of that play I was just in. And the fact that I entered into this relationship that was eerily similar to that of the main character of the play I just finished. And I did so on the closing night of the play. If nothing else, that guy really made me think about some things. And I'm bummed I couldn't just suck it up and deal with my own issues on my own time. But I couldn't. So I had to stop seeing him. I'll get to that later. Maybe.

So Marie and her sister are total drunks. They drink a lot. And they have people over that they don't even know that well and they all drink. And watch movies. Or get high. And drink. So when in Rome. But I feel like I am just replacing one excuse not to be lonely with another even less healthy even less fulfilling one. Sometimes I wish I actually wrote in a journal or something so I could be explicit but if I didn't write in this blog I wouldn't write anything so it is better than nothing. Marie has Multiple Sclerosis, which is an interesting story all by itself. And Joanne recently graduated from college with an English degree. So we have some things in common. Marie has to give herself shots so sometimes we go take our shots together. Its like having a girl to go to the bathroom with at a restaurant. A bizarrely comforting feeling of camaraderie. And they are both smart and funny and vulgar and brash and brazen and all the things that usually appeal to me in female friends. I've just been trying to take care of myself lately. Going to my doctor regularly. Exercising regularly. Eating well. Maintaining somewhat of an emotional even keel. And this last month has just pushed me over some edge I didn't know was there.

The person I was very very briefly seeing had a girlfriend. And he had started to date someone else after I met him as well. That was kind of his thing. He was not a monogamous person. I have been called a serial monogamist. By my friend Becky. Like that is a bad thing. I thought I would try out this person and see if this was something I could manage. It felt like neither of us really liked each other very much and that was why we weren't headed toward anything exclusive or committed. We probably did like each other a lot. But those ground rules had already been set. He wasn't going to be living here for long. He has a girlfriend. He sees other people. So I just pretended I didn't like him very much. And so then I started not to like him very much. I convinced myself for my own good. I could have just as easily convinced myself that I totally looooved him sooo much. I've done that before. I'm starting to wonder if I actually have any authentic feelings for people which aren't influenced by what I think they think of me. Probably not.

What else is there to say? Other than I watched The Saddest Music in the World tonight. It was a fantastic movie. I watched All about My Mother this morning. It was even more fantastic. I started watching last night and finished watching this morning, Power and Terror in our Times:Noam Chomsky. It was really weird. It was a Japanese film. Made buy a Japanese film company. All in English because it is basically just Noam Chomsky talking at a bunch of different universities and some interviews with him but interspersed were these weird montages of city scenes with people walking and Japanese rock songs playing over them. I watched yesterday afternoon Wit, with Emma Thompson. I had read the play and I loved it and the movie was probably one of the best movie adaptations of a play that there could be. It was really great but it made me cry. Not a long sobbing kind of cry. Just a one tear down the side of your face kind of cry. My favorite kind. It looks so dramatic!