The Subtle Dance Of Socializing: Part 2

Yesterday I began the tale of my latest night out. Where I left of, I had just gotten off the last bus of a rather interesting public transportation commute, and was walking to the party. I walked by the location a couple times, but found it in loads of time to be the first person to show. This is an irredeemable fault of mine: I show up at parties when it says I'm supposed to, which usually means that I twiddle my thumbs for about an hour and a half while the host continues to get things ready around me. The most interesting element in this case was a laptop playing strange video footage which was projected onto a retaining wall holding back the hill behind the building.

It was another themed costume party, and you know I wasn't having any of that. Sure, a robots and aliens theme is all kinds of fun until you have to start thinking about what kind of costume you can pull off. There are a lot of considerations. First, there's the cost which a costume entails. I have got no intention of spending more than a couple dollars on a costume, particularly one which is apt to get ruined, and will just be dispatched to the closet for ever more even if it survives the night.

Additionally, over exuberance tends to blind one to the impracticality of their costume. I witnessed many discarding the most cumbersome elements of their get-ups as the night went on, and couldn't blame them. I would have had even more trouble with this than most, given that I came on public transportation, and would have been faced with the prospect of explaining myself to a host of unsavory characters on the bus and train. The extent of my costume was limited to a robot-themed t-shirt.

A couple came and left in the space of about ten minutes, and I mostly read my newspaper. People began to come gradually. Now, the party was held outside behind the back of an art gallery, and we confined ourselves needlessly to a little space just outside the back door for a while. We were persuaded to spread out a bit. The snacking and talking had begun immediately, but the music took a bit longer. Once that got going, the dancing followed. I did not need to be coerced, for once. I think it came easily to me because there were just a few people doing it, all of whom I knew well. Later, the dance floor would swell to encompass a lot more, including really good dancers who I didn't know at all.

My energy ebbed and flowed through the night. I started out at my baseline, then went way up, dropping like a rock at one point before lifting enough to dance a bit more near the end of the festivities. The low energy periods were a good time to sit next to people I knew and loudly converse, whether they wanted to talk or not. I hasten to stress that I did not touch a drop of alcohol (regrettably), so all things I describe myself doing took place while I was stone cold sober. Perhaps that doesn't actually help my image so much.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, the good times ran out of gas. I began thinking of my dignity, and resolved that I would not be the last one at the party. Subtly, inexorably, I moved closer to the door as others did the same. It's a kind of passive-aggressive, unspoken race. I probably would have managed my goal better if not for my altruistic impulse to help clean up a bit and move gear into a car. As it was, I don't believe I was the absolute last person there, so I felt thankful for that. Eventually, I found myself outside on the sidewalk with no compelling reason to linger. There I shall leave it for today, with the story of my return home to be told tomorrow. Don't miss it!