Home Alone, but without the slapstick violence, I hope

[quislibet]

"I Fall Over," a song by a band called Mesh, has been in my head for about three days now, what little I can remember of it. So I'm listening to the CD I have that it's on in hopes that exposure to the actual recording will help conquer it. Which sometimes works, sometimes makes it worse. Not a bad song, but There Comes a Point.

J. is away in RI 'til Friday (poor girl had to get up at 5:30 this morning to drive down Route 95 - ugh). So perhaps tonight I will amuse myself by looking at that online Runescape game my brother keeps going on about. I could study. Ha. (That's more for tomorrow night, when I work at the Athenaeum for a few hours.) There's something nice about being home alone for the evening, at least when it doesn't happen very often. I can eat eggplant! (J. is allergic, even to the smell of it cooking, which is odd until you realize that it's related to tobacco, which she's also allergic to.) I can rent movies she's not so keen on seeing! I can selfishly tie up the phone line with online games! I can, in short, do the sorts of solitary things that become boring and depressing when they are your only options for entertainment, but somehow become special treats when they are rare.

Or I suppose I could go to Da Ray, which is always an option for a Wednesday night but one I never take anymore. Anyway, I haven't been to the club yet this calendar year, so perhaps with November well advanced I'll make a clean sweep of it. Kinda like a friend from J.'s college circle who recently realized that his near decade of unintended celibacy could become a virtue of sorts if he made it official, took a vow, and went for the full ten years.

Only different.

In any case, laziness, one of the main reasons that I haven't been there since December, is still a factor. That and the fact that I'll see people I haven't seen for a long time and we'll just have two-minute small-talk catch-up (and other hyphenated) 'conversations' between drinks or dancing, especially with those people I haven't regularly communicated with in some way online, and I can just as easily have those conversations right here without actually seeing anyone: "I haven't seen you for a while," someone says. "Yeah, I haven't been here in a long time." "Me either," they might say. "What have you been up to?" "Working on my dissertation proposal," I reply,
"still. And going to a couple conferences early next year. You?" "{Working/not working since I got laid off}," they say. "Huh," I respond. "Good luck with that." Maybe I'll complain about how dull Salem is, or they'll make a few comments about how dull they find working/not working. Possibly they'll refer by first name to people I don't know, or if they're feeling particularly talkative, mention that, e.g., they got dumped by their s.o., someone I didn't know they were even dating at all. "Oh," the other person eventually says, "I gotta dance to this song - catch you later." Or perhaps I will be the one to cut the conversation short by going to get a drink.

Perhaps one or the other of us might even look around and comment on all the new people. It doesn't matter if you haven't been there for a few weeks, a few months, or much longer: there are always young new people to comment on. "Who are all of these new people?" I can say, shaking my head at the curious fact that the clientele isn't exactly the same as it was in, say, 1996.

Come to think of it, there's something about the club that promotes conversations like that even with the people with whom I do have more regular contact (mostly electronic, this past year); these have the added drawback that we already know some of the basics about one another that might otherwise usefully fill in space in the small talk. In that case we can talk about the latest flame war on the mailing list, I suppose, until it's time to drink or dance.

Computer games it is, then.

Comments

[spriggan.livejournal.com]

if you went out more often, you could skip the catching-up part and go straight to the mockery-of-newcomers part, which is the whole point.

[synaesthesia.livejournal.com]

So true.

If you had posted "so I think I'll head on down" it might have convinced me to also leave the house and have that conversation. Well, it would have gotten me thinking of leaving the house.

Okay, it wouldn't have changed anything. :)

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

Speaking of leaving the house, I'm coming up on a year in Salem now, and I'm wondering: what did y'all do for entertainment around here?

So last night I tried, and failed, to play online games, but kept at it so long that I didn't get to sleep til rather later than I should have.

It would have been better to read about barbarian chicks, I suppose. But at least my homemade mixed drink didn't cost me five bucks.

[synaesthesia.livejournal.com]

Oddly, we managed to get out to clubs more often -- I reckon it had to do with Going Out being more of an Event, as there was a bit more to consider in getting there than "am I too lazy to go a block/across the river?".

Several friends mere blocks away served us well, as did rented movies and the Int0rnet.

I'd also spend a lot of idle time staring at the ocean. Exciting, I know.

It's odd that I'm now living in an area in which there is more in the way of friends/entertainment/&c., yet I see people/do "things" much less often now.

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

I got out more often in Boston when I lived in Providence, even though we had a perfectly good social scene there as well.

Of course that was due in part to my staying overnight in Somerville most Wednesdays with a club regular...