glump

[dot_fennel]

It strikes me that for the second Saturday night in a row, I'm not just alone but also lonely. There are things I've planned to do (some so long-undone that I've promised myself a Playstation 2 once I finish the last of them) and those actually require solitude, but still somehow and always it seems like the wrong night to have to exert effort to be diverted.

But dawn always comes, more often now than in years past.

Hey, here's a good thing--last night I was out with B. Pepper, who introduced me to several of her friends. One of them, a man she's dating casually, kept putting his arm around me and saying "Oh, Fennel likes me, isn't that right?" whenever he made some joke that fizzled and his comedic disposition required that he attempt a landing instead of pretending he hadn't made the joke at all. So, this finally bugged me enough that I said, "Look... I can't tell if you're actually flirting with me or if it's an 'I am so straight that when I flirt with another man it's hilarious' thing." And he said, "Uh, well, the second one, I guess." I told him that really bothered me, because the social dynamic it sets up is that if I politely say I'm not interested, then I'm the one who can't take a joke and am in fact the homophobe at whose expense the joke is occurring. (Substitute "prude" for "homophobe" when joker and object are different genders.) To my surprise, he not only stopped, but became much more personable and less 'on' for the rest of the evening. Hooray for (apparently) deploying candor skillfully.

Comments

You should've come along

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I parked at Robin's and wound up taking her along for my excursion. We took the red line all the way to Ashmont. Then we switched to the "high-speed line" to Mattapan. It's a 1930's PCC trolley that feels like a wooden roller coaster when it comes out of Ashmont but has a spectacular view of Neponset flood plain after that.

Then we caught a bus to Roslindale Village. There was a mime on a cel phone waiting for another bus. He popped his head into our bus to say, "Could you shut off your engine? I can't hear my phone." Yes, a mime was yelling at a bus driver. Everyone on the bus laughed at that.

We got to Rozzie and found all sorts of yummy food stores. Robin got what she assumed was simply flat bread but turned out to be about a bolt of this thin, tasty flat bread. I'll have to remember to grab a bag of that before my trip to Florida -- it's great road nosh. We even found this Indian joint that served goat. I still have plenty left, so lunch will be yummy Monday.

Then we took the commuter train to Needham. Again we had a bunch of gorgeous views of the area through West Rox and into Needham. No one collected a fee from us, which was nice. Then we found what i thought would be a short walk up Highland was more like 3 miles. So we ran back to the train and took it back to South Station. We talked to this woman (who was originally from central North Dakota) who was bringing friends from New Hamsphire into town. They'd all caught the wrong train back to her suburb (Norfolk, near Foxboro) and wound up with the same suburban romp.

Then Robin and I hopped the subway back to Davis Square. Again we hadn't been charged for our trip, so we bolted spiritedly out of the platforms in case a conductor suddenly figured something out.

Then we stopped at Brooks Drugs, where I was having way too much fun with the poled shopping carts (eg. "Hey, I can drive stick." Then a visual joke where I hold the pole with two hands and say "Iwo Jima shopping!") I found some good greeting cards for Maggie. Then we got back to her place, where her roomie was stripping three ancient AT cases into two computers and one beat-up AT shell for the trash.

Imagine that this could've been your day. Ah, but such is life. Perhaps next time?

-luring the hapless victim, ps/d

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

Hooray for (apparently) deploying candor skillfully.

Hooray, indeed! Go, you!