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Yesterday, a friend I was getting caught up with asked me excitedly– have you seen this series? or this? done this? heard of this?
To all of which I offered up a sheepish “er, no.”
“Really?”
“I’m kinda detached from…pretty much everything that requires me to watch something.”
“No time, nothing interesting, don’t care?”
“…Don’t care, actually.”
Which naturally leads me to wonder why.
Pet peeve of the day: people who misspell words and names that are within the content of the text they’re replying to or commenting on.
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Having male friends requires a role far different than that of being a normal female friend, and it is a challenge both refreshing and exhausting.
I am comfortable around guys. I barely bat an eye at typical raunchy jokes dropped (unless I am in the company of other girls and obligingly cringing and squealing as is expected), I can speak about video games and cars and sports and outdoorsing and how goddamn complicated womenfolk are and being straightforward and all sorts of things.
It’s no wonder I confuse the hell out of people who’ve only seen me in skirts, or else only hear me meowing quizzically.
At 4 a.m. this morning, I found myself in a familiar situation, listening attentively to a friend in California who was having troubles. Far be it from me to let time zones prevent me from helping someone. Yet this friend is a fairly recent one who I met in June when our expansive, transcontinental and international group had a small regional meet-up in Nearby Big City. And he was torn. As he spoke softly of his ever-continuous dilemma– not wanting to hurt others, but not being able to return affections, deciding where his path in life will lead, not wanting to drag anyone along with him, not wanting to ruin a good thing but not being able to help but think far ahead into the future, getting too emotionally invested in things very quickly– a corner of my lips quirked up. “This sounds familiar,” I said wryly. He understood, because on an emotional level, he and I are extraordinarily similar, and I have quietly offered a like-minded sounding board– hopefully a helpful one– as he traverses matters of the heart.
As he is a magnet for all sorts of girls who are, he theorizes, unified by the characteristic of being rather unbalanced in one way or another, this always tends to get messy.
On Monday, I wrote a very long multi-page discussion and demi-tirade. I think I’ll refrain from posting it now because the point is moot, but if anyone is interested in angry semi-feminist rantings, there’s always that.
Well, as one friend said to me dryly, “You’re a feminist in the same way that you’re a hippie. Sort of, by average standards, but not really quite.”
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Tuesday morning, attending a tolerance and prejudice workshop with a group of bright little middle schoolers occasionally listening and occasionally attention-span-hopping elsewhere. One part-Middle Eastern girl, with the still-stickish legs of prepubescent awkwardness but with the sunglasses, purse, too-skimpy wardrobe and demeanor of today’s precocious youth imitating precocious teens imitating adults, all of whom have nary an idea what their actions and behavior actually means–
