man's search for (social) market fit: part II

friendship is still hard

you’re sitting at a coffee shop at the street corner of where he suggested you should meet. “1 o’clock, on the dot.”

you’ve been impatiently tapping your foot for a while as the clock ticks closer to 1:05, and you know it’s beginning to get on the nerves of the girl sitting behind you reading a book with an impatient, tightly wound posture. her neck’s been curled forward with her shoulders tense and rolled, poring over whatever the crap’s in that novel for a while, her eyes darting across each page as she imbibed each word.

the only reason you know she’s noticed you is because she’s begun looking up and searing her gaze into your back. you don’t care if you’re bothering other people. if they don’t like whatever you’re doing, they can leave. for who is going to take care of you but you?

suppose someone had told you as a child you were “too intense,” about your wants, needs, too assertive to take up space in this world. suppose you thought for a while this was true, but instead of taking it as “intense is bad,” you began to believe instead that everyone else was “pre-intense” and you were steadily making your way into “post-intense,” that point at which whether something was intense or not would cease to matter or not and you could happily live your life vibrating through life’s highs and lows without worrying about anything disrupting the ever-present flow you always kept up within yourself.

“life is about keeping a hard-on,” you had frequently told your last ex. “i have to get up every day and find joy or else i’ll starve of stimulation. if you don’t like it, you can leave.”

joke’s on you, he did leave. but not for the reasons you believed. in the end, he was actually the one who —

“Hi.”

you’re startled, and look up to see the boy from the pickleball team hovering over your table. his sandy brown hair looks disheveled; apparently he skateboarded over here with a helmet. you point to the contraption he’s carrying in his arms. “i didn’t know you were into skating.”

he seems inexperienced with direct communication, because he stammers a little at your statement. “i didn’t know i was supposed to tell you i was,” he said.

you squint. this dude wasn’t exactly annoying; he was actually irritating you by virtue of how normal he was. scratch that — he wasn’t a normal boy by societal standards. it was clear from the way he hesitantly pushed up his glasses, fidgeted slightly, and would look around as if anxious yet had a gaze with a slight hint of derision in it, that he thought he was smarter than everyone. he didn’t probably think he was better than anyone, but he definitely thought he was different.

this was normal to you. you had grown up around overly intellectual boys like that, boys who felt their main contribution to society would only ever be to explain things to people who put less thought into things than them, who had pored over books explaining quantum physics and studied hard at MIT and grew up and realized they didn’t know how to talk to other people in a time where that mattered.

you didn’t rationally feel a charge around them; your disdain was purely irrational. you do not identify as a levelheaded person. you are spunky, tactless, blunt, and full of emotions. you have something to prove. you’re mad they don’t.

the pickleball boy sits down. he props his skateboard next to him.

you’re used to taking up space in the room. and because you are, you can tell that the pickleball boy isn’t. he sits with his shoulders hunched, much like the girl who is behind you, and he doesn’t seem at ease, but he also doesn’t seem like he’s searching for something when he just exists. he has things you want — you can tell. and the things you want aren’t things he can give you. rather, they are things that he is that you can’t be, and you wish for him to just disappear and stop reminding you of that.

now you want to bully him because you’re angry that people like him are here in front of you. you’re so angry you want to talk to him and force him to respond until he never, ever, can stop. he’s your prisoner now.

he takes his wallet out of his pants pocket and places it on the table. he throws a glance your way. you know how you must look to him — comical, with your fists pressing into your cheeks, your mouth puckered slightly, completely silent. you’re making your gaze extra steely. you’re preoccupied with the idea of being as unreadable as possible. you feel powerless, suddenly. you want it back. you hate him.

“can i… get you anything?” he asks, nodding at the register where the menu sits above the cashier’s head. you had read over it twice when you arrived at 12:49pm, and you had realized you weren’t craving anything in particular, so you purposely bought something just to not feel awkward. then you realized they had made the latte with whole milk and you were lactose intolerant and had been too furious to let them make you another.

he doesn’t know what is in your head, the fiery amount of tension and anguish and maddening anger mounting in your stomach that had nothing to do with the sips you’d had of that godforsaken drink.

you’re mad now for diferent reasons.

“how about,” you say. “you get me a tall glass of ‘explain yourself and who you are,’ and i’ll sit here and make it awkward for you to converse with me and not let you buy anything and you can overthink about whether you’re being a dick at this establishment.”

he startles. this is a test. it’s a stupid test, with literally no metric of getting results, and you’re performing so you can figure out his deal.

you rarely make friends, and now you’re talking to him as if you don’t want to be friends. yet you’re still sitting there. you’re still furiously leveraging at him a desire to be seen and heard by someone so different than you, but you’re not sure if he can see it yet.

the girl behind you who was reading is now staring at both of you. she can not believe what just transpired. you know this because she is visibly coughing in a way that sounds like her mouth is not facing the page anymore, but is instead more pointed in your direction. you know her cough isn’t purposeful because she tries to muffle it, but you’re still annoyed she’s paying attention to you both. maybe she’s allergic to social impropriety.

“are… you….” this guy is now turning a bit red. is he upset? have you made him upset? you can’t tell yet. you wait for him to finish his sentence, trying to guess at what he will say next. “—serious?” “—always this much of a bitch?” “—on your period?”

“… mad at me?”

suppose you’ve never had this reaction. this dude is now leveraging mild puppy dog eyes at you. he’s legit a bit scared of you right now. he doesn’t know how to read you, possibly, but now he’s cracked open a bit. now you feel guilty. now you’re suddenly faced with the fact that he feels something you didn’t anticipate, not that you assumed necessarily you could anticipate any reaction, but you’re still fuming for some reason.

you try to soften up.

you decide to not answer his direct question and just ask: “so what’s your name? who are you? and why are you playing a lame sport like pickleball?”

his puppy dog eyes shift to deer in headlight surprise that you have turned your face into a slight grimace that is an attempt at a smile. you’re aware he’s confused and not sure how to read how you feel. well, you don’t know how you feel either.

you’re used to people not really getting you, and now when they try to walk into your life, you want to scare them before you even think about letting them in. this guy probably has never known what it’s like to be this way.

this is a terrible market he’s pitching himself to be a friend in. but nevertheless… he made it here. he hasn’t just furiously stomped off. mostly because you haven’t directly insulted him yet, and he hasn’t told you anything direct yet.

you are at a stalemate. so much has happened in your head already that words haven’t even captured more of the action.

what happens next?

*****

Part III coming this week!