Thursday, April 28, 2011
Business cards spent, brainpan marinating in Bud Light–this may as well be a guest post tonight, because I’m not entirely sure who I am anymore. The last alumni event ended catastrophically, in no uncertain terms, and I later found out the aborted concert marked the final gasp of a dying chapter. Now, two years later, I’m at the ground floor of a new beginning, with a different group vibe and a heightened tolerance for community, and I’ve thrown my hat into the ring.
Tonight was happy hour for Big Ten alumnae, deep below ground in a hella hot bar. Usually such events will deplete my energy completely and knock me flat for a week or two thereafter, but that hasn’t been the case lately. No, I clocked in more than two hours and mingled. Mingled, like a man possessed by normalcy. All it took was a self-prescribed kick in the pants.
The first 15 seconds are always brutal, whenever you enter a room full of strangers. That’s the time horizon you have to either break into an existing cluster of people, or miss the train completely. You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s cutthroat and harrowing, when you think about it. I spent the first 10 seconds locked in internal dialogue, a dark swirl of thoughts that was patently unproductive. Who are these people? I mean, the reason they’re congregating is because they’re no longer attending the same college, ridiculous as that sounds. We sure wouldn’t have socialized if we were all still there.
It was a war of self, cynic pitted against hopeful, until the latter told the former to shut the fuck up. After that, it was easy. A loud venue means you can get by with prop beer in hand, smiling at the right times, ample nodding, and swapping cards whenever other people start reaching for their wallets or purses. Now, don’t get me wrong–conversation, some of it actually good, occurred as well–but on the whole, I was more amazed with how easy it was to negotiate the event. The mechanics just made sense. It feels like I’ve leveled up in sociability, hungry for what’s next, and possibility, rather than evasion, is the order of the day. Perhaps there will come a time when happy hour, currently neither happy nor limited to an hour, will deliver on its promise.