Thursday, December 8, 2011

I don’t know how saints become saints, like whether there’s an Academy Award-esque nomination or some such, but Pound Cake gets my vote for patron saint of sociability. Last Thursday, we discussed my intention to sever ties with the alumni association. Tonight happened to be the annual holiday party, and although I had paid for entry, I certainly hadn’t planned on attending.

In fact, I pictured myself standing on a precipice, a single foot already stuck deep in a morass of my old anti-social ways. But then Pound Cake appeared in my mental picture to pull me back from the abyss, telling me to put myself out there. I relented, grudgingly, and decided to regard the event pragmatically: if nothing else, it’d be an opportunity to increase my social capacity. It would be a test.

The holiday party is the big to-do in the year’s event lineup, so it lent itself perfectly to this. This wouldn’t just be any test, though. It’d be more like a final exam. And you know what? I crushed it! I crushed it. We aren’t in Sunday school here, so modesty is the last thing on my mind now. Whenever you scan a party, you can tell who the smooth douchebags are, and the goal has been the ability to become one of those. Everything that led up to this party–the small talk, the capacity, the blazers, the liquor–operated in thrilling concert.

I was one of those douchebags tonight. Confident, collected, steady hand on the small talk, sometimes engaged, sometimes aloof–I was fuckin’ holding court. There was empirical data, too: people wending back to the table, handshakes, hugs, and trace amounts of chick glitter on my face. Nothing sleazy, promise. It was more than a night out. It was validation that I had options, an exhilarating sense of freedom–a narrow concrete corridor suddenly opening into a far green field. And normality, I realized, isn’t something you have to find. It can be made.