a new hobby

I am twenty-eight and consciously developing for the first time the social skills that most people learn much earlier in their lives. I decided early in my time in Chicago that I would force myself to be more extroverted during my one-year layover in the Midwest. I've written some about it on this blog. So far the only manifestation of this extroversion is that I try consciously to chat with strangers. It has become like a hobby or a new extracurricular interest. I am not necessarily flirting, but that is often a side effect, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Because this is new to me, it still feels like anthropological research. I have Googled "how to talk to people," and variants on that search, many times. Today I considered buying a Kindle to make acquiring self-help books easier.

Strangers I have spoken to recently, and the lessons I have learned from them:

1. The cashier at Quimby's, a woman probably in her late 20s or early 30s, queer/hipster-looking, with short hair, thick glasses, and a green striped polo shirt. I asked her where I might find comic books by Adrian Tomine. She walked over with me to the comics section and said, "My hunch is you'll find it here because all the female authors are grouped in this section." And I said, "But a-ha [I said exactly this], he is a dude!" I tried not to be know-it-all about it, but my tone was just a bit wrong. The woman said, "Oh, shows you how much I know!" and was good-humored about it. Then I spotted Jimmy Corrigan, which I was also looking for, and I said, "Oh, never mind, I found something else I wanted!" The woman got confused and thought that I had found Adrian Tomine, and I said something about it being by a different author, and then we discovered together that we were standing directly in front of "Summer Blonde." We both fumbled around with words. I made a joke about the book having suddenly appeared that very second, and then noticed it was 9pm and the store was closed and I said she wasn't even supposed to be working anyway, and she chuckled graciously. Later on, I went to go pay for my purchases. I bought a finger zombie, a finger monster, three finger monkeys, two sushi-shaped pencil toppers, a book of temporary tattoos, a gag air freshener, and Jimmy Corrigan. The cashier had to type in "finger monkey" three separate times because there were no bar codes on the finger puppets and each had to be entered individually. It took her about ten minutes to ring me up, but she, the man behind me in line, and I were all nattering on about SKUs and the inefficient Quimby's inventory system in convivial high spirits, so nobody got impatient. I left feeling that I had successfully navigated a social situation and a flirtation, and wondered if I should go back to buy more finger zombies later in the week.


2. Recently I was at Jewel, slowly deciding between buying the Jewel-brand nutmeg or the name brand nutmeg, both of which were astoundingly expensive for being tins of smelly powder. It must have been winter because I was wearing my puffy coat, the one with a little tied-yarn doll dangling off the zipper. A man standing nearby was also inspecting the spices, but he kept turning to stare at me and my chin. I didn't understand why - I had forgotten that the dangly was there - until he said, slowly, "Hey, where did you get that?" I realized what he was pointing to and said, "Oh! In New York, just at a booth." What I said didn't make much sense, but it was enough to start a brief chat. I said, "Are you familiar with these things?" He said, "Yeah, you see them all the time at comic conventions." I said, "Oh, are you a sci-fi kind of guy?" He said, "Well yeah, sci-fi, fantasy, you know." I said, "I went to ComicCon last year in New York! It's always nice to meet another geek!" Of course, our conversation didn't go quite as smoothly as this, because we were both geeks, but it was nonetheless pleasant, and the memory of how the conversation ended has been pleasantly obscured. It can't have ended not awkwardly. I remember being surprised because I could count the number of black comics nerds I saw at ComicCon on the fingers of one hand. And here I was, flirting with a black comics nerd in the spices aisle!


3. The bouncer at Kingston Mines seemed like the kind of person to chat with everyone. I was on edge because I was trying to use my NYU ID to avoid the $12 cover charge. It was "college student" night, so I was wary of having to explain why my driver's license said I was 28 but I still had a university affiliation. I was prepared to say that I was an artist and had switched majors several times. Sociology, biochemistry, studio art. The bouncer said, "Are you Ashley?" which was totally incomprehensible, given that he was holding two pieces of identification that said [Bananarchist] on them. I was flustered, and I thought he was trying to trick me. But he said, "Oh, there's a crowd of New Yorkers here, and they said that their friend Ashley was coming." Then he inquired about where I lived. "Brooklyn," I said firmly, with a smile, to indicate friendliness but desire to cut off the conversation. He beamed and said he loved Brooklyn. Then he turned his attention to Harry, who always seems so nervous when called upon to show his identification. Harry flipped to his photo page and thrust it intently toward the bouncer, who then wanted to become Harry's best friend. "Where are you from? ["Germany."] Where in Germany? ["Regensburg."] Oh, one of my close friends lives in Duesseldorf! ["Regensburg is in Bavaria."] Oh, I follow FC Bayern-Muenchen! They're great! ["They're not doing so great right now."] Yeah, too bad, but blah blah blah blah blah blah blah..." He kept on talking, and finally I just grabbed Harry and said, "You have to pay now!" and tore him from the monologuer. It was the second time I'd seen Harry cornered by a North American chatter and the only time I saw a glimpse of how his interest in football might provide an entry point for his friendships with men. His comment that Bayern-Muenchen hadn't been doing so well recently was one of the least awkward things he's said in my presence! I didn't like the monologuer too much, but he was friendly, and he seemed to be genuinely smiling, and I didn't have to pay the $12 cover charge.


4. Strangers I spoke to on April 25, 2009: (A) A woman walking down the street in a pack with other women, all of whom were wearing silver sparkly antennae and feather boas. RW and I were walking down the street eating Giant Cheetos; OL was a few steps behind. I noticed the antennae, and I asked the woman, "What's going on?" Savory orange powder exploded forth from my mouth when I asked this. She said, "A bachelorette party." I shrugged, smiled, and said, "I figured." We kept walking. RW asked me what the woman had said, and I said, "Oh, just a bachelorette party," casually and loudly enough for some partygoers to hear. I did this consciously, to signal to the partiers that I understood them and felt their behavior was with within social norms. (B) The cashier at Wendella Cruises, the company that organized the architectural boat tour we took on Saturday. She handed us our tickets, and I leaned toward the sound hole in the plexiglass divider and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, "Where should we sit to get the best view?" She said, "I don't really know; maybe the bow?" I asked again, "Where would you sit if you took the tour?" She responded without much interest, "Frankly, I prefer to sit down inside the boat." There were people in line behind us, so I just said, "Oh, then you and I must be very different people." I was practicing flirtation, but she was bored/disinterested/annoyed and it was best just to continue on my way. (C) As we were waiting for the tour to start, about 100 middle schoolers and their adult entourage moved to the head of the queue. I was exasperated and concerned that we would be stuck behind them, so I walked through the crowd and cut in front of all of them to get in line. As I passed through, I asked somebody where they were from, and somebody replied, "Traverse City." (D) When the waiter at Silver Cloud cleared away our dishes, he accidentally swept up two pieces of paper that RW and OL had folded into a tiny paper crane and a tiny paper penguin. I yelped and made a grab for the origamis, but it was too late and the waiter had already swept them into a dish filled with unfinished spinach dip. I said, "Oh no, our origami!" The waiter said, "Oh no! I didn't see it!" I pulled the crane and penguin out of the spinach dip, showed the waiter, and then told him he could keep them if he wanted to. (E) I asked a stranger on the street outside our second bar (Flat Iron) for a cigarette. My two friends kept walking, and his two friends kept walking in the other direction, but we stood in the middle of the sidewalk and looked at each other. He lit the cigarette for me, and then I thanked him and said that I was only "borrowing" the cigarette. He said, "Oh yeah? You can have my address if you want to send it back to me!" I said, "Ha ha ha!" and we both caught up with our friends and continued walking. I was so drunk, I only got three pulls on this cigarette before accidentally dropping it on my coat. (F) The waiter who served our drinks and French toast at Between, the third bar we went to on Saturday night, was obviously in love with the bar back with spectacles. On my way to the bathroom, I found our waiter wiping down glasses, and I said, "Hey! Are you gay?" He looked a little sheepish and said, "Yeah." I did not wait a beat before saying, "Okay, are you in love with that guy with the glasses?" He said, "Oh...yeah, I kind of am." I said, "I could tell! Everybody could tell!" He said, "Yeah, but he's like totally straight." I said, "Don't lose hope! He doesn't look very straight to me!" He said, "Aw, you're sweet."


5. The people who come through chambers no longer count as strangers, because I have seen them all every day for eight months, but I have enjoyed the process of building up small talk rapport with them. I forgot the UPS guy's name but he is very friendly to me and has a repaired cleft palate and has told me how much he loves fishing in Minnesota. Yesterday he came in in shorts, and I said, "Whoa, shorts!" He said, "Yeah, it's hot outside!" I said, "Summertime!" The bubbly woman from the mail room has changed her hairstyle three times, and each has been genuinely cuter than the last, so I give her a you-go-girl kind of comment when she comes in. This comes out of my mouth like marbles because my natural affect is sarcastic baritone, but I am trying, you know. I bought forty lollipops from the intern (whose school is trying to raise money one $.50 lollipop at a time for the $8,000 shortfall in their prom budget!) and have been pushing them on everybody who comes into the office. Just now, the mail room woman walked out with the whole sack of them, saying she'd distribute them to the mail room workers. Cavities for everyone in the Dirksen Building! Perhaps I will buy another forty lollipops because people seem to like you more when you push free lollipops upon them.
   

I like talking to strangers because it makes me feel likeable and attractive (though this is probably just a good kind of body dysmorphia in counterpoint to the bad kind of body dysmorphia I feel when I see photographs of my schlubbiness). Obviously I will never get to a point where non-nerdiness feels natural to me - I mean, I need to quantify my progress toward social adeptness by making lists such as these - but in one's life, one can only try one's best.

For example: RW and OL were here this weekend. The timing of their visit was perfect, since we are in synchronized states of romantic flux and all we wanted to do was gab for 48 hours straight about our hearts. It would have been nice if our extremely pregnant friend KC could have joined, but alas, travel restrictions. Anyway, more on this later. RW just forwarded me an email from a socially-challenged engineer acquaintance of hers. She had written something like, "It was so great to meet you, Will! Do you like this picture of Bob in the conference room?" And the engineer wrote back, "My name is William, not Will. The picture is of Bob in the library, not the conference room. Goodbye!"

Do you see? It is important to excise this kind of nerdity from one's personality. Flirt your way to freedom. I am going to write a book for Kindle about this.