I have a cold, a nice mild one with the power only to distract and annoy.
I have written many an unpublished post about the party, but can't seem to capture that exact brand of misery in words. Let's just say that Keith and I are both on a very steep learning curve when it comes to socializing here.
It bothers me that I did not take the time to prepare myself for what clearly has proven to be the inevitable; usually I over prepare. Our way of socializing in Colorado suited both of us, but we are not in Colorado anymore, Toto; we are in with the lions, tigers and bears.
So now we play catch up. Firstly, I must take a moment to try and see where Keith is coming from. This is his home ground; arrayed an hour or so north of here are all the physical ruins and memoirs of a very hearty high school experience. Most of his childhood friends are spread out in that area, a bright constellation of high spirited, beer drinking, corn farming, muscle car driving, general carousing Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen proportions.
It was inevitable, now that I think about it, for him to be drawn up toward that junction and for breath taking revivals to take place. There is nothing wrong with that. The only problem lies within my participation. How do I fit into the scene?
I do not, that is my conclusion. Keith, bless is heart, loves to show off the fact that he has an attractive wife who is very comfortable with public displays of steamy affection but who also coldly ignores the boorish advances every other guy in the room and who, on occasion, wears pantyhose and who has no problem with his own highball consumption but does not herself drink anything stronger than Sprite. He eats it up, it makes his day, he is The Man.
On the other hand, I am the sober, completely miserable dork who is doing a very good impression of an ostrich, hoping against hope that if she keeps her head down, the stalking beasts of prey will not notice her, when all I'm really doing is putting my ass up in the air.
Well, I've had enough. That is my conclusion. They can party on, the next time. Keith can go and rock and roll it with the gang, but I will be home, drinking hot tea and watching House Hunters International. It's already obvious that I don't fit in, staying home will simply be doing the honest thing, instead of living the polite lie while everyone else lives la vida loco.
It's not as if Keith just threw me to the lions either, to be fair. He has had, it turns out, more than one conversation with his friend about how sexual jokes are not really my fare and to lay off them when I'm around. Which does explain why I was able to make eye contact and something approaching a normal conversation with him this time. Yay, progress!
But there's only so much I can expect; its not like Keith can screen all the people that show up at the party. And even if he did, I don't expect them all to have a transformational moment and live a life monastical from that moment thereafter. They can do their thing- slap asses, brush boobs, joke about genitalia and scream at their wives. It's a free country. I just don't want to be around when it happens.
I don't think that's too much to ask, really. I hope. We have three or four more years of living here. I have to figure out a working game plan if I am to survive. A good sign: we will not be attending the birthday party to which the Crazy Lady might attend.
That was the lady who chased Keith around a trailer. I was assured later that "she always acts crazy when she's been drinking too much" and usually our well meaning hostess had a chance to warn the unsuspecting before the Crazy Lady was unleashed. As if that were the issue! The fact that I went unwarned, which presumes that anticipating them would have made the actions just a-ok acceptable.
I don't understand these people.
My life is like some sorry, sordid soap opera. How did this happen? This is absurd; I am simply not cut out for the part. On one of the blogs I follow, I saw a picture of the Prudential building in down town Boston and it literally brought tears to my eyes. Something about the winter light, the particular grey of the city street; I felt like I could smell the city, dirty ocean harbor and brick, salt slush in the gutters and coffee.
Oh, for the straight laced, Puritanical thinking! The unfriendly Yankees with their one and a half acre farms and all the granite pulled out of them now bordering the road, from when great grandpa had sheep.
Nobody waves to anybody there, unless they're personally acquainted. When I came out here and people waved to me, I would get all flustered. "Who the hell are they?" I'd wonder, indignant. "Do I know that person?"
You aren't a local unless your grandfather's father was born there and if your brother is late returning the rental from the General Store, the proprietor will let you know when you go in to pick up a gallon of milk for dinner.
People actually go to town hall meetings, in actual town hall buildings and you expect to hear shouting at the damn things, because, by god, every one's entitled to their own opinion.
You're considered well off if you own land but still go to the Church Bazaar to buy shoes and cultured if you own a house at least two hundred years old, never mind that you have to cover the windows with plastic during the winter to keep the heat in.
The tiny libraries are each in their own little architecturally and historically interesting building, but the selection is going to be limited and they still use an actual hand held stamp with the date when you borrow a book. If they are like the librarians I knew, they will have a hidden chocolate trove somewhere and will know the down low on every patron.
There are Thai and Chinese restaurants in almost every town but a movie theater may be a good forty five minutes to an hour away and going there in the winter might be taking your life in your hands, but at least everyone knows how to drive in the snow, which can't be said for Colorado, where everyone becomes an idiot the first time each season, causing I-25 to become as littered with wrecks as a windshield is with bugs.
If you grew up in southern New Hampshire, then one time or another, you skipped school and took the T down into Boston where you wandered around, giddy at the reach of your adolescent rebellion. You might have done this several times.
Your family vacations in Maine, you ski in Vermont (you don't realize that the skiing is crap and that people from the mid west would tremble to take the ice slick, packed slopes that you consider normal), you make fun of Massachusetts drivers.
You've gone to hear the Boston Pops, you've seen the Nut Cracker at the Opera House and went the Science Museum on a field trip, where the mysteries of outer space and star systems were displayed in all their curved infinity inside the Imax theater. You will forever think that Dunkin' Donuts has the best coffee ever.
And I went and married a cowboy, a darling, rough riding, high living Staff Sergeant in the United States Army who can out drink and out play any Hoosier around. And I'm darn proud of him too. I'm just going to stay home when he goes out to play, is all.
