loser

The thought that's perpetually nagged me for the last few months is that my social ineptitude may have gotten to the point where it's beyond repair. I keep trying to tell myself that I'll pull through it and regain my confidence soon, but every social situation I find myself in ends up more uncomfortable and awkward than the last.

So how do I go about trying to fix this? Practice. I try to treat every social function I attend as practice. I tell myself to throw caution to the wind and commit to attempt to strike up a conversation with no fewer than X people. And maybe being so cognizant is what's ultimately making the dialogues increasingly unnatural and uncomfortable, but at least I'm trying to take an active role in making this better.

So this past weekend, Dongdong invited me to a suite at Madison Square Garden to take in a Knicks game with old friends (from my days at Michigan) and new friends. Surely, this would be a perfect opportunity to just cut loose and experiment in the art of conversation under consequence-free circumstances--14 people whom I either have never met or was only loosely acquainted with a long time ago, and all of whom I will likely not see again.

The problem was that one of them was the cutest girl ever. Now, even when my social anxiety wasn't quite so debilitating, beautiful women were always a stumbling block, and they'll continue to be. So instead of actively seeking out interaction, I spent the majority of the time being awestruck by this girl while pretending to be interested in an NBA game (yeah, right) or playing with my camera. And I ESPECIALLY avoided interaction with the cutie... When it came time for me to choose a seat, there were only a few options in one row. Here's what the seating arrangement looked like:

[aisle] [seat 1: some dude] [seat 2: cute girl] [seat 3: vacant] [seat 4: vacant] [seat 5: vacant] [seat 6: vacant] [wall]

Guess which seat I took. Yep. Seat 6! Who's the big winner? Sol, that's who. And note that there was a wall next to it, not an aisle from which I could've accessed the seat. That means that I literally had to step over the cute girl so that I could get to the seat farthest away from her. "Yeah, pardon me, cute girl. Can I get by? I really want to watch this game sitting next to my two buds: the wall and nobody."

But it doesn't end there. After a few minutes, she said, "Why are you sitting all the way over there? Do I smell?" or some retarded (albeit well-intentioned) shit along those lines. So, she was even big-hearted enough to take my social retardation and turn it around to give me an opening. I don't know what I said. I was too focused on the fact that I BMed in my underpants to think about what was coming out of my mouth. But I THINK I made retarded idle chit chat for 16-19 seconds before I bailed on the situation altogether and retreated to the bathroom, which I did NOT have to use. It doesn't matter what I said though. The point is that I had every opportunity to talk to her and I totally froze because I'm a big, dumb homo.

...You can't spell "loser" without "Sol."

So, the weekend, despite the fact that it was like a little vacation, was largely regrettable (apart from the fact that I hung out with M), not only because I sucked, but the same night, I got wasted and paid the price for the better part of today.