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Social Stan, or: How I Managed to Hit on a Transvestite and a Lesbian All in One Night While Being Embroiled in My Own Personal Problems

Here’s the thing: I don’t like being around people. It’s not because I’m antisocial, although I am. It’s not because I’m claustrophobic, although I am. It’s not because I think listening to people who love the sound of their own voices — people who are abundant in social situation — is a fate worse than death, although I do.

No, the problem is that, like all other humans, I am a social animal. When I am around people, I feed off of their energy. I start to loosen up. And I’m a tight-ass, and I like it that way, so this becomes a major problem for me. When I loosen up, I start to act like myself. I hate acting like myself — I’m such a jackass.

Which brings me to last night.

Usually, I avoid social functions in and around the college, because as I said, I don’t like being around people, and people tend to gravitate toward social functions. If I feel obligated to go to a social function, I either sit in a corner sulking, or I sit in a corner reading. People come up to me and talk, and I say incendiary things and they go away. Then, the next day, I call them and apologize for my behavior, implying there was some sort of distracting family crisis.

Believe it or not, this, much like Billy Dee Williams and Colt 45, works every time.

Last night started out much like that. A professor and friend of mine was screening his thesis film at long last (he’s been hyping it for about a year and a half), so I was obliged to go and see it. I was also obliged to recruit people to go, but nobody had any actual interest. They couldn’t even humor me. Bastards. I need to hire a new set of friends. From my long experience with prostitutes, I find that people will be nice to you if you pay them enough.

Prior to the movie, I had some time to kill, so I called Lucy. Talk about murdering time.

She said, “I can’t really talk now.”

“Oh, okay,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m going out to dinner with one of my friends and her parents,” she said.

“Oh.”

“But I can call you in, like, an hour, and we can talk,” she muttered.

“No, I’m going to a screening in an hour, and there’s this reception afterward, so —”

“Oh. Well, um, I can call you tomorrow night, around eight or so,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“I think my boyfriend’s gonna dump me,” she said.

“What?” Suddenly, I was stunned. The last time I’d talk to her, which admittedly was over a week ago, things were fine.

“Yeah,” she said. “So, you know, he might, or he might not.”

“Jesus,” I said, “do you wanna talk about it or something?”

“I can’t,” she said. “I have to go.”

“Yeah, all right,” I said.

We hung up. What the fuck is wrong with her? You can’t just drop something like that on someone, with absolutely no elaboration or explanation, and then hang up like it’s nothing. It is unacceptable and sort of disturbing. It sort of put a damper on the whole night, and I was pretty worried about Lucy. I thought I should call her back, but, even though it was bringing me down, I also thought I didn’t want to have to deal with it.

So, I saw the movie and ran into a couple of old friends from classes, and a couple of professors, so that was kinda neat. Mostly, though, it was hundreds of people I didn’t know. I’m kinda glad none of my friends decided to show up, because the place was packed. They brought in 20 chairs (and the standard capacity of the screening room is 100 people), and it was still standing-room-only.

Afterward, a reception was held downstairs in the li’l cafeteria that I hang out in every day. Two women in strange white uniforms were handing out glasses of what I’m told is really good wine. And the hor d’oeurves spread was quite high-class. You can tell it’s high-class because I didn’t actually know what any of the food was. It was all malodorous cheeses and strange vegetable constructions and so on.

I was one of the first people down to the reception, so I sort of stood in a corner and watched as everyone started coming downstairs. I didn’t recognize anybody, but I saw a really attractive woman, so I decided to get into the food line behind her and be hilarious at her.

“How do you know the professor?” I asked. Seemed like a good opening line at the time.

“Oh, he’s an old friend,” she said.

“Nice,” I said. “You enjoyed the film, I’m sure.”

“It was great,” she said.

“Yeah, I thought it was very funny,” I said.

“Me too,” she said and started chewing on something that I think had salmon in it.

“And it was interesting the way —”

Oh, dear God.

She swallowed, which drew attention to her general throat area, whereupon I saw what I had to believe was an Adam’s apple.

An Adam’s apple?

An ADAM’S APPLE!

“I have to go now,” I noted and tried to engulf myself in a throng of people I casually pretended to know.

Suddenly, this party was making me extremely uncomfortable. My professor is openly gay, which is not a big deal to me, and I would say roughly 60% of the crowd last night were gay, as well, which again, is not a big deal. But it still makes me extremely uncomfortable when I am trying very honestly to flirt with a woman who is not a woman. Usually I can tell, but s/he was good.

It turned out, in that crowd of people, I actually did know someone — one of my current professors.

“I want to introduce you to a friend of mine,” she said. “Stan, this is Kelly.”

Kelly, a not-unpleasant woman around my age. I did standard transvestite checks — she was clean. It was time to return to flirt mode.

“Hi, Kelly,” I said, shaking her hand. “You go here?”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling as if I had hit some sort of cerebral erogynous zone.

“Damn,” I thought, “I’m good.”

“What’s your major?” I said.

“Film,” she said. She had this sort of lackadaisical about her that usually I find extremely grating, but it was sort of cute. Or possibly I’m just desperate.

“Yeah, me too,” I said. “Screenwriting concentration.”

“Oh,” she said, looking me up and down in exactly the same way I did when I saw this hobo passed out on the sidewalk earlier that day on Diversey. I’m actually used to getting this look when I tell people I’m in the screenwriting program, so it didn’t really bother me. “I’m editing.”

“Ah, right,” I said. “A very important field.” Wow, that was lame.

“I guess,” she muttered.

She was losing interest. I had to get her back. “Have you seen the trailer for that new Tom Cruise movie?”

“Yeah,” she said. This wasn’t helping, but I was building it up. I’d been pitching the concept I blogged about yesterday all day, trying to see if anyone else found it funny. I don’t know why everyone in my class hated it, because everyone I’ve pitched it to since has practically rolled on the floor laughing. Kelly was no exception.

“You’re a riot,” she assessed after hearing the full concept.

I grinned like an idiot. I never have any idea what to say to people when they compliment me. It doesn’t happen often.

“What are you doing later?” she wondered when I decided to stop talking.

“Um,” I said. Should I be honest and say I’m going home, or I should I make up something really glamorous and interesting, or should I say something funny?

I decided to go with funny, since it seemed to be working. “I told a friend of mine I’d help him out with this film shoot,” I said, “so I have to stop at this 24-hour shop on Belmont and pick up some K-Y and about eight dildos.”

“Oh,” she said, tittering with amusement, “sounds…interesting.”

“Yes, he’s like the pornographic David Blaine,” I said.

“Maybe someone should stick him in a box for a couple months,” she zinged. It was a good one, I thought. “Well, listen, my girl is coming by later, and we were gonna go out for coffee. Would you want to go?”

“You…you have a daughter?” I was puzzled. She looked like she was about my age, and if she had a daughter who was old enough to be going out for coffee at —

“No,” she laughed, assuming I was still being hilarious, “my girlfriend.”

Strike. Fucking. Two.

“Well,” I said, “we’ll see.” Although my dreams of romantic conquest were dashed, I didn’t want to rule out coffee. She was a nice girl, so even if she didn’t dig on the Stanbeef (and, really, who does?), I’d hang out with her and her girlfriend. Especially if “coffee” is lesbian code for “able-bodied man willing to partake in hawt threesome axxxion.”

So, I was sorta dejected, but I literally bumped into this really nice guy who was in my screenwriting class in the spring. He wrote this hilarious script that I admired and worshipped, and at the same time, he felt that way about my script. He kept talking it up to the friends he brought with, all of whom were also extremely pleasant. So we sat in a corner together and hung out. We felt sort of ostracized, since we were the only people who weren’t in any way affiliated with the production.

After maybe half an hour, we decided to go and congratulate the professor and leave. But I saw the pretty blonde from my screenwriting class. This cafeteria area is divided into two sections: the cafeteria proper, and then the “Interent café,” which consists of lots o’ computers and several non-computer tables for people to study. That way, when there’s an event like last night’s reception taking up the cafeteria, students can still be in there and have a place to work.

The blonde was working, and she saw me, but I am extremely near-sighted, so I didn’t really recognize her at first. I tried to check her out, because the blurry image I saw was still a pretty blonde, but then suddenly she was waving at me, very excitedly. At that point, I knew who it was, so I waved back dumbly and then was whisked off by my friend to go talk to the professor, which we did.

Was the wave enough? I kept wondering about this. My skills with the opposite sex are not exactly honed at this point, which is why I keep dating friends and ruining everything, but this was a girl with whom I really felt a connection, and who for once seemed to feel something herself. She was often way too excited about my existence for this to be a normal thang.

I decided to go off with my friend and his friends, who were pretty cool. We were gonna go back and hang out at the dorms, but as we hit the door, I realized that probably the best thing to do was not go back with them, but go back and talk to the blonde for awhile. I told my friend about her, and he wished me luck, and we parted ways. I went back into the café and sat down with the blonde.

See, somebody left a random, anonymous comment on this blog the other day saying that it would not be a bad thing to compliment her writing and her screenplay ideas, so that’s immediately what I started in with. I mean, it’s the main thing we’ve bonded about, so it makes sense that I’d ask. As it turned out, she was actually sitting there working on her script. She had her character — her problem was, she didn’t know what to do with him. She was struggling.

Fortunately, I’d been thinking about her script for two weeks. See, I’ve become such a procrastinator that I’ve got to the length of mentally doing other people’s homework, just so I don’t have to do my own. Plus, she’s really hot, so I wanted to help her out if I could.

She was very receptive to my help, and the ideas I came up with actually seemed pretty solid. We talked about it for about half an hour before her brother showed up, and suddenly she had to go immediately. I was sorta bummed, but what are you gonna do? The fortunate thing was that she was insanely excited about talking with me, so we’re gonna meet up again on Tuesday.

I think this might be the start of something. Of course, every time I think that, it explodes in my face like so many trick cigars.

Still, though, I think I have a chance. I was charming and witty and full of good ideas. To paraphrase Rilo Kiley — sometimes when you’re on, you’re really fucking on. Aside from not being physically appealing in any way, I’m everything a woman could want.

After I parted ways with the blonde, I decided to call Lucy back. It was only about 9 o’clock, believe it or not. The thesis film, which screened at 7, was only about 30 minutes long (I thought it was feature length).

“Hey,” she said when she picked up, “he dumped me.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ve been expecting it,” she said. “I’m not really upset, but I want to go get a blade.”

“Um,” I said, my disturbed mind starting to crack, “is that some sort of penis euphemism, or are you talking about an actual knife?”

“No,” she said, “a knife. I want to stab him, that fucking bastard. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been dumped.” I hate it when she says shit like that — it makes her sound so arrogant. But it is, technically, true. She usually is the dumper.

“What happened?” I asked, and she told me the whole story, which I didn’t fully understand. She did it in that typical Lucy way, wherein she assumes that we’ve been much more in touch than we actually have, so I know all these little personal snippets that she can gloss over. From what I can gather, it seems like he just got sick of her bullshit and realized that the sex probably wasn’t worth the aggravation.

“So,” she said, “I’m not really upset, so don’t worry, but the girls and I are gonna go get loaded.”

“Great,” I said with obvious faux sincerity, although it was nice to know she wasn’t absolutely crushed by this break-up.

After that, she decided to get going. Apparently it was a race to get to the bars, on the off-chance that Iowa City might run out of alcohol. Of course, having been to Iowa City, maybe that isn’t such an off-chance.

Posted by Stan on October 25, 2003 12:46 PM  | Permalink | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation | Digg It