I’m going out for drinks with my roommate and her coworkers after work tomorrow night. Someone in her department is leaving for a new job, so they’re getting together to do that farewell, good luck drinks thing. The guest of honor asked everyone to bring the siblings and roommates and significant others that she’s heard so much about. I’m looking forward to it, partly because I know Caitlin’s been waiting for her chance to prove to me that some of these people really do exist, but mostly because I have a feeling that this is going to be a room I can work.
Send me out with a group of people from my own company and I’ll totally clam up. I hate being that girl who falls on the last resort topics; either talk about work, or talk about talking about work. But somehow, I always become THAT GIRL.
I basically need a fourth wall. A fourth membrane will do, if the place is crowded. With a bit of a social moat, I can’t not be charming. I’m not trying to be conceited. It’s not like I don’t have several volumes of awkward blunders in my archives, because, seriously? A greatest hits edition is in order. But the animated small talk and the repartee and the banter? I’m good at that. I have stunned my roommate with the way I nimbly impart woes and mirth to clerks at the beauty counter and gas station attendants. She tells me I was thisclose to charming my way out of our broker’s fee, although I don’t think my powers are quite that forcible.
Caitlin is excited to introduce me, finally, to the cast of characters from her office stories. She’s really excited. Like, almost as excited as she was the night we both went to the grocery store at 10PM and waited in the same line because only one register was open and the cashier was like, “are you two together?” and she spent the whole walk home wondering if that meant paying together or together together.
We still talk about that sometimes. “That woman totally mistook us for a lesbian couple!” she marvels and I’m like, “right, right, because single straight chicks never go out for pints of ice cream on Thursday nights.” She says, “that cashier looked at me with respect.” She says she felt like sort of a bad ass.
I’m going to try really hard to get her to tell that story to her coworkers at happy hour tomorrow.
