I knew I was only going to know one other person there (besides Matty) so my plan was to grab some food, find my friend Tom, and try not to put any pressure on myself to be a party animal. Matty loves this kind of thing and it's a sight to see him work the crowd. Well, if you can call ten other people a "crowd."
Most of the time when I'm at a party I feel like I'm "up in the air looking down." I sorta make myself invisible and it feels like I can see what's going on without being a part of things. Even when Matty is by my side and includes me in what he's doing, I still feel like being at a party is alien to me.
But for some reason I decided to have a new attitude for this party Saturday night. I gave a lot of thought beforehand and decided my new attitude would be to just accept my basic shy personality and not change into something I'm not in order to be sociable. What would be the point of that? I figured if I forced myself to put on a "party face" it just wouldn't be my true self and I'd end up completely miserable.
This got me to thinking about what my "true self" actually is. In a social setting, my tendency is to blend in without drawing any attention to myself. But see, this is not exactly true because when we go out, I enjoy doing some things that inevitably draw attention.
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| (Not me, BTW) |
It's when I try to force myself to be something I'm not that gets me in trouble. That's when I get attention that's really uncomfortable. Trying to force myself to be humorous or witty in a social setting, for example, always gets people staring at me like they're expecting me to continue being humorous or witty all night long. It just ain't gonna happen. I can't keep that train on the track.
So instead of "being up in the air looking down," I decided to go to that relaxed place I feel inside myself when I'm not putting any pressure on myself. I wanted to see if I could have my feet on the ground, so to speak, and talk to people if I wanted to -- or not -- and still feel good about it.
Well, guess what? I ended up making a new friend. And guess what else? Evan is about as shy as I am. We both even talked about our shyness. Neither of us felt the need to entertain each other so our conversation just came natural and we discovered we have similar tastes in music and a similar outlook on life in general. In other words we both ended up talking more than either of us normally does in a social setting like this.
It was amazing how much this put me in a good mood. There was even a part of me that wanted to stay a little longer than I normally like to at these kind of things.
On the way home I was in a very talkative mood with Matty, in fact being the one doing most of the talking, which is something of a reversal. I wasn't even talking about Evan either. I was just enjoying myself and how I was feeling inside. I could tell Matty was enjoying listening to me even though he didn't say much. His grin and occasional sideways glance told me everything.
When we got home he wrapped me in his arms for a really tight hug that was one of the best he's ever given. He was making a soft but deep growly sound and I knew exactly what he was telling me. Needless to say I just melted.
After shedding our clothes he reached over, grabbed around my waist, and lifted me up across his left shoulder, my legs in front of him and my head hanging off his back, and headed for the bedroom. It sorta took me by surprise but this time I didn't mind being "up in the air looking down" because I got treated to a very nice view of his ass. Sometimes being up in the air looking down is the perfect place to be.
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