From: orc@usite-next.uchicago.edu (David Parsons)
Subject: Re: Where did all my "friends" go?
Organization: Ministry of Skritching
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 00:58:03 GMT

In article <17976@acorn.co.uk> osmith@acorn.co.uk (Owen Smith) writes:
|Well here I sit, still at work, at 10 PM on a Friday evening. Why? Because
|the other option is to go home and read a book, listen to music, have a bath
|or go to bed. Every Friday is like this, and indeed most other days of the
|week.  I can literally count the number of times I've been invited out this
|year on the fingers of one hand. We're eight months into the year, and at
|this rate I might just need my other hand by mid december.

   Would you believe this happens to us all?  Last year, I think I was
invited out once, and it took inviting myself to other things to go out
more than once.  Even now, where it could be argued that I've started to
develop a social life, here it is, friday night, and I'm sitting home
reading soc.bi, listening to music, and thinking I should have a bath so
that the children won't run in terror when I visit my friends in the
suburbs tomorrow.

   I think that there are quite a few people in the world who have social
lives that run in long cycles.  The good times tend to run by really
quickly, which leaves you with the seemingly infinitely long dry spells.

|Don't get me wrong, I have friends, I know people, there are about 20 people
|who will cross the street and come and chat to me if they see me. But they
|don't invite me to anything. I call and visit them from time to time or
|leave phone messages for them. They never call on me and they never phone
|back.

   This, on the other hand, isn't quite so good.  They could either be
moderately dense or they don't really want you as a close friend.  You
could try to be rather blatant about it - when they start discussing
a party or somesuch, you could casually point out that "It's been a while
since I've been to a <x>, mind if I drop by for your next <x>?"

|I stopped visiting one guy altogether. It's a ten minute walk from my
|house to his, along safe well-lit footpaths. By the time I'd called to see
|him over a dozen times (and he seemed happy to see me each time) he'd not
|once come round to see me, so I stopped going to see him. Was stopping
|calling on him a good move on my part?

   What's your flat look like?  Does it have room to entertain a guest
without them vanishing into a black hole of junk (my flat looked like
that for a while, but discovering a collection of railroad books under
a heap provoked me into a cleaning session.  Now I can confortably entertain
one person (a few prospects spring to mind.. *sigh*) or three/four friends,
if they don't mind being particularly comfy on the couch whilst being
menaced by my book & music collection.

|One lot frequently eats out for sunday lunch. They invite the guy I share a
|house with, but never me. Indeed one sunday morning they rang to ask if Jon
|was coming, but he was already out. They said "OK thanks" and put the phone
|down. I know these people - why didn't they invite me?

   Invite yourself.  If they hem and haw, you can always be rude and ask why.

| Of course women don't socialise with me
|because in their eyes I'm not female,

  No, somehow I don't think that's so.  Men and woman do socialise, even
when there isn't the compelling ulterior motive.

|and there is the slight problem that
|in the circles I move in there are about 100 times as many men as women -
|computers, role playing games, brass bands and cars just don't have women in
|them at all (how many women can you get in a Spectrum? (-: ).

   Dunno.  I know a woman here in Chicago who's a bit of a railroad
enthusiast, and we've been fairly friendly upon occasion.  I'd suspect
that the population of women trainspotters is a wee bit less than the
population of woman rpg'ers, computer buffs, or car fanatics.  And, you
know, there are still all the *men who do those things, and if you don't
want *them for their bodies (I may be biased [so to speak], but I can think
offhand of one or two computer geeks that I'd be more than happy to help
break the morals code with), you can at least strike up a friendship with
them and then become friends/lovers with their sisters/girlfriends/girl-
friends sisters.

|I've drifted and waffled a bit, but basically I just want to scream and
|shout to the world "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME? WHY DO YOU BASTARDS
|NEVER INVITE ME TO ANYTHING?". (This is not directed at soc.bi people since
|I don't socialise with them, which raises the question of why in hell's name
|I'm posting it to soc.bi. But anyway. Sigh.) Maybe I try too hard to be
|friendly etc. Maybe I help people out too often (or at least offer to help
|too often) and they get embarrassed (remember, real men(tm) don't need help
|- help's for women and sissies :-( :-().

   In soc.singles, this has been run into the ground, and the general
consensus there is that would put you into the dreaded LJBF (Let's Just
Be Friends) category, and won't (at least not in most cases) drive the
people screamingly away.

|I definitely don't fit with many of the people I know in terms of acceptable
|conversation topics. For example, someone will say something about nipple
|stimulation (or more likely I'll notice someone secretly stimulating their
|girlfriend's nipples) and then I'll say something along the lines that
|nipple clamps might be fun and I've read that your nipples get more
|sensitive if they are pierced, and then everyone looks at me as if I'm the
|sickest person they've ever met and the subject dies a death. There is a 2
|minute embarrassed silence, and then someone manages to start up a
|completely different conversation topic. What is wrong with these people?

    Umm.  I don't know if that's the sort of topic I'd bring up in casual
conversation; I recall a few cases, when I was younger and existing in
hetspace, where I'd be at a party, someone would start commenting on such
a thing and would soon be standing in the middle of a large empty spot.
(On the other hand, I know of some people who'd rather enjoy this sort
of conversation)

   But I can't really see bringing it up when you see someone copping a
feel, unless the people are fairly good friends...

|Did they have their sense of adventure amputated at birth or what?

   In England?  Dunno; it's your country.  Lots of people think it's
a grand adventure just getting laid, and anything else is, like, way
to spacey, you know?  I'd not imagine that the UK, as a rule, is any
less puritanical than the USA about such things.
                __
  david parsons \/ "Mr vanilla at your service!"