saturday night blues

so after deciding to make my weekly trip up to san francisco tonight, i decided for no good reason to stay home in palo alto. sure i have a stack of books i could read and a few fellowship applications that need to be finished before the semester gets busy, and if those were the reasons for staying in, then that would be fine.

but they're not.

i'm not going because i couldn't bring myself to attend the party that was to be my evening's activity. and the main reason is i felt like a second-class invitee. i had been forwarded the evite by a friend of mine, and when i checked it this evening for the address, i saw that it was going to be a small event. what that meant is that it would be a bunch of first-class citizens and me.

now i'm not claiming that as soon as i walk in a room that every head turns in my direction and guests start queueing to get a chance to get a word in, but given the right situation i can be a pretty witty conversant. on the other hand, if those circumstances are just a bit off of what i look for, i can turn into a silent wall decoration that looks for a shadow to cower into. and that's pretty much what i've come to accept of myself. plus, even though i'm running out of weekends in my twenties, it's not as if i've given up my last weekend on the town.

so sitting on the couch and drinking some homemade lemonade, i felt no remorse over skipping socialization. but then an epiphany. the television was on and i realized what was going on: a single man at home on a saturday night watching ladies figure skating. granted, at least i wasn't watchng men's figure skating or ice dancing. and while i'm not someone who goes around telling guys to be a man's man (since that would make me a hypocrite) but still this represented a serious problem.

so to my two resolutions for the new year, i add one more: start acting like a man, or at least a reasonable approximation of one. at least after sasha cohen finishes skating.