All By Myself

I’m a loner.  I have been introverted my entire life – it will never change.  I have many close friends who I adore, but I live alone, I rarely date, and I love to go see films and try new restaurants alone.  It’s who I am.

I used to be really shy.  Like really shy.  It’s something I started to overcome during my latter high school years, but I still have a few traces of social anxiety in me.  To this day, whenever I have a job requiring me to answer phones, I have a small panic attack whenever it rings.  I hate it when people look at me or ask me questions out of the blue.  I can’t bring myself to hardly say “Hello” to people I admire so much even though I see them all the time.

I have never been straight anti-social, however.  I’m usually the life of whatever party I’m at, and I’m soooooo much better at socializing with new people.  In fact, I’m a little too adept at talking to strangers at parties, bars, and nightclubs.  In fact, I tend to get a little too feel-good and impulsive, to where I might take rides to unknown places with said strangers.  And this usually leads to super-weird situations that could be potentially life-threatening or could get me in trouble with the law.  My first such adventure happened during the first semester of my freshman year at USC.

It was a campus party thrown by the NPHC and everyone was going.  I walked over alone, though, because my roommate (who was black, much to my relief) was out of town, and I hadn’t made a whole lot friends by that time.  I will now compress for you the trajectory of events for me that evening:

1. I danced and danced

2. Some dudes got into a fight, someone pulled a knife, and the whole event got broken up

3. I spotted this dude from UC Riverside that I had gone on a date with and didn’t want to talk to anymore, and he kept trying to get my attention so I pretended to look for friends on the other side of the room

4. Everyone was herded outside, and then people started running, so I started running too.

5. I ended up running next to these two guys who were talking about another party and asked me if I wanted to come.  I saw the unwanted past date nearby looking, so I jumped in the car

WHY THE HELL DID I DO THAT?  Anyway, I think I ended up in Compton that night.  I didn’t know the city yet, and I know that we had driven for a while before we got to the house where the “party” was at, so I think it was Compton.  They drove me back to my dorm around 3 that morning, we had had a nice time chillin’ and thangs.

God is with me.  That’s all I have to say.  Because even after my conscious efforts at behaving myself in a way that befits a young lady such as I, I keep getting into the same situations.  It’s even harder recently because I absolutely LOVE dancing, I’m absolutely feeling SO good, and I can’t wait to cut a rug tonight, but there’s no one to go out with me.  All of my friends are out of town, or they already have plans, or they’re posted up for the night.  And that young, tender, wonderful guy – the only guy I’ve ever been so compatible with, who shared the same tastes in music and nightlife with me - broke up with me because he was “feeling stagnant”.  Which is code for he met someone else, because anyone will tell you that there’s no such thing as stagnation with Alexia Denyce Lewis.  It’s not a boast; it’s a fact.

So the point is, I don’t want my having a great time dependent on whether or not one of my friends is able to join me, but I’m getting too old for my old impulsive shenanigans.  I’m going out tonight, yammit!  I’ve been getting these Facebook invites for Bardot Saturday nights in Hollywood, and there’s supposed to be a good rock and roll band there tonight, so why not?  It’s something new for me.  I resolve to not make any eye contact with anyone, to keep all new social interactions to a minimum, to not give anyone my phone number and/or real name, and to go straight to my car when it’s all over.  I will emerge triumphant, ready to face Sunday with the knowledge that I have the power to overcome my spontaneity!  Besides, I have bible class in the morning, I can’t be out at all hours like I used to do, I’m no spring chicken…