Socialness: All the Things!

Shit's crazy right now, yo. Lots has happened over the past few months.

Starting at mid-January, I went to see a play last week that a friend was in. It's cool that meet-ups with the out-of-town group (for lack of a better name) are becoming more common. I'm really settled in now—there are a few times where I'm like "...what the hell are you guys even talking about >.>", but it's less and less common each time we congregate.

Seeing the play also spawned a little nostalgia trip: it reminded me of high school Drama class, and the school plays I was in. I miss that shit; it was so goddamn fun. Drama was my favourite class by a mile. I don't think uni has anything resembling 'school plays' which random students can audition for, but if they did, I would totally go for that. I was never terribly good at acting—I'm not the best at convincing an audience I'm somebody else—but performing is always fun as hell. Who knows, maybe I'll end up writing a fucking play someday :P



Next big thing: I had a sleepover! Seven people stayed at my house. Seven people. I've never had any people sleepover at my place, much less seven! But it was soooooo fffuuuuunnnn! There weren't any moments where it wasn't fun; literally the entire thing was amazing. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but seriously, nothing went wrong! Two people had to stay an extra night due to trackwork, but that wasn't hard to deal with at all.

We played games all weekend: Nintendo Land, Mario Kart, Smash Bros. U, Drawful, Fibbage, Word Spud, Boom Street... soooo many gggaammmeeess ^_^  And when it got too uncomfortable to play games (and it did a few times, due to the heat and humidity), we just watched Daria and The IT Crowd instead. I know a lot of people think playing games is anti-social, and it can be, but couch multiplayer is anything but anti-social. Couch multiplayer is just like playing a sport without moving: you team up, you trash talk, you celebrate successful co-operation, you bitch and moan when you get trounced. Don't sit there and tell me that's anti-social, cos it fucking isn't :P  One guy was playing on his phone a lot, but he's super shy, so I can relate to that—everyone needs their space, you know? But apart from that, we were bonding pretty much the whole time, even coming up with more in-jokes during the usual 'we're-in-bed-but-not-going-to-sleep-yet' chatting that always happens at these things.

We went to the beach too, and built this kick-ass sandcastle:

(correction: they built the sandcastle; I built the shapeless blob of sand next to it :P)

It was just so cool to have everything go so well for my first sleepover. The only thing that really went wrong was a few people not being able to show up, as well as a few people not getting back to me at all. I'm finding that to be a bit of a pain in the ass: people not replying when I invite them to stuff. I don't expect people to reply instantaneously; obviously, people need time to figure out whether they can attend things or not. Even if you respond the day before, that's fine, no biggie! But when you don't respond at all, or you say you're coming but then don't, that is incredibly fucking annoying. The invites went out a month before; there's no excuse for not replying except being lazy or inconsiderate. I don't hate the people who didn't get back to me, but I do hate their behaviour.

I'd like to host another one soon, but the next two will be organised by other people, and it's better to pass the burden around to multiple people rather than hog the glory of hosting all the time. I'm definitely gonna do it again, though! Everyone enjoyed themselves, and I had heaps of fun getting everything set up, even if it did mean carrying a TV, a PC, and several games consoles in and out of my house eight times in four days, plugging/unplugging everything each time :P



In more recent news, my best friend got back from Europe, and she came to see me a few days ago. Catching up with someone you haven't seen in a long time is always so cathartic: it's an incessant flow of stories and happiness. I remember seeing an old friend of mine from high school last year, and we were laughing before she'd even crossed the street to say hello. I don't know what the hell was so funny, but we laughed anyway :P  But it was awesome to have my closest friend back. We've already organised to see each other at uni once a week to chill and play games, so I'm looking forward to that regular interaction :)



As for future social thingies, apart from random stuff with my local group and sleepovers with the out-of-town group, there's not too much happening. The gaming association at my uni is hosting more regular meet-ups, and I'd like to go to them, but the last meet-up they held was on a day where I went to an open mic, and the next one is another day where I'll be performing. Seriously, events are always conflicting with each other for me; it's quite annoying :P  But if I can eventually hang with them and play some games, I might meet some new peeps.

There is still that part of me which wants to do things totally out of my comfort zone. I read about a friend of mine skinny dipping and was like "wow, that actually sounds... pretty cool." And that sounds weird for someone who's never been naked in front of somebody, but it doesn't sound that daunting. For starters, I've done more embarrassing shit on-stage in front of hundreds of people. When you take to the stage in a diaper and pretend to ejaculate from a baby bottle... your dignity becomes ready for just about anything you throw at it :P  And secondly, you'd be in the water most of the time, so it's not like anyone can see your junk unless you're out of the water, so who gives a fuck, right? It might be a bit scary, but if I have the chance to see some boobs, I'm in. I feel like the kind of people who skinny dip probably wouldn't even judge if someone felt bad about their body, or decided that skinny dipping wasn't for them—that kind of attitude just seems to fit well with the activity, and I'd be totally cool hanging around people like that. But it's obviously a very specific activity, one that doesn't exactly come up very often, so even if I would be comfortable with that, I can't hold out waiting for invitations (particularly when the friend in question was describing an all-girls night, so... yeah, not gonna work :P).

In a more general sense, I don't know what it is, but part of me just wants to do sexy shit like that, to get involved in more sexual scenarios (or any [hetero]sexual scenarios, really). It seems impossible to achieve without entering an atmosphere that's either a) totally foreign to me, or b) one I already know I won't do well in, but goddamn does hooking up sound fun right now :P  Given that I've now had at least one experience where people drinking weren't acting like asshats (a 21st I went to last year), I'm more privy to environments where people are drinking, at least people my age. It might just be my family who've left a fucking awful impression on me with regards to booze, now that I think about it. If other situations with alcohol are like that 21st like year, I'm all for more of that, cos it was really fun.

This doesn't change the main issue, though, one I also experienced last year at another 21st: the lack of commonality with the type of people who are in these environments. I don't go out, I don't sleep around, and I lack interest pop culture: I have very little in common with the kind of people who attend these things, making it really hard to get involved in socialising, even when that's what I want. It's not like these people are bad people; they're just different people. And perhaps I'm wrong about that too! Maybe that 21st was a one off in terms of the people there, and if I went to another place, I somehow would be able to bond with the other peeps. But if all these people talk about is drinking and partying and getting drunk and fucking each other and the latest TV shows and pop tracks... count me out. Unless you want me to sit there playing Super Mario Bros. on my phone, don't put me there, cos I'll fucking hate it :P

The other issue is that opportunities for this kind of thing are thin on the ground to begin with cos my friends are mostly like me with regards to social things, something I've mentioned before. I only have one friend who goes out and does these kinds of things. Going alone to these things really isn't an option, or is at least a real quick way to scare the bejeezus out of me. Even if I did want to go into a new environment, one I've shied away from in the past, if I went there alone, the level of social anxiety I'd have would be so intense that I'd have no chance of working my way in.

Simultaneously, I'd feel like a leech if I asked the aforementioned friend if I could tag along with her, cos it seems unfair on them to expect her to take care of me, or to even risk messing her evening up by doing something wrong or needing to be shown the ropes. This isn't a reaction to the thought of asking her; this is something I've thought about a lot, cos asking to go with her is something I've wanted to do quite a few times (and have done once or twice, probably before I developed the 'leech' feeling above). Any time I see her mention going out to something interesting, I think about it, but then go "no, don't do that. You'll be a liability: you'll stick to her like glue all fucking evening just to feel safe. Don't fuck up her evening; just let her do her own thing." I'd have to know for sure she was 100% OK with me tagging along before I even consider doing it.

And who knows: maybe it'll be so much fun that I decide to go out to these things on my own, or with people I meet while at these places who I get along with, which I probably will if I like these places. If not, then I'll know it sucks ass and I won't have to worry about missing out on anything (the entire point of such an outing would basically be to counteract FOMO right now :P).


Having thought about it, the desire to go out is probably a direct result of my desire to get laid, but I don't see a problem with that. I might go out once and hate it; that just means I have to find another way to get my rocks off. I might hook up once and have my desires satisfied, never feeling the need to go out again. I just wanna throw myself into the mix, I guess, and see how things go. The closest I can currently get is seeing chicks in comedy clubs, but that won't really work cos I'm out of town and always have to get back home, meaning I can't really do anything there—there were two cute girls at the last open mic I did, but I didn't approach them for this very reason.



 
Assuming for the meantime that I wouldn't do well in the type of places my friend goes to, where else is there? Like, yes, I meet new people through my out-of-town friends every now and then, but there's never really any opportunity to flirt (much less the confidence required to do so :P), nor have there been any people I've met who I'd actually sleep with yet. Any time I see questions about where to meet women or where to flirt with them, the answer from most people is "you can meet women anywhere! Talk to them on the street!", but I really don't think that's appropriate, at least not for me personally. And even if it is appropriate, I can hardly approach them in the most basic social situations, much less a totally non-social situation like a goddamn footpath. One step at a time, for fuck's sake :P

I guess it's just frustrating me a little that there are no outlets through which I can currently meet a girl and hit it off with her. In fact, it's not even a thing my friends talk about, because it's not something they're into. My friends are either in relationships, or just not interested in casual sex. But I am interested! It sounds really exciting! I just can't share that with anyone cos I'm fairly sure no one I know really relates to it.

And, oddly enough, this is a very specific desire for casual sex I'm feeling now. Sex in a relationship would be nice for its own reasons, and a relationship would ultimately provide far more for me, but hooking up is the type of sex I want to have at this exact moment. I dunno why, but it is. Or perhaps a more accurate way to explain it would be to say: while I would rather be in a relationship than hook up with girls, I would rather have the experience of hooking up with a girl before I enter a relationship, seeing as I can't hook up with one girl while dating another. It's the experience I want.

I swear to god, one day, I'm gonna find a way to make nerdy get-togethers hot. It will be done. I've got material on this already, as the set-up allows for a whole bunch of jokes, but I'd also like to see the idea in reality. Like, take Dungeons and Dragons: a tabletop RPG game where everyone plays together in a fantasy world, working their way through a narrative explained by the Game Master. All you'd have to do is make the narrative erotic! The players are all physically there, able to check each other out, and the game gives them characters through which they can flirt in kind of a 'safe' way, so they can suss each other out. Then, if two players like flirting in the game, they can flirt in real life too, getting each other's numbers and/or hooking up. Or for something simpler, instead of Strip Poker (which you could also play, I guess—something else I'd be up for personally, if only I could understand poker :P), instead of that, you have Super Strip Bros. You start up any version of Super Smash Bros., set it to Survival, and add one life for each article of clothing able to be removed. During the battle, whenever a player loses a life, they have to take off the next article of clothing on the list. And they aren't allowed to pause: they have to take it off quick enough such that they don't fall back into battle before they get their hands back on the controller. Once you got up to a certain level of nakedness, particularly with girls, the others would be at a disadvantage cos they'd have to prevent themselves from perving, or else they'd lose a life themselves. It just sounds so goddamn plausible I tell ya!

Perhaps I talk about this too much or too in-depth, but I'm just stuck in limbo here. I love hanging out with my current friends and wouldn't trade them for anyone because I have the greatest time when we hang out. But I don't see a way to hook up right now, at least not through my current social group. I was never really invited to parties or anything during high school, and I can't remember ever being able to play things like Spin the Bottle or whatever other party games there are; I didn't even really want to go to parties or do things like that when I was younger. So maybe these are just high-school-level carnal desires popping up at an inconvenient time. The curiosity won't go away, though.

I dunno how off-topic I got but I'ma stop now :P

Open Mic 1 and Open Mic 2

How did I go? How well did I do?
Which jokes went well? Which ones did I screw?
Why does this rhyme? I don't really know.



So, I went to two open mics last week, testing material for a comedy competition I'm doing tomorrow. How was my first open mic performance, my first stand-up performance in over two years? Rusty. Very, very rusty :P

After walking down to the train station, I got my ticket, and ended up running into someone from high school who I hadn't spoken to in ages. We were catching the same train, so we ended up reminiscing about high school and discussing comedy for the whole trip--a surprisingly cool way to start the journey!

I got off the train, and had no clue where I was, cos I'd never been in Central alone before. I ended up walking all the way around it before I got to where I wanted to go, allowing me to orient myself in the direction of the venue. The GPS on my phone was proving very useful; the fact that Google Maps doesn't save street names for offline maps was not at all useful. A map without street names is nothing more than post-modern geometric art. I walked down to the venue, arriving earlier than I expected. My friend turned up not long after, so we started chatting.

It was at this point that the nerves started. This is normal, particularly when you consider I haven't performed in two years--just part of the deal, as I've come to learn. I went upstairs when sign-ups began and put my name down, before going to sit down near the front and going over my lines. The others sat more towards the back, though the room did pretty much fill up by the time the show started. The room seemed to fit about 40-50 people in it. One guy who was sitting behind us, a guy who'd seemingly been there before, spoke to me a little. I asked him how the room was, and he said it was a good room: the crowd was accepting, and though a performer may or may not do well (especially considering many will be trying out new material), there's no animosity or heckling or anything.

Not long after we spoke, the show began. The running order was determined by lucky dip; I was up towards the end of the first half. This started the Anxiety Countdown Timer™ in my head, meaning I was getting progressively more nervous until I was due to perform (but again, that's just how it is). Despite my nerves, I was confident I'd do well, even though I hadn't performed in a while. I wasn't certain I'd do well; I just believed the material was reliable.

In the meantime, I watched the performers before me go up. The audience is pretty much entirely comedians going up to perform, save a few people there to see their friends. The performances were alright--nothing special, but again, it's an open mic, so you're not expecting perfection. It wasn't horrible, though! I chuckled at most of the people who went up before me. I wasn't laughing my ass off, but I wasn't bored or anything either. Thing was, though I was chuckling at the material, many people weren't. It seemed borderline impossible to get anything beyond a slight laugh from the crowd.

That didn't faze me, though. As nervous as I was, I was fairly sure that when I got up there, I'd do reasonably well. I mean, my jokes were at least partially tested--each one had been posted to reddit in written form, and had done well there--so I wasn't going up totally blind, right?

My name was eventually called, and I went up. I had two openers to test: the first one didn't get much of a response, and the second one kinda got a response, but it was a delayed response (it's one of those jokes that takes a while to figure out, thus not really a prime candidate for 'first joke in your set' :P). Usually, when I perform, the first laugh I get is what relaxes me, but I didn't get laughs for my opening jokes, so I wasn't able to chill out. The joke I did after that got almost no response. One person started to clap (it was one of those jokes that tries to make a point; he must have liked the point I made, even if the joke was shit :P), but nothing beyond that was given. The jokes I did after that got a fairly mild response at best.

After I sat back down, I didn't feel angry or regretful; what I felt was confused. I thought "what happened? Why did the performance go that badly? Some people who went up before me went worse, so I wasn't totally awful, but I felt like I could've done a lot better than that." I would have to wait until I got home to review the tape and figure things out. The room didn't get much easier for the others after that, either. I can thing of three or four performers out of the thirty-or-so who performed who did what I'd call 'well' in terms of audience response (and one of them was only funny cos he was rambling while smashed, so... yeah :P). I left the venue determined to figure out what the hell happened when I got home, as well as working on improving the one joke that got almost no response (that's gotta be the quality of joke, not the room).

When I got home and reviewed the tape, it became clear that I was hella nervous. I can be on-stage and not feel nervous, but still look and sound nervous, which is annoying, but also helpful to realise. I was nervous during the lead-up as I always am, but that never subsided once I started performing. This basically meant that while the other performers were 'loose', I was 'rigid'. The good performers that night were calm, acknowledging bad jokes, interacting with the audience, and able to improvise. I, on the other hand, was nervous as hell, moving past bad jokes almost immediately, hardly acknowledging the audience at all, and sticking to my script like glue. Bad stage feel, yo. Stuff like moving past bad jokes is actually what I'd been taught to be proper form (in Drama class, I'd always been told to keep going on-stage no matter what happened), but the rest was all on me.

This didn't explain why the others didn't get a good reaction, though. I discovered one of my openers wasn't delivered correctly, which screwed it up, and the jokes which got borderline-zero reaction probably just aren't good jokes, but the other jokes were delivered properly, and they got about as much reaction as many of the other comics did, even the ones I thought were good who just weren't received well. Could it be that the room's just difficult? I believed so. If it'd been only me and a few others who'd done mediocre, it would've made sense to blame the performers, but heaps of people seemed to do worse than they deserved. That's not to say the room was shitty or mean-spirited, but it suggests that something beyond my control was interfering with my performance.



So, I found a new opener, touched up the joke that didn't work at all, substituted tested material for untested material that I wanted to test, and went up to the second open mic on Sunday. I wasn't fazed by my performance on Wednesday; in fact, I was glad I went up, cos it meant I was able to fuck up there rather than during the competition. This venue was smaller, but there were also less comedians, and the performance was far shorter--most of the audience were there to actually watch rather than perform. Some of the people who I saw on Wednesday were here too, which was cool. I didn't really speak to anyone other than the guy managing the show, although one of the people I saw on Wednesday said he recognised me.

Once the show started, it was revealed I was on third. I liked this: intead of having to wait through ten performances to get the nerves out of the way, I only had to wait through two :P  The nerves were definitely there, but they were far less intense than on Wednesday. The audience was actually responding well too, which was good to hear. There was one guy who was heckling the MC rather incessantly, and I was scared of being heckled cos I haven't really been heckled before, but I knew I'd only be able to react to him as he heckled, and thus there was no point worrying about it in advance.

Eventually, I went up. I noticed the first performer was an adult, and the second performer was more of a young adult, so being the 15-year-old-look-alike that I am, I opened with an improvised line about the comics getting younger and younger, which went OK. The original opener followed that, and also went OK. The re-written version of the joke that totally failed on Wednesday was, again, not fantastically received (I'm determined to make that motherfucker work :P). The jokes after that, however, went great! It wasn't the best performance I've ever done or anything, but the jokes were getting good laughs, I was reacting to the crowd, I closed pretty damn well, and I was comfortable throughout the entire thing, even at the beginning which was a tad shaky. I sat back down with a sense of satisfaction, as I now knew it wasn't the jokes that were bad; it was, at least in part, my delivery.

After I sat down and the next act was introduced, the MC walked past me, patted me on the shoulder, and said I did well. That was confirmation to me that, yes, this was a good performance. One or two of the other comics who went up before the halfway mark gave me thumbs up as well. During the break, an audience member came up to me and said "keep doing what you're doing, cos you kinda remind me of a young Bill Hicks". And that was the dude who was heckling. I got complimented by a fucking heckler. That was a pretty cool compliment. I know I'm nowhere near Hicks in terms of insight or providence, but to even remind someone of him is pretty bad-ass.

The rest of the show made a second point clear: the room on Wednesday was, indeed, a tough room. This room was way more appropriate in terms of its reaction to jokes. I mean, there were less people in the audience on Sunday than there were on Wednesday, but the Sunday audience laughed way more! The comedians were definitely getting the laughs they deserved, and the audience seemed way more into it, probably cos they weren't all there just to perform. When I emailed the organiser earlier in the week, he mentioned that when they organised performers on the day (like the place on Wednesday) rather than in advance, the quality of the performances was far lower, so it seems like organising them in advance is definitely the way to go, as the audience enjoys it more, and the comics get a better crowd.

When I left, I was again told I did well by a few people. The guy who said he saw me at the Wednesday venue (who was the MC on Wednesday, in fact), said I did well, and actually suggested that I apply to the organiser at the Sunday venue to perform for their Monday show, a show for established comics--he clarified I might not even get a response, but that it was worth a shot). I dunno if I'll do that, but if I do well in RAW, then that'll get me a name for myself, and I can use the extra rep to apply for that show, cos I'd love to play that room again. Even if I went back on a Sunday, it'd still be great to go back. I said the MC did better here than on Wednesday, and he said "yeah, that room's a hard room". And I'm like I fucking knew it! So yeah, I'll probably go back there eventually too, but I'll know what to expect next time :p



The only other thing to talk about was transport, which was actually pretty easy! It is a little disorienting, being in a foreign place and having to figure out where to go on your own, especially when you walk past where you're supposed to go and you have to double back, but you don't know that you've missed something, so you keep going, and it takes far too long for it to dawn on you that, yes, you fucking missed your turn and you have to go back you stupid fuck--that happens a little too often for me :P  But I know where these places are now, so I'll have no problem getting there in the future. I'm also becoming more familiar with the train stations and platforms too, as well as now knowing that there are actually quite a few people on trains at 10-11pm, so that was way less scary than I thought it would be. It's not the barren wasteland I expected it to be. I know you've still gotta watch your back, particularly in Sydney at night (so many unlit streets, Jesus fucking Christ), but the trains are relatively safe, it seems.

So yes, I'm getting back into this shit now, for realz. I'll be doing my competition performance tomorrow, and I'm fairly sure I'll do well. The one joke that hasn't worked the first two times has been almost entirely re-written, and my mum laughed at it when I told her, so I'll have to hope the audience's sense of humour mirrors hers. I want that joke in there cos it makes a damn good point, and if I can convey that point in a way that's actually funny, I know it'll go down well with the crowd.

So yeah, that's been my week. Shall make a post about some other stuff soon enough :)

EDIT: One thing that did annoy me a bit was that most people who were invited to the Sunday performance didn't respond for some reason. I didn't understand that. It's not that they didn't go; it's that they said literally nothing in the lead-up to the performance date, so I had no idea if they'd even seen or understood the invite, much less if they wanted to go. And if they're busy, or just don't wanna go, that's totally fine, but they should still tell me that. They don't even have to provide an explanation! I don't care why they aren't going; they just have to decline the invite, so I'm not sitting there at the train station wondering if people have responded at the last minute perchance. Not a fan of flaky people.

Open Mic: It's happening!

I'm finally going up to Sydney to do some open mics! Hooray! My first one is tonight at 19:30, and my second one is on Sunday at 19:00. It's the first time I've performed in almost two years, so I'm pumped :D

Though I'm not 100% sure about who (if anyone) is going up with me on the Sunday, as I've only just sent out invitations, I'm definitely going up to Sydney alone tonight. Though I've previously stated that I'd be hella nervous going up to Sydney alone, I'm actually less worried than I thought I would be. I'm catching the train up at 16:00, and I'll arrive at the venue well before nightfall, so that's not a problem; and the path from the venue to the train station is along a main strip, so I should be safe there. The venue's also way way closer to Central than I thought it would be—I originally thought I'd have to get off at some weird stop and walk from there, but that turned out not to be the case. The only bit I am worried about is the train ride back. So long as I secure a seat near the guard carriage, I should be fine, but riding a train alone at night is not my idea of safety and/or fun :P  I don't even know exactly when I'll get back to the train station at this point, cos the show has no definite end-time, but I'll just have to roll with it and get on the first train I can.

Hopefully, I can have someone tag along with me for the second performance, but if I can go alone this time, I can go alone next time too. I'm not too concerned with being alone at the actual venue cos the other people there are either comedy fans or comedians themselves, so surely we'll have some common ground. I've been in scarier places; this isn't a huge deal.

I'll report back once I finish my performance (perhaps once I finish both). I've got other posts with more information in them about other things, so it's not as though nothing's been happening, but I haven't bothered to finish the posts I've started to post them.

Unless I get stabbed, of course—then I'll report back on the stabbing :)