For me, writing became the perfect pretext to come out of my shell and say hello to the world and the people in it.
I am a coward. Unless I’m tipsy, I can’t just walk up to someone at random, in a grocery store or wherever, and start chatting them up. People who can do this are marvels to me. I once had an acquaintance who was so socially gifted that he could approach someone at a grocery store (I saw him do this once) and be nursing a budding friendship over drinks later in the week.
Likewise, I cannot meet someone at the fitness center and then at some point begin to see them socially. I do not talk with people at the fitness center, nor at the grocery store, nor anywhere else, unless a reason has been provided for me to do so.
But here’s the thing: Even if I were to meet someone at the fitness center, that person would remain forever in a kind of friendship limbo as my fitness center friend. How people take that next step and begin to see their fitness center or grocery store friends outside of those specific settings is a mystery to me. Were I ever to make a fitness center friend, that friend would be discarded upon non-renewal of my fitness center membership.
It seems to me that the way that I make friends is by making the friends of my current friends into my friends. Essentially, I take my friends’ friends for a test drive and then eventually, through a kind of friendship osmosis, they become my friends, though they always remain better friends with the original friend of mine than with me.
This is not to say that I don’t have friends. At some point in my current group of friends I must have made a first friend, which led me to additional friends, but I’m not sure when or with whom my friend chain began. But it is a chain; nearly all of my friends are friends with my other friends and no friend is an island except maybe an errant coworker or two who became a friend.
Instead, the friendships I make take years to cultivate. That is why most of my friends can be traced back to school, plus one or two friends who I’ve picked up over 16 years at my job—social settings where you are likely to spend years of your time with the same people, unless you’re a job-hopper or an army brat type.
Why I write
I think that I got into writing for a couple of reasons. One is that I’m curious, but I don’t understand a lot of things, so I have many questions to put to the people who seem to have answers. And second, I have difficulty meeting people and making friends.
What I’ve realized is that in order to meet someone I need pretext. I actually enjoy talking with people and learning about them and their passions. It’s just the “Hello, etc.” part that I don’t understand. With writing—particularly feature writing, which is what I mainly do in higher ed—you have a pretext to approach people who are generally interesting (interesting enough to write a story about), but with a set of ready-to-go questions.
To be clear, I’m not talking about the in-depth features you might find in e.g. The New Yorker, where a writer perhaps spends multiple days, weeks, even months with a subject, so much so that they come to know the person’s motivations. I’m talking about the kind of feature writing where you set aside an hour or two and ask the person, “So, what’s your motivation?” It’s not Tom Wolfe so much as non-famous writer Tom Floof, but it’s a living and it’s usually interesting.
About half of my job working in higher ed involves talking to students and researchers about what they’re doing and how they hope to make a difference in the world by doing it: a pretty uplifting gig, all things considered. And with that as pretext, I can muster the courage to say, “Hello, you seem interesting enough to write a story about. May I ask you some questions?” Almost no one turns that down, because people want to be known and valued and I am ready to fill that role for them, if only fleetingly.
Dating apps are a pretext, too. On only one occasion in my adult life do I recall asking someone out face-to-face. We were both in a creative writing workshop. And while I’m not quite 5’11”, she was easily 6’3,” and I typically do not find myself attracted to taller women. Still, she was creative and smart and I was lonely and desperate, and so the stars were aligned. On the last day of the course—so I’d never have to see her again if she said no—I asked her out. She said no.
Since dating apps went mainstream 15 years or so ago, I’ve been on lots of dates. But moving from a dating app interaction to in-person communication isn’t the same as meeting someone fresh. When you show up for a dating app date, you’ve already been through the introduction phase in a way that is mostly without risk: someone has responded to an electronic message, or they haven’t. They continued to respond, or they didn’t. And it has now progressed to the point where the two of you are willing to meet in person. But even then, because of your heretofore interaction, the potential for a feeling of visceral rejection is somewhat lessened compared with initial human-to-human interaction circumstances. In any case, the pretext has been established. So dating apps, I can do.
It’s just that nothing seems to workout long-term. Which is why I’m about ready to give up dating apps. Then I would be forced to sink or swim—to find the courage to ask out the tall girl, or to shrink from the opportunity.
The approach I’m thinking of using goes like this: “Hello, you seem interesting enough to write a story about. May I ask you some questions?”
And who knows, maybe it will turn into a story.
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