Social in Austin

I still tend to regard myself as relatively unsocial. I am still absorbing the implications in the fact that people who know me often don't see it.

So I landed in Austin late Friday and went downtown before going to my lodging. Austin is a happening town! There's a great stretch near the Capitol with bars of all sorts cranking and pumping, people everywhere, and music flowing along the streets like smoke. After using a quiet bar to catch up on work email and fill my need for a beer and a quesadilla, I went for a random ramble along 6th and other less famously numbered streets, enjoying the sounds and the lights and the sights of countless college kids roaming for adventure.

I like to walk fast and with purpose and so when I stopped suddenly to look in on a rock band with their backs to the street I was surprised that within a couple seconds a little cutie with a cigarette grabbed my arm and said she needed someone to dance with. I looked past the band to see an empty dance floor and told her that was no wonder, considering the music they were playing. She went on about how she could dance to anything, she was pretty malleable, oh that makes her sound like a slut, and so on, so I leaned against the bricks and we had a conversation about Austin and Burning Man and music and dancing and I don't know what. She insisted on giving me her phone number and said text me, we'll go kayaking, and I enjoyed squeezing her tiny figure as we embraced before I walked along making sure I still had my phone and my wallet. I actually did text her the next day, though not for kayaking, but there was no response, and later I deleted the number.

Saturday as I left the office about seven o'clock I asked a technician I had gotten to know where a single guy should go for the sights. He mentioned the area I'd already been in and that a guy could always find strip clubs if he's into that and then described a venue with multiple bars all going at once under one cover charge and with more than just college kids. So after some necessity shopping and a quick dinner I changed clothes and headed on up to Graham Central Station.

GCS looked like a big-box store complete with huge parking lot but the insides were a tasteful mixture of large loud bars full of people line-dancing either to country or hip-hop, or country dancing, or whatever dancing, or doing karaoke, or hanging about at tall bar-tables looking boredcool. I cruised about with a Bud longneck looking for some clue what I was looking for and generally enjoyed the people-watching. I did ask one gal to dance whom I'd noticed was by herself, but she politely declined. Later and in another place there was some 70s funk going on so of course I danced to that, alone, since that's what we do in my world. My eye kept falling towards a woman about my age with unattractively heavy features and she kept noticing that. Why is it that sometimes our eyes naturally go somewhere we really don't want them to, such as a welding spark, or an unattractive woman? Maybe it was the colors. In any case, I was standing at the bar when suddenly she was upon me, set down her purse and her beer, and was in my face with an oddly tentative aggressiveness which I eventually figured out signaled a lack of English and which implied bailar. So we did, as I'm pretty easy-going, but pretty soon she decided I was too easy-going and/or not really into her (the latter being the salient point), and she suddenly looked at her watch and made excuses and a swift beeline for the exit. At that point I pretty much decided I was done too, that the scene just wasn't for me, and I went home to bed.

Home being a furnished apartment the corporation got for us travelers who are staying through the coming weekend with its race-induced high hotel rates. I do not want to stay through the weekend and I have hopes I won't have to, but that isn't entirely my call.

Next morning I found myself sleep-deprived as usual, having fallen off at two and woken up at seven, and I had to go back to the office, but what I really wanted was a decent breakfast. I dozed and took my time about getting a move on and found myself on the road after eleven. I parked behind an IHOP and walked around to find huge crowds waiting. Annoyed, I drove up the road and took a seat at Applebee's only to learn they didn't serve breakfast. I used my phone's mapping to head for another likely-appearing cafe but they weren't open. By now I was pretty well out in the weeds and decided to hell with it, I'd just go to the IHOP near the office and wait if I had to. The route had me on Barton Springs Road where I passed a large open porch with open tables and eclectic decor and people drinking coffee and scanning menus and for once I listened to the tiny little voice and made two U-turns against traffic to zip into their parking lot. The hostess was going to put me at the bar but I wanted to sit outside ... but as we passed the bar I saw a good-looking woman there and listened again to that tiny little voice and said, no, never mind, the bar is fine. It was there between a touch-screen cash register and the bar's coffee dispensers that I found comfort putting myself around an omelet and coffee and propping my phone against the bowl of creamers to read a book. Aaahh.

I was of course conscious of the delicacy two stools to my right, reading her Nook, and imagined she glanced at me once or twice, while I did glance at her once or thrice, and finally came up with something inane to say, to which she responded with some nice if brief conversation. After five more minutes of reading she came up with something not-inane to say, and this led to a good twenty minute conversation about nearly everything. She was very animated, and very pretty, and we had a lot of connection points, and she accepted my invitation to have dinner. Truly, the wonders shall never cease.

After work I collected her at her condo and we went to a very nice Italian restaurant. SoCo is one of those urban neighborhoods that has done its ghetto-time and is now rebounding in an appealingly quirky way. The food was excellent and the company even more so, and as I took her home again (she had a late movie date with her son) I asked if she'd like to go again later this week. She would! So we have that, whatever happens thenceforth.

Truly, if this is the extent to which this naturally shy guy is social in Austin, I am content.