Small talk me into intimacy

Exercises in friction, issue #3: stumbling into relationships with honesty

I grew up watching a lot of American rom-coms. In these stories, friendship is an established fact; we already know and accept that the best friend will stick with the protagonist through all her bad decisions, because that’s what friends do. We know that the charming, helpful neighbor will eventually become a love interest. We know, somehow, she will find the confidence to stand up to her formidable boss and either leave her unhappy situation or be finally perceived as an equal. The script leads the characters (or sketches of them, at best) to their inevitable happy fates, and for a long time I think I believed relationships in real life just fall into place like that. That the right words will just come out of me, unbidden, drawn out by kismet — and if nothing comes, then it wasn’t meant to be.

Maybe I am alone in this. I know for certain that social skills come naturally to some people like a powerful intuition. Ungifted, I grew up very insular and shy, but I was fortunate to have had a few close friends at every step of the way. I never thought much about it then. Friendships as a child felt like they just happened to me. Luck seated me next to a girl in class who would, through time and proximity, eventually become my best friend. I became close with the cousin I saw every weekend for lunch. But beyond the usual settings — the classroom or reunions with extended family — I wasn’t very good at talking to people. There was no script to follow, so I would say nothing.

The chronically online (including myself) love to talk about community. But community is a lot of work. That work looks like going to gatherings and events alone, initiating awkward small talk with a stranger, and in many cases, spending money on gas, clothes, and food that tend to come with being in social setting. It means facing rejections, embarrassing yourself, experiencing discomfort in the form of conflicting values or indescribable dislike. Crucially, it also means knowing how to be alone, because I think part of building community is possessing the honesty about who we want to surround ourselves with. An inability to be alone tends to welcome even unhealthy relationships that only give the appearance of community. We don’t have to like everyone, and not everyone will like us (the horror!). Of course, the reasons for our dislike requires constant reflection, lest they crystallize into a harmful, misguided worldview.

It isn’t sexy to talk about relationship building as work, but I think an extreme aversion to this idea has led to an expectation that meaningful relationships are fateful, epic moments of instant connection. Some relationships can feel electric from the first conversation, as though you had already met before in a past life; these are real, but extremely rare. The rest requires conscious effort — a genuine desire to know the other person and be in their life. I’ve walked away from so many people in my life that I wanted to know better, but I lacked the courage then to turn around and face them with an invitation.

Am I a late bloomer? Perhaps. I feel that I am. Nevertheless, I see now that the discomfort of friction between myself and the unpredictable other is necessary.

The possibility of connection is one of collision

A relationship is an everyday marvel. In the collision of two wholly different worlds — each with its own perspectives and mannerisms and histories — something is transformed. The subjects themselves change, and often, the collision changes everything else, too: family dynamics, institutional hierarchies, culture, finances, opportunities, purpose. I see now how sublime it is that we can know one another, and meet the world not alone, but together. This, to me, is too important to make frictionless. To automate, or somehow make easy.

So, the ongoing exercises: Being fully present for my friends and family when they need me. Starting an email chain between dear friends I haven’t seen in a long time. Sending epistolary zines to friends and strangers. Writing letters to people I admire. Going out for drinks with colleagues turned friends. Joining workshops and poetry readings and connecting with classmates I have obvious affinities with, in the form of similar backgrounds, interests, and frequencies. Even sustaining this newsletter is an act of invitation to the world, to you — meet me here.

I’ve recognized a handful of past decisions that, in retrospect, was guided by this impulse towards connection, though I may not have known it yet, like when I spent my first New Year’s Eve in the United States at the local bar just so I wouldn’t be alone at home. Or when, after weeks of being stranded in the remote town Michael works in (long story), I decided to stay at an Airbnb and hostel in Austin — first by myself, then with someone I just met. At the barricade of BST Hyde Park’s main stage — I was there just for The Strokes — I befriended two women from France and grabbed a bite with them afterwards. Even in high school, despite being terrified of socializing, I regularly met up with a group of college students I met online through common interests. This led to one of the most formative relationships of my life.

Some connections don’t click, and I’ve experienced my fair share of acquaintances who didn’t seem interested in getting to know me. Texts go unreplied, every invitation is answered with an awkward maybe next time they clearly don’t mean. Then we never speak again. It stings each time, like an ant bite, and like a bite it eventually disappears.

Most difficult of all are the relationships that challenge what it means to love another. Complicated family ties, intense friendships, consuming romances, community overshadowed by politics. Here I am confronted by impossible choices. Here I have survived, here I have grown new flowers, here I have lost.

I try again. Make that awkward hello, trip over my words, be overenthusiastic. Possibly give breath to what they needed to hear, then and there. Aspire to bring comfort, laughter, a spark. None of this matters alone. I reach out with both hands and, when the other reaches back, hold soft, hold tight. Skin to skin.

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