A Brief Confessional

So here was the dilemma. Last night, I had some guests over, including a few friends who are in LA for a few days from out of town. At around midnight, after a few hours of catching up, people decided they wanted to hit one of the local bars. I declined for two reasons.

First, I had to wake up early this morning to open the video store, which is unpleasant enough without additional hangover-related discomfort. Secondly, alcohol has not been sitting well with me lately. Last weekend, I went to Orange County to have a meal with my family and wound up getting a headache from two mild whiskey and ginger ales. I've kind of made an informal decision to avoid the sauce for a few weeks, hoping the problem goes away on its own.

So anyway, I was not going to go. It turns out, one of my friends also didn't want to go to the bar. So it was suggested that he hang out in my apartment for a few hours while everyone else drank, then they could come pick him up post-revelry and go home. (This had the additional benefit of providing for a designated, though sleepy, driver).

The thing is...I kind of wanted to go to bed. And my roommates probably wanted to hang out in the front room, the location of the big television, without a passed-out guy splaid out in there. So I made this objection known, and plans were changed.

I have seriously been troubled by this experience all day today. In the cold light of the following morning, I came to realize that my actions inadvertedly made it appear that I didn't want to have my friend in my apartment for a few hours. I was, in a manner of speaking, actually kicking him out, without using those particular words. In the end, it was an awkward social encounter. Not a bad or unpleasant or hostile one, but just awkward or unforutnate, which I late came to regret.

It's a crappy feeling. I don't want to call the guys and apologize, because it's not really that big a deal. In fact, I think hashing it over and trying to belatedly explain myself would only make the entire affair seem more significant, thus making me look worse. So I'm just stuck with feeling like a dick for turning away out-of-town friends, which is something you really ought not to do if you just have to wake up early to open a video store. In retrospect, the big thing to do would be to stop being a baby and just go get a drink with everybody, because who knows when we'll all be together again. It's too bad I only feel this way the next day, when the social event in question is already over.

Really, it all relates back to my increasingly anti-social attitude over the past few years. I notice that, as I get older, I just become more and more of a loner. A creepy loner, you might even say, if you weren't feeling charitable.

There was a time when I hated to be in my apartment alone for extended periods of time. I really enjoyed living in my own apartment, by myself, but not because I wanted to be stuck in there all the time alone. Really, it gave me an excuse to get out more and do stuff, because there was never anything going on at home.

Now, I crave alone time. To paraphrase a classic "Simpsons" line, hanging out in my room with a couple of DVD's, a pot of coffee and some combustible vegetation sounds more fun than a weekend with Batman. My urge to randomly call up a friend to grab dinner somewhere, to take a walk down to the music store or the movie theater, to check out a local bar to which I've never been, has dropped violently over the last few years. As in, I never feel like doing these things as much as I feel like going home, grabbing a quick bite, watching something for an hour and passing the fuck out.

I'm way too young to be this much of a loser already. (Although I've always been something of a prodigy when it comes to loserdom.) So I have panicky episodes like last night and today, in which I turn down a prime opportunity to go out and be social and then spend the next day feeling like a lame dumbass.