God's frozen people

Leaving Turtle's birthday dinner tonight, monshu turned to me and said, "That was nice." And sadly, that's the most that could be said of it. The other couples there were all lovely people, to be sure, but at some point early in the evening I said to myself, I'm not going to have an interesting conversation this whole night. And I didn't. Self-fulfilling prophecy? I don't think so. There were certainly times when a stimulating exchange threatened to break out, and then we were back to talking about real estate and oddball relatives and the like.

Often, these moments came when there were only two or three of us involved, and flickered out right as more people returned to the table and the talk had to expand to include them. So I think a lack of side conversations was part of the problem. It may also have been a factor that the other bear couple were friends of Turtle from church; I don't know how they knew the lesbian pair, but they promised more engagement. And perhaps it was significant that all but two of the people there were born and raised Midwesterners--and mostly small-town Midwesterners at that. It was not a crowd for sharing dark revelations after a glass or two of wine.

Any evening with Turtle or her wife is never wasted, and I was more than happy to get out of the house for a couple hours. But I'm really, really happy I just RSVPed for a cocktail party with a raucous band of heavy-drinking bears two weeks from tonight.