Late-night braindump. Numer 437 in a series.
Interesting couple of weeks. Serenia (Friend of the crew from Adelaide - one of the other Australian state capitals) came to town; much partyage and suchlike ensued... a night at the Hog, a Dungeon run... you know. Steak and clubbing. Anthea had her housewarming the same weekend, and Afro managed to fall head over heels in love, lust and devotion simultaneously with Serenia. Unfortunately, said weekend was also timed to fall on my Week Of Pain (tm) - 630am to 330pm shifts thursday through sunday. Which roughly equate to 430-5am wakeups. Does wonders for your social life, of course, and I staggered through the weekend in a haze of sleepdep and red bull fumes. Probably said a few things I should regret, but eh. Like anyone out there expects anything different of me by now. They can just deal with it. Hog run kicked ass; was still awake (friday night) and functional, and we all got to goth ourselves up for the event... went for my new favourite outfit, as recommended by Alison... tight black tshirt, black jeans, and my new favorite coat. The evolution of the coats is approaching its peak, I think. First coat I got was a standard cold-weather jacket, in a blue brushed cotton. Quite tasty, quite warm, and enough pockets to keep me happy. Also light enough for me to wear for at least six months of the year here in sunny brisbane. Not too long after that I acquired the Dilphcoat - navy blue trenchcoat that once belonged to my father - he picked it up in a secondhand shop when he was 15, and I found it in the wardrobe one day and promptly claimed it. Seriously heavy coat, calf-length and a coarse wool, I think, outer... this thing is probably damn near bulletproof. General consensus is that it's a maritime deal from the forties or earlier; hooks and buttons everywhere to keep it shut against everything up to hurricane weather. Hell of a coat, but not exactly classy. More of a functional thing. But I love that thing, and most of my online personas wear it to this day. Next step in the evolution was a dress coat; saw it in a menswear store and fell in love with it. More stylish - this one is meant to be worn over a suit - and charcoal wool, it's even more appropriate than the greatcoat 'coz it's lighter... I can wear it year-round with minimal discomfort. Plus, y'know, black. Black is good, and when I started getting dragged out to gothdom, it became my staple 'going out' garb. Then early this year, new year's eve, to be precise, I discovered that said coat was in Melbourne... hardly of any use to me. So I ended up going with a dinner-suit jacket I'd inherited from my uncle some time back, and it /worked/. Me like. Other people liked enough to mention. The image evolves further... I've already decided what I wish to purchase next. For a long time there's been talk of Snowy and Anthea taking me out shopping for a new wardrobe - half in jest, originally, but something I've gradually taken more seriously. To the point now where I've decided it'll be the next thing I buy... before the computer upgrade I've been promising myself for years, before even the sydney trip, most likely. Centerpiece of said shopping trawl - a new coat. Something in black, with tails, cut to my (rather narrow and rail-like) physique... with all the trimmings to go with. Waistcoat, gloves, the whole ball and dice. Maybe even a top hat, but that's pushing it a bit. Sure, it's something I'd never be comfortable wearing in any but the most specific circumstances, but it feels so goddamn /right/. Mind you, I've felt that way about a lot of things, and haven't acted on most of them yet... maybe I never will. Anyways, back to the story at hand. I'm typing this at 4am, and my eyesight is literally swimming at times. We hit the Hog, our steakhouse of choice - mostly coz the steaks are damn good (marinated and cooked for 16 hours!) and the waitress is an utter bitch - our kinda people. Hit the club after that, and despite promising myself I'd be home at midnight to get some sleep, ended up leaving at like, 230am. Scary thing is I recognised a reasonable number of the regulars, and was recognised in turn... keep this up, I might end up making the cut as an actual goth, rather than a friend of some... and generally had a good time there. Supercharged Whyrl on caffeine - I've finally dragged him to the dark side with the mystic powers of Red Bull, and got to watch him being dragged off to the dance floor... amusing, to say the least. Serenia decided to try to get a reaction out of me - bad move, especially when I'm sleepdepped. No matter what she tried, all she got was mild amusement, or a raised eyebrow... until she dumped a fistful of ice down my shirt. Still only got the little smile out of me, but a couple of minutes later I got the ice out of my shirt and shoved it down her corset-bound cleavage. Grin. Got snagged by Julie, one of Snowy's old friends... first thing she asked was if I really still had my V plates - probably should have words to Snowy about that one - and shortly thereafter I ended up demonstrating the Grip on her, while she gnawed on a finger. Gave up eventually because I gave no reaction, save for the already mentioned eyebrow, and moved on - I drifted back around, irritated Erika for a bit... shit. I still have marks where her teeth were. More impressive than I thought. Cruised back to annoy Snowy a little later, and was snagged by her and Julie who proceeded to throw me around like a rag doll or a dressmakers mannequin, discussing assorted clothing options - which later, when I cornered Snowy about it, turned out to be the plans for the tailed coat I aspire to atm. Irritated the crew some more, did a run with Kelvin for caffeine, and when the crew started vanishing, ended up parking beside the pool tables with Anthea for a moderately deep and meaningful... as always, she manages to turn my entire self image upside down with a handful of words. She knows me far, far, far too well, and can spot things I'm too close and self absorbed to see... either that, or I attribute far too much significance to what she has to say. I think I do that a bit, particularly with women I find attractive; Alison, for instance, despite not knowing me much at all and not saying all that much of import, has told me a few things that I've filed for far deeper consideration than I'd do for anyone else save possibly Anthea. Worth musing on later; guess the cleavage holds more power over me than is perhaps wise to allow it. Anyways, Ant comments that I've changed since last I've seen her - I can't recall the precise words, but it was along the lines of 'the way you interact with people... it's cool, but you treated Afro with zero respect tonight', which is true. I can think of a couple of reasons how that would be so... for instance, at work I've finally grown into my authority. We have enough fresh blood in the ranks that I don't feel junior to the whole staff, and issue commands. Self effacing ones, and I still make a joke out of myself at almost any opportunity - but I'm a good, solid worker and acknowledged as such, and have the rank to back it up. Boost ego slightly; while not the alpha, I'm certainly one of the pack betas at work. On the home front, I'm with Wuffy and Hairy; Hairy is an old, old friend. Known him since eighth grade; somewhere around ten years, now. We've got our patterns well and truly established, and while we are more or less equals, I usually take the lead in things. He's too soft; has no real desire or ability to take charge of a situation. Far too sweet natured for that. So in terms of pack hierarchy, he's definitely my subordinate. Wuffy is a trickier issue; he's a nice enough guy, and I think it'll end up being a friendship that outlasts the house, but in terms of hierarchy, it's a hard call. He owes me significant amounts of money, and I'm the person who pays the rent, along with being the longest resident in this house - I invited them in, and so forth - so I think I rank higher than he does; by the same token, I think he considers himself higher than me on the totem pole. At any rate, I perceive myself to be the house Alpha Male; and the ego boost from that and the work stuff have probably degraded my attitude towards others in public, just because I'm the Big Man On Campus now. The flip side to this is that on the night in question I was treating Afro no differently than I do Hairy; and we've treated each other the exact same way since school. When I'm close enough to someone to relax, I throw out most of the pretenses of polite society; I order them around like the bitches they are. And they treat me like shit in return... it all balances out in the end. It's light-hearted and in jest, male bonding at its finest. I do the same with Whyrl, and Bingo, and Stephen, back when I actually had anything to do with the boy.. but I don't think Ant had ever seen anything like that in play. Whyrl is quiet enough that he's rarely noticed, so I doubt she's ever seen that interplay. Bingo is everyone's bitch, as the joke goes, so my behaviour melded into the crowd as nothing unusual. Hairy was mostly out of the loop, or at least he and I had minimal contact until he moved in, so no demonstrations there. And stephen... well. SHe knew I had issues with him, and the whole mess there made em worse, so I'm guessing whatever she saw there before it dissolved was attributed to malice; also, at the same time I was losing the comfort margin with him that meant I would act like that. So that's the scoop... is this an old character trait she was previously unaware of? Or a newly developed one? Or, as is more likely, it's a mix of the two, what's the relative proportions thereof? One thing is for sure though, Afro now numbers among those I am comfortable to act like that with... along with snowy and hairy and the rest of the crew. Food for thought, anyways. See why I love that girl? Anyways, somewhere in this ramble is the story of that weekend, so back to it. Saturday I crawled in to work, consumed much red bull, and survived the shift on a wing and a prayer, crawled home, showered, got changed, and charged for station to get ot Antheas. Linked up with the guys on the train - by this point sleepdep had truly kicked in, and I was in robotic monotone power-saving mode... and stayed that way for the first three or so hours of the party, if not longer. Eventually I woke up enough to move around rather than hide behind my sunglasses in the 'terminator look' and join in some of the conversation; Afro and Serenia were moderately clingy by this point, but I thought nothing much of it because Afro is, and always has been, in my eyes, the slow, careful, responsible type. I didn't figure him to be the type to fall in love over a weekend; more like the long, slow inevitable march towards something special. As he's said himself, he's husband material, not dating material. Turns out I was wrong on that count, so more power to him. Eventually I joined Julie, Michelle, Craig and Bingo on the front porch to discuss sex and politics in the workplace, at least to start with, but the conversation meandered around crazily, as it tends to do. Something came up during that one I found quite interesting - that a lot of the younger furry crew are very two-dimensional in their lives. Computers and roleplaying, for most of them, are their obsessions and crutches, and fill their lives almost completely, with no room for anything else... makes em rather boring at parties, for sure. And the fact that while it's normal, and expected, to be like that early, it's a phase, just like anything else... and eventually you realise the emptiness of it all, and move on to wider experiences. Something I really need to do; I mean, I'm not so bad as some, but I know that I'm far more focussed on the gaming than I should be. And I don't want to be like that at thirty, or fifty... some sad old geek desperately clinging to his rulebooks as the only life he knows... I can feel that setting in already. Whyrl mentioned a while back that he's starting to get gaming burnout; sacrilege as it may be, I think I'm verging on the same. Might just be that I need a new crew to do it with; Wuffy, while a good DM with the promise of greatness, has run most of the games I've been in of late, and living with him as well it's a constant flood of game data; a good thing, I think, but at the same time I'm starting to tire of it. Too much of a good thing, maybe. Maybe it's time to spread my wings and expand my horizons. Right now I'm gaming three, four, even five times more often than I ever have before... maybe I really should cut down. Or at least change the flavour. But looking from the outside, at myself a year or so back, and a lot of the crew now... that is all they have. And that, my friends, is the saddest part of all. I know I have depths beyond that, things to make me a three dimensional 'person' rather than a sad little two-d geek, someone with things of value to offer outside a narrow, specialised spectrum... and I can see it in the others, too, through long association... but from the outside, without the depth of knowledge and friendship I have with these folks, and myself, we are empty but for statistics and dice rolls and perl scripts. I hope that the onset of maturity will erase these faults, but I fear both for myself and my friends that it may not be the case. But enough of that particular ramble... I think I've explained things a good three, four times now. It's now five-thirty, and while I still have much I could write on my current issues with personal space and suchlike, I probably should sleep... and I also don't really trust myself not to mortally offend someone with /that/ little rant. So goodnight, y'all.