When it comes to interacting with large groups of people I don't know outside of a professional setting, I am one of the shyest people to ever walk the planet. Put me in a professional setting and I can network like a madwoman. I shake hands. Hand out my business card. Remember all the interesting things I've read in the New York Times. I'm charming. Invite me to a dinner party with five people I don't know, and it's as if I've suddenly reverted to a better dressed version of my high-school self. I'm self-conscious. I have sweaty palms. My voice is always a few octaves too high. I'll be creepily silent until my inner monologue, hysterical from trying to remember how one makes conversation, will (apropos of nothing) burst out with "there are ice fountains on Enceladus!" Or "I saw Abraham Linclon's death certificate in a museum!" Or "On an atomic level you're not very different from that dog poop you just stepped in!" I will then laugh a nervous-high-pitched-oh-my-God-I-think-she's-a-serial-killer laugh and abruptly leave the conversation.
On Sunday, attending a barbeque, I had no fewer than three of these moments in a row. Devastated by my inability to simply calm down and interact like a normal human being and by the beer that I had spilled on my new dress, I skulked off to the kitchen. At least there I could do the dishes and have a legitimate reason for avoiding all the new people laughing in the backyard. When the screen door banged shut behind me I heard a familiar hello. Standing at the counter casually fixing a salad and blessedly not surrounded by strangers was an honest-to-goodness friend of mine. Someone who laughs at my jokes, has participated in more than one top 40 dance party, and has shared a beer with me. Someone who I somehow managed to meet without sounding like a psychopath or idiot-savant. At that moment, I was so pleased to see someone I knew I could hold a normal conversation with that I almost kissed him.
We caught up casually as he put together his salad. At one point I asked him if, a few months previous, I had discovered his love for The Great Gatsby, high-fived him, and recited the opening page of the book. I had. Thankfully, he's also a Gatsby lover and we started chatting about the upcoming movie and our disappointment in the way it appeared to be filmed. Before I knew it, the kitchen had a few other people in it, all of whom were enthusing over different aspects of the book and trashing on the film. I was pleased to discover that my voice had remained normal and that I wasn't running in the opposite direction or searching for something to to say. The conversation was effortless, the way it always seems when my slightly-hysterical self is when watching the way other people interact at parties.
***
I've been living in Minnesota for nearly ten years, all of my adult life, actually. I assume that everyone who lives here has read Gatsby at least once, the same way I assume that everyone's heard the Prince song "Raspberry Beret" or gotten over a broken heart by playing "Don't Think Twice" on repeat for two weeks. Reading Fitzgerald in his home state seems like a given, but I've recently discovered a whole host of people who have lived here for their entire lives and have never gotten around to reading it. I am absolutely unable to fathom this, but then again, I spend one Saturday morning every couple months sitting in Fitzgerald's old neighborhood, sipping coffee and pondering his life when he was still living here.
One of the images I've always loved from Gatsby is his vast, beautiful library full of unread books. I love the image because it's so odd and perfect. It's another thing I cannot fathom. I read constantly and more than a little obsessively. There have been more days than I can count where I will curl up in my armchair at 8 am in my PJs with the intention of reading a few chapters only to look up, blinking, at 9:30 pm. I realize that I've finished my book(s) but I've neglected not only to take out go to the grocery store and scrub the floors, but to change, eat, or brush my teeth.
I would rather read than do any number of other things, which probably accounts for my social-awkwardness. I didn't realize the role it played in my life until my film-loving friends pointed it out. We were discussing the merits of Joss Whedon's Avengers and he was trying to connect the movie to some other film I had seen.
"So, you've seen Avatar, right?"
"Uh, actually, I missed that one."
"Really? Ok, how about Inception?"
"Nope, missed that one too."
"Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?"
Long awkward pause.
"Tell me you've seen Drive."
Longer pause.
"BUT YOU LOVE RYAN GOSLING!"
"I have seen some movies recently!"
It's true. I have seen some movies recently, but they've all be based on books that I've read an loved. And, to be 100% honest, I go for the snarky, superior satisfaction of being able to say "Oh, well, in the book..." and then making some asinine observation on a tiny detail that only an obsessive fangirl would remember from the 3,000th time she's read something. In addition to being a terrible party guest, I'm a pretty shitty person to see movies with as well.
***
I've never thought of my reading habits as something that might need to be corrected, even when my parents used to yell at me for taking books to family parties and hiding in another room to finish them. I thought that I was catching up for lost time. I didn't learn to read until I was seven, and I still remember the exhilaration that came when I finished my first book at the appropriate reading level. When I eventually found my way to sci-fi and fantasy I found that I could inhabit worlds where I could be something extraordinary. They were worlds where a moral question wasn't whether or not I should copy my best friend's history homework when I forgot to do mine, but what to do when given the choice of absolute power and authority or an ordinary life. It's adolescent and escapist, but there's still a part of me that wants those things to be true. It's why I let myself get so wrapped up in these other worlds and forget to do every day things.
Yet at the same time, I want to be the kind of person you can invite to parties. The girl who can converse easily. The one who can strike up a conversation with someone at a bar rather than whipping out her Kindle and updating her Readability downloads. I don't really know if reading is the root cause of my social ineptitude, after all, Gatsby's books were all uncut and he was a solitary figure at his own parties. And I'm not certain if I really want to be the chatty, outgoing girl at parties, how to become her if I do, and if giving up the joy of reading 4,000 pages in a month is worth it. I do know that when I was talking about all of these concerns with a friend she said "I just read a great book about that."
