Social Skydiving is Life Skydiving
One of the most important things I've learned from social skydiving is to be more willing to do things that scare me. For me, this whole thing isn't just about learning to talk to people anymore, it's really grown into learning to enjoy life and having a good time.
Likewise, I'm on this kick right now where I'm trying to do things in my life that I would normally avoid because I am irrationally afraid of them. You know, things like sky diving, bungee jumping, and going to a karaoke bar alone. That last one is literally more scary than the other two as far as I'm concerned which made it a perfect thing to do on a Saturday night.
The whole time before going I had horrible anxiety. I was sweaty, my stomach was in knots, and I was trying to find some excuse to not go... I'm getting so much worse at finding good reasons to not do stuff. **sigh** I made myself take a few deep breaths and then I took my dog out for a quick walk to clear my head. While I was out, I gave myself a good talking to and decided that the worse thing that would happen is that I would be embarrassed and alone. That made me realize that really the only thing that could really happen is I could end up getting emotionally stronger. Also, I don't care how dumb someone looked doing their crappy rendition of Burn by Usher, if they were there by themselves I'd give them mad props just for showing up. In other words, in my mind, it would have been an accomplishment just to fail.
If you look at it that way I totally accomplished something.
40 Ounces to Fail
I ended up at Ozzie's in Seattle. Not a bad bar, hella busy and overwhelming though. The place is divided into like 3 or 4 different "rooms" and each one has a vastly different vibe to it. When I first walked in the door I was in the middle of the restaurant section. People were sitting, drinking, talking, eating and just plain having a relaxing good time. As I walked through the dimly lit, darkly colored eating area I noticed the karaoke room to my left. The opening from the restaurant to the karaoke room was huge so it really felt more like a section than a room in and of itself.
There were probably five or six televisions with the words to the current song printed boldly across them and some drunk frat boy was in the middle of the room doing his best to molest it (the song, not a TV).
Ahead of me and to the left was a staircase that led to a dimly lit bar area... I still don't really understand the function of this spot. I think it's just there so the self-important people have a place where they can go to be goofy drunks but try to feel exclusive about it. Everyone who was up there was looking svelte and like they were having fun so mission accomplished on that front.
Directly ahead of me was a corridor with a bar flanking both sides of it with probably five or six active bartenders. If one could brave this gauntlet of booze they'd find a dive bar's equivalent of a game room complete with the creepy fluorescent lights positioned over the three pool tables that spilled out onto the dart boards and gaming area.
I stopped in the corridor to pick up a beer. Know how you can tell you're in a bad bar? They don't have any porters on tap (read: any serious beers). So yeah, I had to settle for a Guinness which honestly just bitched out when compared to other beers. It was watery and devoid of any real flavor though it still got me tipsy so I guess I can't really talk... but still.
Now that I had my beer in hand I headed towards the karaoke "room" (for lack of a better term). The place was packed; not a seat available in the house. I managed to find one however. There was some guy who was wasted, like to the point of looking depressed. I saw that he had one of the song catalogs at his table so I walked over and asked him if I could check it out.
The song catalogs are *HUGE* in case you've never seen them. So imagine a note book the size of two hardcover unabridged english dictionaries laying on a circular table only a couple feet in diameter meant to accommodate the drinks of about four people. By opening this massive tome of glee I easily overtook half of the table.
I stared at the seemingly endless selections of songs for a while trying to find something to sing. I say seemingly endless because the song that I had already picked out in my mind to sing ("Most Beautiful Girl in the Room" by Flight of the Conchords) was no where to be found. They must have had a couple of whole pages of Garth Brooks songs though, oh and Hanson... Oh yeah! and I think he was too drunk to care though. A little bit later one of the bouncers said that he needed to settle his tab before he could get more drinks. The patron never came back.
I finally chose to do Burn by Usher. Hehe... Yeah we'll get to that.
Eventually, a group of three people came up to my table to read the song catalog. I tried to start up some conversation ala my freshly learned social skills but it just wasn't happening. They were friendly and would talk back but after saying a couple of things their body language would turn the other direction and since it was so loud they couldn't hear a word I was saying anymore. I was happy that I tried, but it sucked to be an hour or so into this whole thing and still be sitting by myself.
Voice Like a Crow
Finally I got called up to do my song. First of all, I need to say this it was so bad. Like, I'm not even being humble as though I were on key and just went flat a few times. No I mean I was so bad I don't even know how bad I was. I've done karaoke once in the past (with friends of course) in a smaller more enclosed bar. That place wasn't too bad because I could hear the music and hear myself. At Ozzie's though I swear I could barely hear the music and I couldn't hear my own voice over the PA system to save my life. That means I had (and still have) no idea how loud I was or how bad I was. I do know that the look on my face was a wide-eyed expression of terror. One guy came up kinda dancing near where I was singing and tried to root me on a bit but he's not Jesus, and no miracle was performed this night. Before you think I'm just trying to make excuses for myself I'm not saying I would normally sound great, but just that there's no way I should be sounding THAT terrible.
Part of my problem is that I didn't want to do the karaoke drunk. I wanted to be sober because I was there to learn from my thought processes and not cover them up. First and foremost was personal growth not looking good and not even honestly having a good time. Coincidentally, I didn't really have a good time. I finished my drink and then left the bar to walk off the stupor provided by my crappy beer. Ironically I had a more fun time walking around the streets of Seattle then I did inside the bar.
There and Back Again
Here's my approximate route. I started at point A and worked through the others sequentially:
Right around waypoint B I think some of the booze began to wear off, because I began to question the intelligence of walking around completely desolate portions of Seattle in the middle of the night. At which point I figured I should probably stay a lil closer to the pulse and head back into the general vicinity of my car (waypoint E).
Somewhere between waypoint B and C I saw this woman standing in front of this awesome old time car. I should've snapped a picture but I didn't think of it because.. Have you been paying attention so far? I just came from a bar and was in the process of walking the streets of Seattle alone for the past 30 minutes. I obviously was not thinking straight. So anyway I ran across the street and asked her if she was a driver (she was dressed in a full tuxedo). She said that she was and that she was waiting for a bride and groom and I was like oh awesome! I think she saw I was a little too excited to be sober judging by the wide-eyed smile on her face as she agreed.
After that I decided I wasn't getting sober quickly enough so I stopped at a convenience store to pick up some Pringles. That helped a fair bit actually. I could see the Space Needle above the surrounding buildings and set my sights on it and decided to see if there was anything interesting happening there.
When I got to the Space Needle (waypoint C) I ran across a couple drunk army guys who needed directions to Club Fusion. They said they wanted to get some "trim" and by golly I support my troops! I was a little nervous about helping these guys out but one was from North Dakota and the other was a fellow Californian so what could go wrong? Am I right? That's not foreshadowing... they turned out to be cool.
While we were trying to figure out the directions on my phone though these two shady mexican guys came up to us and asked for loose change. I put my iPhone away. Only one of them spoke english (in front of us at least) and it's always comforting to have two guys you don't trust speaking a different language in front of you.
Since I had some spare change left over from my Pringles purchase. I gave it to the two hoodlums and they went on their way. It was basically just a bribe so they wouldn't hurt me. Pretty soon afterwards I finished giving the army dudes their directions and after a manly handshake and fist pounding we all went about our merry way.
The problem with the direction I was heading in though was that I had to walk past the creepy mexican guys again. I caught up to them since I apparently walk way too fast, and we all said hi. Then the one that spoke english asked me where I was heading to and I told him I was off to my car. He repeated it back to me to clarify and I confirmed what I said and told him I'd already done my partying for the night. His friend said something in spanish and responded and I was totally just done with this. I didn't know why the hell he asked me but I knew I didn't fucking like that he did. As I continued to walk past them I was much more thankful for being a fast walker. I wanted to put as much distance between us as possible. When I finally made it to a more well lit and populated area I started feeling better.
I had finally gotten rid of my dizzyness and most of my buzz after eating about 3/4 of my full can of Pringles. I had probably been walking around for about two hours by the time I finally reached my car.
In Conclusion..?
I'm not sure. It was a good night, but only in how bad it was. I broke some new ground for myself and made my weekend interesting. If this is the what my average Saturday night becomes, then there are some good times ahead of me still.
