It wasn’t meant to be one of those “leave-me-alone-nights”. Honestly. I didn’t plan on being a party pooper. I really wanted to dance and head bang and forget about how futile getting drunk actually is. But by the time we arrived at the club, my legs no longer felt like dancing, my head not like banging and my brain not like forgetting. I was not in the mood to get loose anymore. At the same time though, I didn’t want to disappoint my friend that had made my North American trip unforgettable so far and wanted me to go out that night so bad. That’s why I decided to just let time go by with quiet people watching and getting lost in my thoughts surrounded by drunken folks… Sweet inspiration, I thought to myself, and was excited for the party to start. What I didn’t think of though, was a phenomenon I first considered a cultural dissimilarity between Europe and the United States but then turned out to be a general social principal of western world.

 

I’m talking about the unspoken prohibition of pursuing my hobby named “quiet people watching in crowded places”. For some reason, society doesn’t seem to accept the fact that I (and I bet I’m not the only one out there) sometimes enjoy standing like a lame-ass loser at the edge of a dance floor and just watch instead of act. This one night at least people wouldn’t let me indulge my passion. I first blamed the North Americans’ tendency to chitchatting for it. Since I got here, the talk activity of North American citizen has been overtaxing my interpersonal communication skills by far. Everywhere I went so far, people wanted to hear my story (or mainly tell theirs). I saw it as a challenge in the beginning to try to keep up with the (no offence, dear North Americans, but most of the time) senseless drivel before the amusement turned annoyance because all I wanted once in a while was spending some quiet time during my travelling.

 

Exactly like that I felt this one night. Once I realized I wasn’t in party mood, I withdrew from the bar to some quiet edge in the club wherefrom I installed myself to watch people and get lost in my thoughts. 45 seconds later, the first drunken maniac of the type I wanted to avoid talking to staggered towards me asking if I wanted to join him on the dance floor. A rather easy candidate to get rid of only by directing his attention on the next hot blonde, the second destroyer of my quiet wonderland was way more persistent. It was a young and – surprise – 100% European bred German girl that obviously felt the call to save lonely hearts from social alienation. That’s when I realized I wasn’t dealing with a cultural difference only. There was no way this self-declared German psychiatrist would accept that I chose to sit alone simply because I wanted to be alone. And she obviously knew right from wrong better than I did and just like this she explained harshly that only losers or egocentrics would stand on their own like I did. Bang!

 

Losers or egocentrics? Her words reverberated in my head and the stigma she had just engraved on my forehead started burning. I spent the night away thinking of what I would rather be, a loser or an egocentric. I would always fall for people watching which consequently seemed to mean that I have to get used to being considered either arrogant or psychologically endangered. Well, and if I am now almost about to become a proud egocentric lame-ass loser, does that make me a bad person?

 

I don’t know if I want an answer on this one… But lets just say it’s okay to be quiet once in a while, okay?

 

Lame-ass Ela