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No. 376280
there's something wild about knowing people who are hypersensitive to people's needs, motives, and subtle forms of communication.
i have a close friend, very close friend, with whom i often have to hide how tight we are. we're not doing anything inappropriate by any means, but in this day and age, open flirting, cuddling, intimacy, and affection could be misconstrued as proof of romantic advances/commitments. so... in public, especially when we're near each others' exes or her significant other, we disengage from that sort of stuff. as if we weren't as intimate.
we still connect, but we intuitively make it so that no one would even bat an eye. both of us have strong strong reads on the room, on people. we join in on conversations when people need support or perform conversation hijacking to get things into less awkward situations. we are both incredible flirts. we watch each other with what feels like hawk eye focus from as far as across the room while physically and mentally still being engaged with whoever we're with at the time. when we do interact, we act as if we were only casually friendly, never exceeding the highest level of affection that the room already offers or that we would offer to others in the room. not too many subtle secret cues. only enough to touch base. she goes off to show the same level of warmth and affection to other friends. i stimulate meaningful or fun conversations with people to get things moving and lively, dropping a few laughs here or there to spice things up. all the while, we can read all the subtext and intent of the guests just below the surface. to us, it's as if people are screaming everything they feel, their words pounding like massive hammers, while to them we become invisible (or show only as much as we want to show). everyone else who isn't quite so intuitive look to us like poker players with their whole hands showing. we pretend we're not "cheating" the game.
it can be tiresome to have to hide a benign friendship like ours, but the whole charade feels like being a spy, and it's intensely fun to play spy so long as she and i don't completely disengage, so long as we still have each others' backs.
this exact sort of thing happened at a party today. it was over at an ex's place. had to navigate some seriously dangerous social interactions with some potentially explosive people who have VERY strong and complicated attachments to my friend (and in some cases, to myself). She's a strong woman. She can take care of herself. Watching her dance is like watching a circus performer make the trapeze look like a playground. She let some people down who needed to be let down. She warmed some people up, like my ex, who needed affirmation and physical comfort. I, on the other hand, got to act as support, corroborator, and decoy. I got to comfort and entertain our somewhat less troubled friends. Lots of cuddling and subtle flirting to reassure them they are as attractive as they are and as loved as they deserve. Lots of acknowledgments of things that are important to them. Reminiscing on things they like and introducing them to things they might enjoy. I usually take the lead for the larger stuff, but like it or not, the party was centered on her (for anyone who actually noticed). Half the men were drawn to her like wolves with me occasionally stepping up as wingman to subtly return things to less uncomfortable topics or playfully redirect some inappropriate flirting into subtly analogous conversations that touch (or sometimes SCREAM) how inappropriate certain kinds of human interactions can be. Very educational. It's like the first step in a kind of social inoculation. Plant the mental seed and water it. Most of the time they don't even know we're the doctors and that we're performing surgery. Other times... when we have to and when we have enough ground... we have to strip the advancers/offenders of all power and teach them a goddamn lesson with the clinical coldness of a psychiatrist. That also happened at the party, today. A girl ran off home without saying goodbye because she had a lot to deal with. She sure did. All of this was happening in otherwise normal conversations, some slightly off to the side so as not to bother people when things got too heated.
I have to say, some people just don't seem to notice how bloody creepy or taxing they can be. They're good people. They just need to be... made aware. They don't know how much they take from others. They don't know how much we give.
And... even though my friend and I had plans to meet up immediately after, when she was about to leave, I chose to stay a bit longer. We didn't even hug goodbye. I just said that she should text me sometime. She made finger gestures with her thumbs. I nodded. Mode of communication confirmed. She went to the door. I yelled bye without looking at her, turned to see her, then locked eyes with her for a fraction of a second. It was warmest embrace that whole party. A knowing glance. A deep one. We made it through another big and potentially explosive event, and we did it with flying colors.
When she and I are alone just talking with each other, we still use pretext of "x" or "y" reason but have no need to maintain that illusion. Sure we'll do "x" or "y" when we hang out, but how often is it that anyone does things with friends because we're most interested in the event? I spent the next hour with her decompressing after all that very emotional heavy lifting. People don't know what we do for them. She was in tears. I heard her every word. She's done the same for me in the past. To those friends who don't get us, there's a "je ne sais quoi" that makes them want to keep us around. We're "fun" or "warm" or "amusing". I do try to appear that way. What they don't have words for are "intuitive", "emotionally tapped in", "gentle", "invitational", "kind beneath the surface", "inspirational".
This whole social navigation thing is not a fucking game. It's a fucking art. I wouldn't be writing here if I just wanted to brag about how close I am with this friend. I have many close friends, and I'm sure many of you do, too. This whole post is about the art of subtext and meaning in friendships. I have nowhere else to write up or share my experience and how goddamn amazing it is to finally find someone who's as adept as I am at reading people but who isn't a complete manipulative fuck. There are two kinds of people that I've seen who are this in tune with others: manipulators and protectors. We're protectors. We want to help because we care about people. We want the best for them. And we give a fucking lot to make sure their needs are met. Until we found each other, we were both exhausted. Only exhausted. Other people tapping into us until we either had to cut them off or ran ourselves into the ground with not enough being returned to us. We never ask. We don't want to burden anyone or make them do things they wouldn't already want to do, especially when it comes to loving us. The power to persuade and read makes us that much more hungry for authentic love and affection, and people can be like stone walls, even when they care.
That's why we're close. It's because all it takes for us to feel loved is the most subtle of proof. The softest touch. The briefest glance. One well timed brush of a hand or a choice word. When it's us, we're allowed to speak freely. We're allowed to not speak at all. I'm an extrovert. She's an introvert. When we're alone, we have all the space and all the company in the world, and when we're both full up, we take that energy and bring it to everyone else.
The world is full of noisy people. So very noisy. So much paint on their faces. Their lives hanging off of their clothes. And I care about so many of them. But it's so loud. Even their silence is deafening.
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