=Observations at a Barbecue=

How I deal with people: People are background. Like wallpaper or music on the radio or a television I'm only looking up at from time to time when a word or voice involuntarily catches my attention. When I can think of people that way, especially at a party or some other social event in which I'm supposed to be participating, then they are perfectly tolerable even, though I dare not go quite so far as to say, desirable as a form of passive entertainment. I have to insure, however, that I can first erect a kind of screen from which to view them safely, at a distance, that I can keep them from invading my personal space; in other words, that I can reduce my interaction with them as much as that is possible. The key is to give myself permission to disregard any social obligation I might be pressured to feel. Sometimes I put it to myself more bluntly. I tell myself that I could be going to a chemotherapy appointment instead. Would I prefer chemotherapy to this social event? That usually straightens me right out. I'm a lot more amenable to spending the afternoon among other people when I put it to myself that way. Most of the time, though, I just open a secret door and go deeper inside myself. I leave the shell of me outside to go about the perfunctory business of meeting people—Hello. How are you? I'm fine. What's new? Nothing much. Smile. Nod. etc.—while the actual me is deep in the interior, safely tucked away in a windowless room insulated from the outside world, like Proust. I'm locked securely against invasion as if inside a panic room; the door is disguised as a fake bookcase; no one is any the wiser. I'm inside my secret room writing, thinking, talking to myself. Outside, the world goes on without me and I go on inside, perfectly content, without it.