Recap: TNG Day at the Beach
Thanks to the twenty-or-so people who came out on Saturday for the first official TNG non-bar meet-up. We had 3 hours of good conversations, a Frisbee was tossed, and some owners brought their dogs who came out and looked really cute.
The formula, which was pretty simple, seemed to work: A bunch of people got together, sat on blankets, ate fresh baked cookies (yes, thanks Greg), and talked. There was no more lofty goal than that.
Stay tuned for more information about other TNG non-bar events. And please offer to help out if you have some free time and are interested in helping make genuine, real-world connections with other queers in DC.
8 comments:
I am glad the park/beach thing was a success. I have to ask, though, what's up with people saying its hard to make "real connections" with other gays in this city? What exactly are these people looking for? Most of the gays I know around here have like 500 facebook friends and more social engagements than they can manage (and they say the same thing!). Maybe it's an issue of quality and not quantity of social interactions? My perception (and this is just as true for me as it is for anyone else) is that people in the "scene" don't really need to meet anymore NEW people, they just need a chance to get to know the people they actually "know" already. How are you gonna "really connect" with someone when theyre sharing their deepest concerns with you and you say, "hold that thought for a second, I have to go say hello to someone"? I guess what I mean is that there needs to be a distinction between social networking and actually being a friend to somebody. The subtleties of that transition are sometimes hard to negotiate and I wonder what other people's thoughts/experiences are? I'll take my answers off the air...
That's a really good point, and I totally agree. The common lament does seem to be more about quality than quantity.
I think our culture is so frequently concerned about acquiring that friends have become another acoutrement. Your Facebook mention is perfect - these people usually aren't friends in how I would term the word. Are they people who know you in your glory and in your crabby-ass, depressed phases? Will they come over to your house with fresh cookies (glad you liked them, Michael!) when the chips are down? How about grabbing a drink after work?
Real friendships take time to develop and ferment, and with an increased speed-focus in the world, this can be challening.
The event on Saturday afternoon was really lovely and delightfully low-key. Thanks to TNG folks for hosting!!!
Not@yelle: These are really good topics, and worthy of a post unto themselves. I could pontificate for hours, but I'll do my best to restrain myself. I have a few thoughts. 1) transience, both locational and social - the friends I hung out with five years ago I almost never see now; 2) what we are all really looking for isn't friends, but a boyfriend, and we often say we're looking for a soul mate, when we really mean "ego-massager"; and 3) DC (and maybe the rest of the US) has a "trade-up" culture, and we don't want to invest too much time in one or two others, just in case some cooler friends come along. My two cents, for what it's worth.
landoftrolls, I wouldn't be so negative. To develop deep friends requires time and intimacy. Friends will care for you when you are down, and that you would do the same. Having a boyfriend shouldn't change that.
Ugh, I hate it when my rhetoric is poor. What I meant to say was that most gays in DC say they are looking for friends, but what they are really looking for is a boyfriend. Because they say one thing, but mean something else, they often fail at both. Thanks for calling attention to my sloppy wording, Blue. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify.
I am familiar with those gays. They tend to hang out at the bars frequently and be too self-protected.
I hope people dont think I'm criticising anyone more than myself. I have to admit-I AM one of those gays...I know more people than I have time to be the kind of friend I would want to be to all of them. My social calender is always booked two months out. I feel like I would like to get to know some new people, but I don't have time for the people I know now. I was more looking for advice from people who have more experience managing these demands and how you maintain old friendships and build new ones while were all living this fast-paced lifestyle?
Okay, be forewarned. I am about to offer an old-school line of thinking.
For me it wasn’t about quantity or quality. It was about priorities. I filled my calendar because I HATED sitting alone at home. It reminded me that I had a cell phone full of acquaintances and very few, if any genuine friends.
To a certain degree, I think that my desire to keep my social calendar jam-packed was so I had very little time for anything else and could avoid real intimacy. Again, that was how it worked for me. It is hard to hit a moving target. I kept moving so I didn’t have to expose myself to heart break or disappointment. I found that is was hard for me to make "real connections" if I was unwilling to let down MY wall.
I know so many nice, good-looking, successful, SINGLE guys, that I actually started asking what was going on with that scenario. But I think the answers are best summed up by something I read online, “LTR oriented, but will settle for a great sex until Mr. Right comes along.” Some guys are spending alot of time “settling”--as did I. Whether it is for sex or a busy social calendar, in my opinion, I think alot of us are trying desperately to avoid feeling lonely.
My advice for managing “the demands” is don’t try. Slow down. Decide what is important, and make decisions accordingly. There is already a “ ... distinction between social networking and actually being a friend to somebody,” and it is anything but subtle. This has been one of the hardest 16 months of my entire life, but the people I am blessed to call my friends have been there for me in ways that I could have never imagined. On more than one occasion, they have picked me up, dusted me off, and put my ass--sometimes kicking and screaming--back on the horse. No one in my “social network” is going to do that. They let me cry and scream and bitch and complain, and then reminded me how much they loved me.
And, seriously, if I trust someone enough to share one of my “deepest concerns” with them, and they take a phone call or respond to a text that is not an emergency, we probably won’t be hanging out anymore. I try to keep things simple. If you want to hang out with me, then you hang out with me. Put away the iPod, the iPhone, the Blackberry, and all that other crap and let’s hang out. If I see someone I know, I wave or pass by their table on the way out. They have feet, they can come over and say hello as well. Otherwise, I spend my time enjoying the company of the one who “brung me.”
Last, find a good therapist and start working on shit now.
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