Oh...now I get it...

So I've been posting lately about how I was nervous about seeing my friends and everything...and yesterday it hit me that once I decided that I was only going to see Josh and Jon at their party, I felt a whole lot better about the whole thing.

And then I got why.

When I went back to Salisbury the first time, I went for drinks at Market Street with Josh, Jon, Charles and my old coworkers Tyler, Rob and Kenny.  It was literally broken into two camps.

Josh, Jon and Charles sat on one side and Kenny, Tyler and Rob sat on the other.  I will grant you that Tyler is an acquired taste.  If you don't like incredibly sarcastic comments, the tendency to quote the Office instead of actual conversational gambits, and the occasional really annoying behavior, you're going to hate him.  (I, as an incredibly sarcastic Office fan, love Tyler.)  But Kenny and Rob are seriously two of the nicest people you will ever meet, ever.  They're also hysterically funny.

Josh and Kenny have both had books published, so we talked about that for two seconds--Kenny asked Josh what he wrote and Josh was like, "Mysteries."  (Kenny's is about his experience playing baseball in the minor leagues.)  But by and large, it was Kenny and Rob trying to make conversation and Josh and Jon giving maybe two word answers. 

And I never get to really hang out with Tyler, Kenny and Rob, so I think I definitely paid more attention to them.  (This probably also didn't endear them to J,J&C.)

So after dinner, I was like, "Okay, seriously, what the hell?  Why were you so rude?" and they were like, well, "The blonde guy [Kenny] wasn't as funny as he thought he was, the guy next to me [Tyler] was really obnoxious, and the guy next to that [Rob] was really boring."  And here's the thing--Kenny is hysterically funny, Rob is not really boring, and Tyler was...well, very well-behaved, all things considered.  And then they said that they really just tend to find straight men really obnoxious and annoying.

And that, my friends, was the second time in my life I was ashamed to be gay.  I was like, "Yeah.  That's just great."

And I don't even want to talk about how annoying it was that they didn't even bother to learn the names OF THE THREE OTHER PEOPLE AT THE TABLE.  Especially Kenny who, as "the blonde guy" is pretty easy to remember.

So once I decided that I wasn't going to deal with their negativity, I started to feel a whole lot better about the situation.

The sad thing is that Rob is now in Texas (he got a job), so I won't get to see him.  I hope that Kenny and his wife will come either to dinner or Market Street on Thursday, and I am waiting for Tyler to get up with me so I can invite him to one event or the other, too.

I would also like to say that Josh and Jon (and especially Charles) aren't bad people.  They are incredibly kind (well, to me...well, sometimes), smart, funny and sweet (well, to me...well, sometimes) people.  They're just a little snobbier than I would have preferred.