04.06.23

ball sports, friends

in the area there are many cliques, most of them related to balls. depending on whether you trust numbers and vague buzzfeed statistics it's the fittest place in America. I conflate this with wealth but like with all things it's impossible to know for certain what's really going on. you meet a friend and they're from spikeball, then you meet another person and they happen to be the pickleball guy. volleyball guy, tennis ball guy, racquetball. sometimes you meet a guy and he just likes testicle balls. i was used to the different guys being guys that watched balls ex. a football guy sitting down to watch others play football for him. football is less of a factor here as everyone is skinny and asian or white, lending well to smaller, contactless ball sports.

either friend groups are formed around sports or they're imported from other coasts, east or just more southern. statistics on graphs on websites will tell you that people love to bounce from coast to coast but you wont really believe it until you talk to a person and find out they're from the east coast and love to play spikeball at the park just like the last guy you'd approached.

s profile s is one of the few people i can talk to at work for a while. she's got bright hair, you can see most of the whites of her eyes, and the whites of her teeth always. she lives in a house where nobody has a room to themselves and she handles her thuoghts in like fashion. s will tell you, albeit with hesitation, about the art festival in the woods she agreed to attend. she also hinted that there was "sex" involved, but wouldn't agree that it sounded like a plain orgy with other, secondary elements. s makes gadgets that sound like what i would make if i smoked meth, but they actually seem to have function. (people that smoke meth will solder random circuit boards together, strap batteries to them, and plug them into walls)

one of the other highlights for s's college experience was the boat she was gifted, water legal, by a friend of hers. i didn't ask if it was her friend named an engineering term somehow. the boat is made of pvc and tupperware and it can float on the water but s isn't licensed to drive so it's a bitch to use it

s is from the coast but does no ball sports and is a lesbian as well. s represents an odd but consistent manifestation of the cliquiness of the area, and tells me in detail about the lavish events she plans to host at her house but does not invite me, almost certainly because, like she has explained, it is important that her friends are queer.

when i drive her around in my car s talks so loud that my ears split. i wouldn't mind being friends with s but it seems like things are just so barely misaligned between the two of us that it wouldn't work out. that's how it's felt with everyone that i've met after relocating, but it could just be that's how adult life is.