"Why don't the other children get me?"

A week ago, I stopped at a Repair Cafe in the community center. I have a camera whose lens was stuck with grains of sand from my honeymoon five years ago. I have held onto it because I kept hope that someone would one day present me a way to fix it. I have other, better cameras now, but I refuse to let this one go, even as I release most things that no longer serve me.

I wait behind a woman having a sewing machine fixed, a simpler issue that does not need the exposition as it receives. I am patient. I don't have much else to do today but chores.

A woman sidles up beside me and asks what I am having fixed. She is blonde and well put together, though it is easy to pretend that under the cover of a peacoat. This might have been what I was doing as well.

I tell her that what I am doing was not having a camera fixed but getting a second opinion from a man who doesn't want to look at it. I had tense interactions with his elderly wife years ago--more her fault than mine, but I still had a hand in them. I think she cautioned him not to give me the time of day.

I ask the blonde woman what she, Amelia, was having fixed. She has nothing in need of repair but came here to scope out the competition. She is opening an ecology store behind Grandiflora. I tell her I know that area well, as my wife used to work there.

We say our brief goodbyes, as she has other things at the cafe to examine, a sincere smile on her face. The conversation went so well that I reach into my pocket to hand her one of my cards. I do not have any in these pockets, only in my car.

I duck out, dodging a man at the door asking me again if I am a Democrat and willing to sign a petition for Pete Buttigieg. (I am not and would not, and he also mispronounces his candidate's name in a way I find suspicious). When I return, two people occupy Amelia in conversation. I do not see a reason to interrupt her.

To wait until she is free, I return to where a chef has made dishes out of winter squashes. A woman with a glitter of gray hairs had approached me earlier and asked if I had any questions about the spread. I was flustered a moment, touching her arm and assuring her that I understood food. She is still there, and I mention that she looks familiar and hadn't we met before? (Prior, of course, to her asking me about food.)

She doesn't think so but urges me to try the spreads. They are delicious but garlicky. I taste this for the rest of our conversation. Does my breath reek of it? Uncertain, I keep my distance.

She, Britt, reveals that she returned to the Hudson Valley for love, that she lives across the river, that she oversees sustainability at Bard College. I understand moving for love, giving her the story of Amber moving in with me after less than six months of dating.

I have not slept well and so do not feel that I am at my conversational best. I feel at times the unwelcome pangs of social anxiety with her. Still, we chat for several minutes before I decide that I may be monopolizing her from encouraging other people to eat the spreads--if that is indeed her purpose here. I take my leave, but not before handing her one of my cards. She receives this as though I have offered her a dead mouse I found in my pocket. (She does presume that "Thomm Quackenbush" must be a penname. I assure her that a man named Pieter Quackenbosch hopped off the boat from the Netherlands in the early 1700s and then had a thousand children.) I don't understand why she isn't interested, but do not press the issue. I have done whatever damage I was apt to.

I scan those present. Amelia is no longer among them. At least I made Britt's acquaintance. She won't contact me, I suspect, but I've done what was appropriate (even if I am the only one in the interaction who might have felt that way).

When Amber returns home, the assure her that two women tried to pick me up. She does not believe me for a second.

The next day, I receive a generic social media invite from a local library for that coming Friday. When the day rolls around--and being absent Amber until 9pm--I decide I will check it out. Not go inside, not play any board games, but walk to the exterior of J&J's Cafe and look in.

The cafe is empty aside from two workers, both of whom look as though they are cleaning to go home. Who could blame them? I hesitate a moment, wondering at asking if I have been misinformed about a board game night, but decide against it. Best to return home and enjoy the rest of my night in peace.

I turn and there is a librarian, Amy, her arms loaded down with games, and a couple likewise burdened. I am not obligated to this event. I begin to leave anyway until my inner voice calls me a coward and tells me to go inside or never again complain that I do not have more friends.

I don't like board games. Competing with people as a form of social activity rankles my nerves. Throwing in that these people will be strangers almost puts me over the edge. The other option is sitting at home, trying to write away my anxiety about ***leaving my publisher, and waiting for Amber to come home.

I enter, sitting next to the stack of board games. There ends my initial courage. I do not have it in me to make the first step in interacting with anyone, or really looking at them. I start editing one of my books, technically but not practically attending this event.

I do this for five minutes before a woman with short hair and a knit cap asks if I wanted to play.

"I guess I am here to be social and not to just sit."

"Do you want to be left alone?" she asks.

"No, I want to be spoken to," I confess. "That's why I sat next to the games. It's like when you go to a party and you don't know anyone, so you sit near the food table. Then people have to talk to you."

She, Amanda, and her bearded husband Aaron suggest that we play Doctor Who Fluxx. I tell them that I haven't played Fluxx in a while, but I do know Doctor Who. I'm sure that balances out.

I win the first game. I realize later that that's only because they did not correct me when I misunderstood the rules.

They tell me that they just moved to Kingston, the city on the other side of the bridge, having come from Poughkeepsie and, before that, Beacon. They are being pushed north, though I suggest they sojourn in Hudson on their way to Albany.

We joke around. They find me funny. That is how I assume socializing words. I make people laugh; thus, they like me. Then we can be best friends.

There may be steps between, but I'm not sure.

They wrangle in a guy named Jake who works at the Millbrook Winery.

We try Fluxx again, then a maze game where we must kill one another, and finally a game that promises to be more mathematical than it ends up being. I do not win again and do not mind this.

The longer I am around them, the more charged I feel. In the past, I assumed I was an introvert, but I don't think this was ever the case. I lacked confidence then, having been mistreated and not giving my mental health the attention that I could. I tend to my herd of introverts but, as this night shows, I may at least be an ambivert.

When I take my leave of them two hours later, I give all three of them my card. None react as though they are going to do anything more than throw these in the garbage, though I don't know why. We've been friendly. My name is no one's anathema. Yet, no, they will not contact me after this.

I walk home, exuberant, eager to prepare tea and mozzarella sticks for Amber when she returns, pleased to have a story of my bravery over social unease.

Soon in Xenology: Magical thinking and witchcraft.

last watched: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
reading: American Cosmic