So for the trick of my third post (just to get me feeling well established in my new journal and all), I'll use that ever popular stand by of mildly bitching about offline friends. To those new to my journal, this particular group of people and I all met up one fateful day, when I got talking to Dave in a bar and he later took me to his regular meet up with his friends. We would meet up weekly from mid 1998 onwards up to when I left East Kilbride in late 99. After that, I only met up about once a month or so and over time and socialising between us has formed into smaller groups.
Dave - Dave phoned me the other day and it was the first time I'd heard from him in a few months. He remembered that I don't want to visit him in his home because of an incident one night, involving his creepy friend Jerry taking over the house (I'm not the only one to take a bad and cautious reaction to that guy and he seems to be passive aggressive and interrogative of Dave's other old friends). Anyway, Dave suggested that maybe he could meet with me and Stephen sometime. I thought that would be nice, but I know that it probably won't happen. Dave is far too unwilling to go anywhere and wants everyone to come to him. Also, he's incredibly fussy and changeable about which pubs he'll go to, to the point that he pretty much doesn't go to pubs. I suggested that he could come out and visit me for a couple of nights. This might happen, but I know it would probably mean me travelling all the way out to him, rather than meeting half way, as Dave never makes the effort to travel himself or find out bus times or routes (he wasn't always like this but he's become far more lazy and reclusive over the years and relies on taxis just to go ten minutes down the road!).
Dave also wondered why he doesn't have more friends and went on about how he used to be a big star and played with all the big bands (he exxagerates a lot of this - he was a session drummer apparently for bands like Jesus & The Mary Chain and The Quireboys at one point but it's not like he's on any albums or did major tours). Well Dave, the fact that you never go anywhere or make an effort over anything doesn't exactly make it easy to know more people (not to mention letting some creep attach to you who many of his older friends end up distrusting or disliking). Dave also tends to be stuck in the past, only ever wanting to talk about or listen to the same old late 60s/early 70s music. I like some of the same bands, but I'd hate to be stuck in the same timewarp that he's in, incapable of appreciating anything else and wanting everyone to be the same.
Jim - Jim has become increasingly involved in his stand up comedy, theatre and acting over the last couple of years. Far different in some ways from how he was when I first met him. He's generous at letting you stay the night and paying his way etc, but he tends to want everything his own way and can be pretty arrogant, condescending, mocking, obnoxious, patronising, stubborn and intolerant in his views and interests. He's an obsessive Star Trek fan and can't go as much as a day without watching at least one episode or movie of one of the Star Trek franchises. I used to like it more as a kid. I don't dislike it, but there's plenty of things I like better or the same and I get bored when he just wants to gibber on about Star Trek constantly and always watches it. Also we just have very different interests, tastes and opinions in general, which means I'd prefer to just meet up for a few hours and then go and do my own thing, but he usually wants me to stay the night. Not to mention that he goes all Glenn Close if you don't get his phone messages in time or answer the phone. I find many of his political views to be overly naive and simplistic and it's obvious that he's happy to hand his brain over to party indoctrination in a way that I never could. And he pretty much only concerns himself with things that interest or affect him, no matter what may be going on in your life (like when my cat was run over a few days before but he talked about beig depressed about the Brit Awards, or when my mother was in hospital with cancer but when I stayed the night with him as a favour he kept going on about his girlfriend and asking my advice on their on/off again situation as if it was the end of the world!). I can have a good time with him, but sometimes it can be wearing and I tend to feel out of place around his circle of people. Oh and he has an annoying tendency to gab away for ages to just about every person he meets, even strangers and shop assistants, usually leaving you in the lurch by his side like a spare prick!
Stephen & Stuart - No, they're not a couple, lol! I went a long time of a couple of years without seeing Stuart, but eventually he started coming out to meet me with Stephen. Stephen has a habit of repeating himself, it's a nervous insecure thing I guess. Conversations with him often tend to feel like he's running down a checklist of things to say to or ask you, or else that he's doing a inpersonal market survey or something. He's always been quite the pop music trivia buff (although he prefers radio disc jockeys to rock stars) but isn't particularly in touch with current music. He has an unfortunate tendency to follow the opinions of his favourite music magazines and DJs as if they were absolute truth, rather than someone else's opinion. He's probably the easiest to talk to, but it's hard to get deep with him. I can get along fine with Stuart sometimes (I used to like talking about books with him - he gave me my copy of 1984 many years ago and also turned me onto reading The Brontes and Jane Austen), but more often than not it can be problematic. He has a tendency to be very late or cancel at short notice. He wastes a lot of time on his smoke breaks. Like Stephen he can interrupt you a lot when you're trying to talk, which means a simple few minute story or anecdote gets dragged out indefinitely (if you don't just give up!) and "can I go back to what I was saying" becomes the biggest catchphrase since "That's Hot!". The biggest problem though is that Stuart always has to bring in his bible observations and general christian religious waffle into things. He knows that I stopped believing in any trace of his invisible sky daddy when my mother died last year. He claims to understand me when I said that I would strangle g*d, but he still comes out with trite, laughably pathetic and insensitive attempts to convert me (I was never a fan of organised religion and always dubious of the bible) and has that annoying "everyone believes what I believe, even if they protest otherwise" attitude, which sees any atheism or hostility to christianity as a passing phase. And he gushes about his wonderful "creator" - the same bastard that never answered a single prayer for my mother! I try my best to deal with him. I tune out and look bored, when he mentions the bible I talk about the teachings from Confessions Of An Heiress as counter, and I sometimes just tell him I'm not interested. But I fear it's gotten to the point that I'm going to have to be more militant in giving as good as I get from him, after all he's not giving me any consideration. But only time will tell if our friendship will last or if he'll ever get the message and change the record.
They're all good people and valued friends in their own ways, but there's just times when I could tear my hair out and stay away for a while.
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