It works both ways

So it turns out Im not the only one with inadequacy issues. The boy confessed to me today that he felt a little awkward around my friends during a roast dinner gathering I had at my place. Now I can see it all makes perfect sense. The boy and I met online on one of the less obvious but equally conventional gay networking website. Our paths would had probably never crossed if it wasn't the exchange of some fairly basic 'Hey, how you doing' messages and the intrigue of seeing whether or not the profile photos did one another justice. Apparently mine didn't but I've never been able to perfect a killer pose. As a teenager I never thought to practiced in a mirror. His world and my world although exist in the same dimension/London post-code have entirely different social etiquette's. His friends are very accomplished and scarily ambitious and my friends are incredibly unconventional and impassioned. I suppose the main traits both our friends share are creative ones. Much like the difference between him and I.

The boy said to me that he felt really preppy around my friends because they were all so cool and it was only last week that I was saying to him that I felt stupid around his friends because they are so intelligent. I explained to him that I would never want him to feel like he didn't fit in with my friends. Just as I have to not worry about what I believe my shortcomings to be as does he. We are now out of our comfort zones and its totally necessary that we experience this. If we didn't we would become cliquey and dull. I need to push myself out of my comfort zone as much as possible. We both do. Its all too easy to become set in your ways and ridged, totally unable to experience new people just because we are governed by a fear of not fitting in or ignored. Its true that today he spoke about things my friends were probably not interested but in equal amounts I shared what I thought were amusing antidotes with his friends only to find strained smiles looking back at me. His friends will get use to me and mine will get use to him. After all we are all lost creative types finding some sort of life for ourselves in overcrowded lonely city. And from that same point its not the most terrible place to start some sort of connection.