Reading: Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

Moving: walked 2.7 miles

Listening: Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

Watching: "That '70s Show"

7 February 2001: Ozymandias

A fellow from another department just chatted for a moment with Egg. He has a date soon and they spoke of "Chocolat" as a good date movie. That much I heard just because we share a cube wall without any particular eavesdropping or straining on my part. As soon as he left someone on yet another side of the cube wall dashed over to get the details about this fellow's dating life from Egg, mostly because he showed up at last Friday's company party with another, single, female Dot Orger, and, I know, I was not alone in wondering whether they had just gone together or it was a Date or what. Of course I'm curious and a gossip too, but I typed deliberately and industriously during their conversation so I couldn't hear it, because it's none of my business and I don't like feeling as inquisitive as I actually am about someone I don't know and whose only tie to me is working at the same smallish (150 people) organization.

Do I feel virtuous? No, because I haven't died yet and could still ask Egg myself. Well, maybe a little. It's part of the whole debate about how I conduct myself, though. RDC pointed out that I behaved badly when I was overwrought and grief-stricken--I like to say only "insane," as the exaggeration is obvious and doesn't beg explanation--and having done so has scarred me to the degree I am not confident to be myself anymore. Ten years ago. Ten. Also the outgoing exuberant thoughtless devil-may-care lisa I was as an undergrad, immediately preceding the insane period, probably wouldn't wash either, in my current life. I'm still thoughtless, but I've grown a conscience and now care when I am, though I'm no better than ever at judging when I might have been or am being so.

RDC and I had this conversation last fall, in the car on the way down to the tech center where two folks from the No Kidding organization had made supper reservations at a Marriott restaurant. Did I want to be friends with them anyway, given those two points of bad taste, given that our only point in common was not reproducing? I had nothing to lose there, didn't work with them or go to school with them, but watched myself carefully that night, thinking they knew nothing about me and this would be a good way to judge whether I am likeable or a good conversationalist when you meet me blind. The watching myself didn't help me be myself. Part of being myself is not to tread softly.

Anyway. This all kicks up again because I really really like a new staff person in my very departmen. (This also reminds me that I probably could have made a number of other friends here, as we're packed with interesting folks of similar interest and in promising age ranges. I haven't because of this fear, but I am here because she's in my very department and new to town to boot.) I want to be friends with her, but the whole reason I haven't made friends at work is that my work persona--the regulated, non-swearing, non-hooting, non-tangenting, version of lisa--is so carefully segregated from the lisa version of lisa, who is loud and abrasive and offensive and talks about subjects no one else is interested in, in a manner no one else can follow.

I invited TDT--I'll come up with a better handle--to dinner at Watercourse Foods and to the Mayan to see "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" with Haitch and me a few weeks back. I thought they had enough in common to want to meet, and they liked each other and that was good. We've gone to the library together a couple of times at lunch. She was uncertain how to find the aquarium so came to the house last Friday and I drove her and RDC and me to the Dot Org holiday party. (Usually "holiday" means "around Christmas" but no one organized it this year, so instead we had Candlemas/Groundhog Day at Ocean Journey, which would have been great except the sea otters, river otters, and tigers all go to bed at 8:00 and it's not fish I go to the aquarium to see, logical as I am.) I like her. She's enthusiastic about all things Denver, being new to the city and 25, and she's staggeringly bright in her esoteric field and also reads regular books and is a fishy vegetarian (she and RDC decided to go out for sushi if the catering sucked, whereupon I made the obvious joke that we would already be at an aquarium) and does yoga and loves dogs. What's not to like?

But how do I act? Where do I draw the line between the lisa who can keep a job and lisa as I am otherwise?

Damn. Yesterday the gynecologist asked if I had other concerns and I mentioned that I want to lose about 15 pounds. He talked about the weight-loss program his clinic runs and said he could prescribe phenwhatever or fenwhatever, the safer half of fen-phen, depending on this and that, and of course that rocked my world, except that insurance doesn't cover it and I don't need to lose weight by a bottle but by discipline. I told RDC about it and he said that besides the drug being dangerous, I'm about the last person who should be on amphetamines. That was true of me Before, but not now. I'm not like that Anymore unless I am alone or know my audience.

Jessie is infectious, and I've been pretty much myself with her. The first time I met Jenn and Kevin I was myself--by the way, Jenn, the gift shop was closed so I couldn't see what was happening with the tigers--and I came away feeling like that had gone all right; the next time I saw them I realized--afterward--that my usual rude-ass self wasn't one I should inflict on their friends. I liked Columbine but didn't think my noisy immaturity was called for; he's confessed himself that his Silliness is well guarded. With the No-Kidders, well, that was a disaster waiting to happen; and at DU, I have my one good friend and a bunch of acquainti. It's very rare that I feel no qualms about being me Me ME around the uninitiated, and believe me that gets lonely.

So in December when Dot Org had a meeting in Boston and I wanted my coworkers, whom I like and who largely like me, to meet my sister, it wasn't just because her restaurant serves good food close by the meeting site. It was because--well, it was because I hadn't seen her since July and wanted to see her as soon as I could--it was because I wanted my department to see who I really am.

I mean, my act's not a good one. I leak at work--lisa leaks out, plus I've cried occasionally. Everyone knows I love my sister and my granny and miss the ocean and want a dog and read a lot and am aimless without professional ambition. I'm not, I couldn't be, a closed book. But it would be more obvious with my sister.

Minne, who is scarily intuitive, observed afterward that we're very close and very affectionate, and how much we resemble each other in face and gesture, and then there was the fact that my raunchy sense of humor, suppressed at work, here responded to its genesis. Everything. I wanted the people with whom I interact for 35 hours a week to see who I am for the other 143.

That was a one-time thing.

Now I have the potential for an actual Friend at work. She's seen me pounce on a book at the 'brary, heard me ramble off in a half-forgotten train of thought, and met my best friend, my husband, and my bird.

The problem is, how can anyone know the real me but still be of the opinion I can hold a job? Or is what I'm really scared of, the possibility there's no more lisa left and the dichotomy maintained for my peace of mind thinking there's a need for it when really there's not?

Be careful out among them English.