The life of the party

By Susan McCarthy

I curse the Well, for it has made me delusional. Over the course of seven years of mercilessly exploiting the Well, strip-mining it for friends, professional contacts and eclectic knowledge, I have also attended Well social events.

I dislike social events, because I am foul at them. I am feeble at introducing myself; inept at introducing people to each other; clumsy at moving conversations from zero to five, let alone 60; infantile at keeping my beverage level so it doesn't spill.

But at Well social events I can simply blurt my name, and people say "Oh, yes. You hated the ending to 'Limbo' -- I couldn't believe that -- I thought it was perfect." And we're off, pounding round the turns, kicking up mud, striking at each other with our whips! Not reduced, as at most social events, to muttering, "So, what do you do?" or "So, where do you know Gregor and Medea from?" and wishing to be dead and safely buried.

I can ineptly introduce people and they fall into each other's arms shouting "I LOVED your haiku about peplums!" Or if they don't know each other, they can puzzle out why: "I mostly post in Spirituality, Dreams and Buddhism." "Oh. See, I post in Weird and Flame.ind and my own conference, crazedslayer.pri."

I still have difficulty not spilling my beverage. The Well has let me down here.

As a result of going to gatherings where people I have never seen turn out to know me and talk to me, I have acquired a reverse paranoia (I've read on the Well that this is called pronoia). In gatherings of strangers, I unconsciously feel I'm surrounded by people I know. Neighbors. Friends. "I'm 'sumac' on the Well," I could say whenever I chose. And rather than backing away in a flurry of pepper spray, garlic and silver bullets, they would say, "I know you! You posted that Mary Jo Salter poem." "Oh, hi -- did you ever get that extra head looked at?" "Sumac? I loved your planned itinerary in crazedslayer.pri!"

About the writer

Susan McCarthy is a San Francisco writer and co-author with Jeffrey Masson of "When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals."

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