The Hanging Out Conundrum
May-August 2022 Holed up in an apartment in Las Vegas. Ex-wife three apartments away, squatting in a friend’s place practicing her trade with anyone with a penis and some cash. I stay inside for most of those four months, rarely leaving except to go to the grocery store, the liquor store, and to walk for miles with no place to go.
September-January 2022-2023 Living in a room above my mom and dad in their house. Like a nice dorm room decorated via Southern Living. I go out to the gym and look for work. Some days I hang out at one of the two bookstores in town and write. I do not go out and look up old friends and I make no new ones either.
February 2023- I now have a rad (yes, I use that word in regular conversation because I grew up in the eighties…) loft apartment, a job I really like with benefits. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve lost the ability to make new friends. I have zero desire to date because the prospect of yet more heartache is more than I can stand (Sex? Sex would be fun but not at the potential costs that accompany the afterglow). I live near a few bars and places to see shows but I find myself holed up in the new place or spending time with my family (which is wonderful but hardly a road to making a few new friends unless they’re my mom’s church friends).
Years ago, in Chicago, going out and hanging with people was effortless. I had tons of friendly acquaintances and could sit in a theater lobby or bar and talk for hours with complete strangers who then became either women I dated or dudes I could hang out with. Today, my closest friends live hundreds of miles away and I keep in contact via FaceTime calls. Those calls are important but they lack that small talk to profound bullshit ratio that crashing in someone’s shitty apartment with no agenda meandering conversation.
Vegas was hard to find friends although I managed a few I consider lifelong types. The place is filled with transient citizens who blow into town seeking riches only to split shortly thereafter. Granted, at three and a half years, I suppose that I fit that description so it isn't any real surprise that I didn't find a crowd. I don’t become entwined with the lives of people I work with—I’ve been burnt too many times and I neverdate anyone from work because I’m not a complete moron.
My mother advises that I volunteer for something. She thinks hanging out in a bar is a terrible way to make friends. Find something I'm passionate about, find an organization that engages that, and volunteer. She may have a point and the oldest movie theater in Kansas is a block from my house—The Orpheum—and once I have a little bit of disposable income, I may spend some time over there and volunteer for some of the work they do. I am passionate about stories and hanging out is all about stories.
I'm hardly the only person finding it challenging to find a group of like-minded conversationalists. In 1990, 63% of Americans reported having five or more close friends. In 2021, only 38% did. On an average day 20 years ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Time Use Survey, 38% of Americans socialized or communicated with friends. By 2021, that number was down to 28%.
“Signs suggest that the role of friends in American social life is experiencing a pronounced decline,” according to a May study published by the Survey Center on American Life. Study authors revealed that “Americans report having fewer close friendships than they once did, talking to their friends less often, and relying less on their friends for personal support.”
That isn't just alarming. It may be why we're dying younger.
In 1938, Harvard researchers embarked on a decades-long study to find out: What makes us happy in life?
The researchers gathered health records from 724 participants from all over the world and asked detailed questions about their lives at two-year intervals.
Contrary to what you might think, it's not career achievement, money, exercise, or a healthy diet. The most consistent finding we've learned through 85 years of study is: Positive relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer. Period.
Knowing all of this, my conundrum is that the very idea of hanging out, making conversation, getting to know other people is daunting. Certainly elements of distrust based on my most recent experiences are coming into play. My judgment of people is highly suspect. Not only is it difficult to trust new people, I can’t trust myself. It’s established that I find a woman even remotely attractive I need to run as fast as I can. My track record sucks balls. I am, however, far better at judging friends.
What I know is that the true friends I have, while all are on corners of the country far enough to take a day or two to drive out to see them in person, I cultivated the relationships doing something collaboratively creative. Theater, music, writing, and storytelling are all gateways to my most lasting friendships. If there is a mantra I repeat, day after day, it is “Live, Work, Create.”
In Wichita, right now, I’m living fine. I have my family here and the joy that they bring to my day is incomparable. Time spent with my mother, father, and sister is long overdue and I love them without reservation. They’re also incredible fun and funny. I have an excellent home, a loft apartment that I couldn’t possibly afford in a major city. Sometimes I simply stand in the middle of the place and marvel at what a phenomenal place I’m in. I have work to do that is fun, weird, and I look forward to each day. Enough of the familiar (I’ve worked in non-profit radio so commercial radio is just enough different to be challenging but just enough the same to be comfortable). I create with my friends—podcasts and this digital magazine all which I have so much fun creating—but to make new friends, I need to be creative with other people as well. Through that pathway, the hanging out will happen naturally.
Also, there’s karaoke.
I empathize with the millions out there, unsure of how to find the ease of hanging out I did when I was in my twenties and thirties. Dating digitally is a fucking horror show based entirely upon physical traits and subtle lies. Online friendship is only a facsimile of a real relationship. My days of going to someone’s apartment, getting drunk or high, and finding myself deep in discussions of Nabokov, Didion, and David Foster Wallace are probably over but to find myself hanging out, talking about anything more important than the current culture wars or political divisions, sounds pretty goddamned divine.
So, I go forth. The only route is to engage. To find people who enjoy films I enjoy, music I dig, writers I admire.
The only way way forward is, well, forward.
