a social life from scratch

 How do you create a social life from nothing?  When you've got no Mommy or Daddy to set you up on playdates, and no cliques to pressure you into friendships, how do you create your social life?  Here's how I've tried, in my two months since moving to New York:

• Take up your co-workers on their offers to socialize with you outside of work.  This can go positively: hanging out, drinking Blue Moons, embarrassing yourself by showing off your horrible coordination while playing GarageBand and bonding over life in the South by re-creating Southern accents; or negatively: taking him up on an offer to go to Fire Island, in a scheme to have sex with you in the 'meat rack.'  Allegedly.
• Go to bars.  Alcohol clearly helps you loosen up and makes you more willing to talk to people you wouldn't normally converse with, such as, oh, say, anybody on Long Island.  So far, this has worked out for me only slightly.  I have made friends with the bartender at the Long Island Eagle.  Two things to address here.  Number one: yes, you read that correctly.  For those of you ignorant to the gays and their crazy wackness, the "Eagle" is generally a leather/bear/leather daddy bar, and almost every gay-friendly city/region has one.  This Eagle is actually pretty lax on the leather daddies/bears, even if it is a mostly older crowd.  This Eagle is really pretty cool - it's kind of divey, but homey too.  It's like you're friendly neighborhood bar ...except with the occasional leather chaps-clad man strolling in.  Number two: having a bartender as your friend has insane advantages, especially if you don't have to ever 'hang out' with the bartender outside of the bar.  I've only been to the Eagle three times, and the bartender already knows my name and has a drink ready as soon as I walk in.  And he gives me a free drink every third drink.  So, there may come a time when I end up drugged and raped at the Eagle, and if so, I'll know it was only my friendly bartender.
• Cook yourself gourmet, oversized meals so that food becomes your best friend.  If it worked for Paula Deen, why can't it work for me?  If she can be lovers with inanimate objects like butter, why can't I be friends with my bacon-wrapped organic chicken?  In all seriousness, I have a dedicated desire to learn how to cook, and living alone has been a perfect time and place for me to learn.  The only downside is that recipes generally aren't made for losers with no friends, so the portions are always huge.  Thus, so are my hips.
• Redefine your standards for friendship.  What I'm saying here is, well, let television characters be your friend.  That's what they're there for, after all, right?  Since moving to New York, I have watched every single episode of True Blood, fallen in love with Bill Compton, become best friends with Sookie Stackhouse, gotten in fights with Jason Stackhouse, cried over the loss of my dear family friend Gran Stackhouse, and consumed a shit ton of popcorn while doing so.  After I finished watching all episodes ever produced of True Blood, most of which were obtained illegally once I discovered that Netflix couldn't feed my addiction quickly enough, I switched over to Hulu.  And the Golden Girls, and Will & Grace.
• Be patient.  Good friends don't come instantly.  Well, actually, some of them do.  But tell yourself that they don't to try to trick your mind into believing it.  Fake it till you make it, sister.  Patience is key, and this is what I've learned.  For someone who relishes in instant gratification, it's such a challenge to just wait for the friends, the excitement they bring, and the new possibilities to come.  The greater challenge is to find the joy and happiness in life alone.  To spend time with yourself without hating yourself, to appreciate your idiosyncrasies, to dance around your house naked, to pick your nose in complete freedom, to cut your hair by yourself one night and laugh ridiculously at yourself for what would surely be the greatest sight if a stranger were to enter your house at that very moment.  There is fun to be had by yourself - sometimes, you just have to try harder or look closer.
  

And here's how you don't make a social life:

• Spend all of your time on social-networking sites.  Like Facebook and Twitter.  I should know this because this is what I do, and I have yet to attain a real social life.
• Do things alone, when you could do them with someone else.  This one is tricky, because it depends on the kind of social life you're looking to have.  I'm looking for a balance, where I can spend time by myself, and really be happy with doing nothing by myself.  I feel like I've honestly gotten there.  However comma, it's only been two months and I'm already a bit restless for other people.  But that could be because I really only see the same 5 people all day, 5 days a week.  Still - I'll never give up seeing movies alone.  One of my favorite things to do.
• Drive around.  Believe it or not, this has been unproductive.  Here I thought getting in my car, and driving around cute little downtowns across Long Island while longingly staring at people out with friends having a good time would somehow endear them to me enough to come, open my car door, throw me up and onto their shoulders, starting a spontaneous parade where everyone is cheering "thank God, Wes has finally come! Be our friend! For he's a jolly good fellow!" would help me in my attempts for socializing.  For some reason, it has not proven successful.
• Spend hours on the Internet looking at adoptable dogs.  Everyone knows that dogs are man's best friend, and cats are for crazy ladies, so naturally, I want a dog to cure my loneliness.  No matter that my landlords strictly prohibit having pets of any type.  The fantasy still lives on, however futile it may be.
• Give your number to basically every boy you meet.  I was really never one to give out my number freely when I lived in North Carolina.  The opportunities, granted, were much more scarce - but I had standards that I just don't have here.  So, I've given my number to a few guys.  And strangely enough, no one calls.  Which tells me to a) stop giving out my number to douchebags; b) stop giving out my number to men who are so obnoxiously drunk that they won't remember you in the morning; c) don't be so desperate for attention/social life that you'll lower your standards to hang out with any average joe, because clearly the average joe's don't even know what the fuck is up.
• Cry about it.  To my surprise, I've only spent one night feeling sorry for myself and crying about it.  I had a moment, when I missed my mom overwhelmingly, and then I missed everything else, and that was it.  I was very sad, but only because I'm missing out on the silly details of my friends' lives - not because I was unhappy with my decision, or with where I am or who I was becoming.  I think that's a healthy sad.  I do know that if I were to spend more time crying about lacking a social life, I'd be spending more time doing something unproductive.  There was a time when this logic just didn't connect for me, and I would rather have wallowed.  I'm over wallowing now.

All in all, I think I'm about right on track.  I have something that resembles a routine, I have people to hang out with when I'm really bored, and when I don't, I always have myself.  And after all, as Carrie Bradshaw would say, "the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.”