Review Mode: Being Awkwardsauce as Our Democracy Collapses

Obviously, the important things to focus on post-inauguration aren’t whether or not I’m being likable enough in my social interactions, but the important things are scary/make me cry, so here we are.

Welcome to Review Mode, a biweekly newsletter where I mark up my social interactions, mining my, like, medical-grade self-monitoring for your reading pleasure.

Okay, unfortunately to mark up the following exchange, I have to acknowledge that all this *gestures broadly* is actually happening, which is one of my least favorite things to do. That’s kinda the whole thing here — I still haven’t figured out how much we’re supposed to let this whole sense of doom inflect our day-to-day little social interactions. So far, I’ve only ever under- or overdone it.

The day before the inauguration, I got coffee with a friend of mine — we’ll call him Russ — whom¹ I’ve been getting closer to in the last year.

Which, by the way, is huge for me. Making new friends, as someone who had very few friends growing up², gives me a high that you usually can’t get in your adult life without, like, quitting a shitty job and telling your boss to eat a dick. Like, realizing I’m friend-able feels like telling the middle school popular kids that they can eat dicks.

Russ is the sweetest. Like, I bet when he was in middle school, if he saw someone getting bullied, he’d be like, “Hey, that’s mean.” Like, Russ seems like the kind of guy who gets rid of spiders by trapping them under a glass and letting them outside. Real catch, friendship-wise.

At this coffee, I’d confessed to Russ I’d been feeling pretty low, weighed down by dread about Inauguration Day. Being honest about that was so scary. Sharing vulnerable emotions with people kinda feels like showing em a weird scab - like gross, who would wanna see that? (Anyway, wanna see my scab? It’s healing really well, so now it just looks like a rash.)

So, the day after the inauguration, when I ran into Russ at a friend’s show, he went in with a concerned, thoughtful “How’re you doing?”

I, however, wasn’t engaging with my emotions anymore. Or anyone’s, I guess. I’d done too much crying the day before. Now, I was running on busy-ness and distraction.

So, I went in for a quick, cheerful hug and said in a chipper tone, “Good! You?”

He seemed confused. Of course he did. Days earlier, I’d been like I’m dreading this big, bad thing, and then the big, bad thing happened, and suddenly I was basically skipping through a meadow with a basket of flowers. (Which sounds kind of fun. Seems like something I should try at least once.)

I missed the opportunity to connect with him and be a real friend, as he’d been to me. Ignoring how I was feeling led to me ignoring how he was feeling.

I didn’t necessarily have to, you know, get into it, but I could’ve taken in his tone enough to acknowledge the moment we were in. Even an, “Oh, you know,” or a “Would you believe I’ve been better?” would’ve opened up the space for us to actually relate to each other.

Given my relative friendlessness growing up, I have a real scarcity mentality around emotional connection. When I miss an opportunity to relate, it feels a little like, “Wait, no! Who knows if you’re going to get another one of those?”

I’m not saying we needed to sob into each other’s arms. But Carson, would it kill you to make a little eye contact?

It’s like Russ was holding the door open for me, and I wrenched the doorknob from his hand and slammed that door in his face. But in a small way, so it would have to be a really small door. The door that that mouse from Catdog used. Winslow.

Anyway, since then I’ve been way overcorrecting, answering honestly anytime someone gives a quick, perfunctory “How’s it going?” Which is so much worse.

The Lesson That I Should but Probably Won’t Learn from This: Slow down for even just like one second to see how someone else might be feeling, or else you might miss the chance to be a real friend.

• Alternative lesson: Chill out, Carson. It was literally just a “How’re you doing?” It’s not like he was like “Hey, do you have a minute? I’ve been having a tough time.” And you were like “Tough time? Couldn’t be me. Suck it, bitch, I’m doing amazing.”

Carson’s Life Updates

• I just watched Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings, and it made me want to be in a decades-long marriage where we can’t be honest with one another. Did I get the right takeaway from that?

• The first Friendly’s (the monthly queer comedy show I cohost in Brooklyn) was really fun! Follow @friendlysfunny on IG for info about the next show, which’ll be Tuesday 2/18.

• In these trying times, I highly recommend my new wellness routine - it’s this emerging technique called drawing a fuckton of Pokémon. Research is still in its early days, but preliminary results are promising.

  

  

The Boilerplate

Carson Olshansky (still they/them, despite the haters) is a Brooklyn-based comedian and writer. If you don’t already, you can follow them at @carsonolshansky on Instagram and TikTok and at @carson-olshansky on YouTube.

1. Note that, anytime I use this construction, I end up striking a worst-of-both-worlds grammatical balance that doesn’t please anyone. The use of whom comes off as so stilted that the sentence will alienate anyone who feels like grammar is a classist and condescending construct. Meanwhile, the dangled preposition will alienate any grammar sticklers.

If you expect me to be consistent in how I apply grammatical rules going forward, I’ll only disappoint you.

2. For some insight into why making friends may not have come very easily to me, see the previous footnote.