Calling this a bad case of 'nerves' would be an understatement. I am scared out of my wits for no good reason. I cannot fuck this up, and I'm so afraid that that's exactly what I'm going to do. If I had any experience with, or knew how my body would react to Xanex, I might go looking for some to squash my stupid social anxiety issues before what I have to do tonight.
Wait. I just realized I do have one experience. I don't think it was Xanex, I think it was Valium. I must have been about 19, when a friend of mine gave me one of them suggesting that it would cause me to turn into a melty pile of butter, which sounded nice, so I ate it. I never did feel melty, or really any different. But two hours later, I calmly decided to drive over to the house of a girl I had been spending a lot of time with, and explain to her that our friendship was over because all she ever wanted to do was talk about herself, even in situations where I was the one who really needed an ear. It all made sense in my head. I had been resolving to stop landing myself in co-dependent friendships, being taken advantage of by those 'all take and no give' kind of people, etc.
Really not proud of this. It might have been true that she was self-absorbed and taking advantage of me. It might have been a lesson she really needed to learn in life. But was it my job to decide those things? Am I in any way qualified to be judge and jury? Was it kind of me to show up unannounced and tell her she sucked as a friend? No. Was it irrational and irresponsible for me to have taken a strange narcotic and then gotten in a car? Was it bizarre that I could have chosen to do anything at that moment, and settled on using my temporary state of drug-induced courage and confidence to go shit on another person? Yes.
I believe I have just talked myself out of anti-anxiety meds as a solution for my current problem. Apologies for the detour.
Tonight, I am going to show up to a local fight promotion here in Austin and give my name to some people with the magic list. I'll then receive a press pass that will allow me access to everything behind the scenes, and wander around trying to talk to fighters, coaches, EMT's, promoters, or anyone else remotely related to the fight game, in hopes of having a conversation I can then make into a story for Fightland. Which is a subsidiary of VICE Media. Which is... all I've ever aspired to be a part of.
If I was Lauren Taylor, this would be easy. That girl has never met a stranger. I've always struggled to keep up with her in social situations. She has never been able to sit still as long as I've known her. Traffic makes her happy, because it means she's in a place with tons of people, and to her that is ideal. How weird is that.
Once, before I had really fallen for MMA and still didn't know much about the sport, she brought me as her guest to the AFC in Anchorage (that's Alaska Fighting Championship for those who don't know, and LT is the women's 145 champ). I more or less followed her around, trying to remember names, feeling really awkward and trying not to show it. I had just gotten into this rhythm with her that night, when she said, "Hey, that's Donald Cerrone. Let's go introduce ourselves."
I had no fucking idea who Donald Cerrone was. All I knew, was that he was a dude walking around by himself wearing a cowboy hat and boots, in Anchorage, Alaska. So, for lack of anything else to say, I made fun of his hat. I was good-natured about it, and it was the easiest introduction I'd made with anyone that night. I picked up from the talk between the two of them that he was a fighter, and that he must have been from out of town, but past that I was clueless. Wasn't until much later that I was informed that Donald Cerrone is one of the top ten MMA lightweight fighters on the planet, and that the promoter had brought him up as a guest. I would have been unable to speak, had I known. Lauren ambled over to him, stuck her hand out, and had a conversation like any other she'd have with a friend. I would give a lot for half of her social comfort level. Or... her balls, to be more direct.
But I don't have them. I'm trying to remind myself that this won't be a big deal. Over the last few years, I've been backstage with all kinds of fighters. I've made conversation like it was nothing with one of the top fight teams on the planet at Jackson's MMA. The answer is to just pretend that it's all normal to you, even though it absolutely isn't. Every time I get to sit in on practice, watch and listen while someone gets their hands wrapped, fetch some water or a coach or some gloves someone forgot in the car, I act like it's normal. But to me it isn't. See, I'm actually cheating. I've never been in the cage. I haven't earned my stripes with these people. Yet somehow, because I do my best to be a good friend, I get to share in an experience with them that most others will only ever glimpse pieces of from the stadium seating.
And tonight, I don't have a buffer. I'm in Austin, not Anchorage. I don't know any of these fighters. Lauren isn't here to charge boldly into the middle of conversations as my super out-going counterpart. I have to do it all myself, and come away with something worth writing about, because if I fuck this up, or disappoint the editor... if it's lame, or been done, or no one will talk to me and I come away empty handed... it will mean a failure at the single most amazing opportunity I have ever been handed.
I sure wish I could stop thinking about it like that. Self-fulfilling prophecy, setting myself up to fail, all of that shit I have to avoid. It's just another fight night, and these are just a bunch more fighters, and fuck if they haven't so far in my experience proven to be one of the coolest groups of people on earth. By and large, anyway. Even more than that, I'm in Austin. There is an unspoken social code among people in this town; don't be a dick. If you aren't friendly, genuine and warm, you aren't welcome. If that isn't how you acted in whatever town you came from, you better learn fast if you want to fit in here. This is the best possible introductory foreign scenario into which I could pitch myself headfirst. I'm a pretty cool girl, and I have always magically made strangers feel comfortable talking to me. Time to give this whole 'fake it until you make it' philosophy a real try.
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