Oh Austin, Austin take me in + meetup recap!
I get an email as I’m shoveling halibut into my mouth. I’m alone and it’s about a half-hour before the meetup. I read it quickly. As I’m reading key parts over again (I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially, “I. AM. NOT. IN. LOVE. WITH. YOU. ANYMORE. AND. HAVEN’T. BEEN. FOR. A. LONG. TIME. I. LOVE. SOMEONE. ELSE.”), I get a feeling in my heart similar to someone setting a knife on fire and then stabbing me with it. I speak in simile, of course, though I did briefly consider asking the barkeep to try stabbing me with a knife that was on fire to see if I could tell the difference between the emotional pain I was experiencing and the actual physical pain of said simile. But then I’d probably have to tip more and I’m a cheap date. No dice.
I quickly finish dinner and start walking down 6th Street back to my car trying to fight back tears. I walk hoping I won’t totally lose it in the street. It’s drizzling outside. I get to the car, sit down in the driver’s side seat and the tears absolutely pour out of me in a way that is both frightening and cleansing. It immediately begins to rain hard. It never rains in Austin.
To put it mildly, I was a fucking wreck. And would you look at the time, only twenty minutes until the meetup! I call a friend of mine. I calm down a bit. The email I’m reading is right there on the same screen I get the world’s news and my work emails. It’s gotta be true. I bring myself back to reality.
Fuck, I’ve got to put on a happy face and meet people now?
I arrive at the bar at 8 and no one is there. Oh great, and now no one came to the meetup. Perfect. But then they do come! All of them lovely people: onemorefortheroad, seagull, lacey, hotelchozulu, fleetfootedfox, hoarr and other people I met but forget their tumblr names because I only remember tumblr names of people I’ve slept with (see above).
But seriously, these people make you feel immediately at home, if growing up your family was a bunch of fun loving alcoholics. They’re excellent conversationalists and nice people to boot. All of them stand-up folks. They make you forget you were crying in the front seat of a rented Jetta earlier in the night, if you do that sort of thing.
Austin has a lot of good things going for it. I’m going to venture to say the people have quite a bit to do with that.
