Mike and I are in the pub after the Regular Features show. We've made some awkward small-talk with the hosts, and are now lurking by the bar being weird. There's a woman beside us standing by herself, but not by herself like I'd be standing by myself, drowning in anxiety, feeling blood pumping in my head and a heaviness in all my limbs. This woman is just leaning there looking relaxed. I assume she's either a space alien unconcerned with human social mores, or she's Friends with the Band. The band, in this case, being four games-journo types who do a comedy podcast rooted in nerd culture.
The woman turns to us and starts talking. I'm not sure her exact opening gambit. She's just all of a sudden in a conversation with us.
Mike and I reply for a bit, trying to seem normal. After a while the conversation inevitably, as this is the live performance of a podcast that we are currently attending, turns towards podcasts.
"What other podcasts do you guys listen to?" the woman asks.
"Oh, you know," we stammer. "Just, ooh. Loads. umm. Where to even begin? Just all the usual ones."
Mike manages to conjure up a podcast he has in fact been listening to, which the woman obviously knows, and they talk about that for a while. It's something to do with the radio show of a fictional town filled with Lovecraftian goings-on, with fake adverts and musical interludes by hip unsigned bands. It sounds amazing. I hate Mike.
The conversation falters, and Mike turns to me. "This guy listens to the more serious podcasts though."
Thanks, mate.
"Oh, yeah," I say. "I mean--"
--At this point I've got two choices. I either tell the truth, which is that I don't know anything at all about podcasts, though I've been listening to Regular Features for a long time. That I've heard the odd gaming podcast before, and recently I've listened to a few others in an effort to broaden my horizons, but really I don't know anything, but that's fine, that's just who I am, and maybe this woman could point me towards some interesting ones to try out, if she knows her stuff...
... Or I could -- and do -- say: "Well, most recently I've been into the Jon Ronson -- do you know Jon Ronson? He's an excellent journalist and writer and presenter, he did the Psychopath Test and the Men Who Stare at Goats and things -- well I've been listening to his series called the Butterfly Effect, which is about pornography, but it's not salacious at all, in fact the point he makes early on is that if you take the sexually-explicit content out of it the story quickly becomes very strange, and interesting, and funny, and moving. It's an exceptional piece of work, you should really give it a listen."
I mean that's mostly what I say. In reality there's more stuttering and sweating.
"That sounds great," the woman says. "What else have you been listening to?"
Fuck. I literally know three other podcasts. One is a daily bulletin of the New York Time's most salient story that day, which will make me sound like an unmitigated prick if I bring that up right after I just used the word "salacious" in a sentence. The second is the Adam Buxton podcast, which everyone in the world has heard of. The third, and most appealing option, is a show that keeps watch on President Trump and all the batshit crazy schemes he's been up to. This is probably the one with the most hipster cachet (just), which is obviously what I'm after, but name-checking it would have the following issues: I've only listened to half of one episode and couldn't say anything about it, I don't actually remember the podcast's name, and I heard about it through an interview with Jon Ronson, on the Adam Buxton podcast, which if these strands all came to light would show the pathetic fragility of this house of cards I'm attempting to build.
Basically I listened to one episode of a famous podcast, and this is the nexus from which all my paltry knowledge springs.
Luckily, at this moment we are interrupted by the woman's partner returning from elsewhere -- turns out the woman wasn't alone after all -- and after introductions and whatnot the conversational initiative falls naturally to me, and so I say, "But what podcasts do you guys listen to?" and then I just nod sagely and pretend that each one is the singularly overlooked fish to have slipped through the otherwise tight net of my vast and comprehensive knowledge.
And then the woman wants to go spontaneously be in conversations with the hosts, and so she does, and Mike and I have escaped. We look at each other sheepishly and shrug.
- - -
Why am I like this? Why do I try so hard to trick people into liking me? Why not just accept that who I am is good enough, that if I'm always aiming to be the person I assume others want me to be I'll never end up as anything but a rapidly cracking shell? That all anyone truly wants in a conversation is a genuine human being, flawed and imperfect like themselves, and that Hannah (which was this woman's name) was I'm sure nervous in her own way and drinking a little too much wine and worrying about making a good impression, and I would have made her feel a lot more comfortable by letting go of my dumb ego and being interested in her, appreciative of her, rather than trapped in my boring skull bombarded by ricocheting thoughts all focused on my own tiny unimportant self.
I mean we're just all going to fucking die. It does not matter. Not any of it. So why are we like this? I'm asking you. Why?
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