The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. I went to another social event today. Ironic that I go to all these social events and yet I'm the most anti-social person I know. This year I'm forcing myself to go to as social events as possible. "Going social", I call it. Like "going postal", but instead of killing people with guns, I'm talking to people.

Today's social event was at a vermouth bar downtown. I felt nervous but strangely excited. I arrived punctual, at 6:30 pm, at the start, so I didn't feel overwhelmed by too many people. But already a large group of people were standing in a cirle outside the bar. Saw them, thought "nope", and went inside the bar instead. Bought an alcohol-free beer because I didn't want alcohol to affect my social skills. The organiser of the event, a friendly Russian woman called Nastaya, gave me a pen and a name tag. I'd never had a name tag before. I was tempted to make up a cool-sounding name like Rock Samson but I just wrote Paul instead. Then I stuck the name tag to my chest. When I looked around I noticed no one else was wearing a name tag.

I've been reading a book called The Social Skills Guidebook to help me learn social skills, and I was eager to put my new-found knowledge into practice So I went back outside, mustered up my courage, and joined the group of people outside. Thanks to the book, I knew exactly what to do. Stand near the group, focus on the person talking, wait for a break in the conversation, and then... pull down your trousers and whip out your genitals. Oh, I'm sorry. That was a different book.

But there was no need to do any of that because next to me was a Polish guy called Maciej, who I went on a hike with last week. It was nice to see him again. Today he was with his Spanish teacher. His Spanish teacher lives in Poland. So the Polish guy lives in Spain and the Spanish guy lives in Poland? Christ.

Next I met an Italian guy called Alejandro. He had read Charles Bukowski, which surprised me, as I didn't think other people read Charles Bukowski. "Everyone reads it in Italy when they're a teenager," he said.

My tooth started hurting, the one that's been hurting for months now. I tried to ignore the pain. I saw Mariah, the Dutch woman I met at the last social event. I apologised for talking so much last time. I mentioned I'm reading a book to try to improve my social skills. She asked how that was going.

"Pretty good actually," I said. "Yesterday, I struck up a conversation with a woman in the playground. I said, 'I like your coat.' I wouldn't have done that before."

"You liked her coat? What, was it a nice coat or something?"

"Yeah, it was a pretty nice coat. It was different colours."

"And what did she say?"

"She said thanks, and she asked me where I was from. I told her I was from England. I asked where she was from and she said Galicia. And that was it really. The whole conversation lasted less than a minute. But I'd still consider it a success."

She laughed.

"Do you want a drink?" she said.

"Sure," I said. She bought me a vermouth.

Next I met a fat Spanish guy called Mario and a tiny Japanese guy called Huan. Not sure if they were a couple?

"What are you drinking?" Mario asked me.

"I don't know. I've forgot." I said.

A guy came up to me and Mariah. His name tag said his name was Joaquin. He was balding, in his fifties. He looked like a character from a Tintin book who works at an embassy. He talked to us for about half an hour. I say talked to us, but it was more like talking at us, because he never stopped to ask us questions. It seemed like he was talking forever. I thought about offering him my social skills guidebook. It's right there, Joaquin, on page 234: don't monopolize conversations. At one point his name tag fell off. He didn't notice until someone pointed it out to him. He reached down, picked it up and stuck it back on upside down. I think he was drunk. I asked him how many drinks he'd had. He said five. His last drink was a special Vermouth called a James Bond. It was called a James Bond because the bartender shakes the drink in a cocktail shaker.

"But the bartender he was shaking it for five minutes," said Joaquin. "He just kept shaking and shaking."

"Are you sure it was the drink he was shaking? Or was it his penis?" I said, making everyone laugh.

Mariah eventually said, "Well, I'm just going to the toilet," and went back inside. That was a good way to escape, I thought. When you want to leave a conversation, claim you have to go to the toilet. (When I got home, I checked the book, and it's there, on page 164: methods of ending conversations.)

Joaquin's monologue was actually quite interesting - at least, the parts I could understand. He said he'd live abroad for 20 years and had worked as a consultant in Australia, a pint-puller in a pub in Dublin. He had worked across the whole of South-East Asia. He said right now, he's in the IT industry and has a hundred servers in the Czech Republic. "Sometimes they phone me to say a server is down. I tell them to which cable to check."

The last person I talked to was a bald 56-year-old man from Plymouth. His name was Gordon. He said he'd been living in Madrid for 14 years and moved to Girona just eight weeks ago.

"I love it," he said. "Girona's like paradise." Alright, steady on. I don't see any naked women walking around, do you?

Gordon said he'd been divorced for a few years and has two kids, aged 15 and 18. He said in the short time he'd been in Girona, he had managed to become the leader of the local Meetup group. By beating the former leader in single-handed combat to the death?

He showed me some photos of the group on his phone. It was a bunch of grey-haired pensioners sitting around a table. I'd seen younger people in retirement homes. Then he swiped to another photo. This one was of the other extreme: girls and guys in their twenties, holding beer bottles and gesturing in a "whahey" motion.

"So how old are you, if you don't mind me asking?" said Gordon.

Why, so he can suck the life force out of my blood and become young forever?

"36," I said.

He looked shocked. "Really? I... Well, perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I thought you were older. For one thing, you have grey hairs in your beard."

I made a mental note to start dyeing my beard.

It was 9:30 by the time I left. I promised Gordon I'd come to his group next week.

Overall, I think tonight went pretty well. I even got someone's phone number. Unfortunately, it wasn't the phone number of a hot blonde girl but a bald man from Plymouth.