An ass out of you and umption

[mrissa]

Crowded Culver's in the middle of Wisconsin. Table of four guys in their mid-twenties dressed in hunting winter camo and orange jackets, eating burgers and cheese curds and frozen custard. As I stood there propped against a wall waiting for a table to open up, it became clear what they were discussing:

"Like Mirror Dance? I liked that one, with the crazy clone brother."
"No, not Mirror Door, Mirador. It's a place. They're all places, all the titles. Fake word places."
"I just read Melusine."
"Well, you gotta borrow the others. There's this actress...."

I did not jump in to tell them that truepenny had put trains in the last volume, but oh, was I tempted.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Also, and this is an assumption here, you are a girl and they are boys, and so they may be inherently pleased that you are into what they're into.

Yes.

Do you see how that's not always something that would be worth their enjoyment to me? Sometimes I am pleased to be the Designated Woman Geek In The Vicinity, the one-woman walking force of gender integration, sometimes (depending on their tastes) even The Cute One They Didn't Believe Existed.

But particularly with my mobility limited in ways that aren't obvious to the casual observer with the vertigo, that's not something I always want to open the door to.

And also there are lots of boys (I use the term advisedly: there are fewer men in this category, and it's hard to tell from casual observation of a group of 20somethings in a Culver's whether they're boys or men) who are scared to death by women who are knowledgeable in their fields of knowledge, and who are rude and unpleasant by way of not knowing what else to be.