When I had my own live show

annanaka called me last night, lost in Michigan. She wanted directions back to her house. She didn't know the address. Also, the person driving had a knack for getting east and west confused. As a result, it took a little while to get them home.

Betwixt giving directions, we chatted a bit. Anna's friend wanted to know if I knew someone in the plant biology program; I thought the name sounded familiar, but didn't know for sure.

"Don't you know everyone?" Anna asked.

"No," I said, "I really don't know very many people at all. I've been very shy lately."

"What!? But you knew everyone at Tech. You're Virginia Tech famous; the only person more famous is Toby."

Those words stayed with me. I had known everyone at Tech, for at least the last four of the five years I was there. What I didn't know, exactly, was how I had come to know so many people.

Let's rewind.

Middle school was incredibly painful. I was impulsive, tactless (and uncomprehending of tact), and had only a small handful of not-quite-close friends, most of whom were a year younger than me. I didn't go out on the weekends. I read constantly, even in class, but mostly my bookshelf held Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan serializations and Star Trek paperbacks.

I played in the band, I was a wiz at math and got a perfect score in our computer class, and most of the teachers liked me a great deal (relationships I worked to cultivate, proof that I was not socially inept). I was by definition a nerd--at a time when it was not yet cool to be geeky. But it was worse than that, because I was pretty much the sole member of the nerd group. I had no fellow Trekkies--or even Jedi--to back me up.

Not that I ever got beat up, of course. People in my school were mostly above fistfights. But as I'm sure you all know, the worst violence in middle school is psychological. Primates at their worst.

I suffered through a lot of loneliness in middle school, but good things happened to me as well. For one thing, the relationships with the teachers had paid off. My grades were mostly decent, and even if they weren't, I think I ended up winning five or so of the subject awards at eighth grade graduation...math, computers, art, and I don't remember the rest. The Richard P. Babyak Award, that said that I was a really nice guy to everyone (to this day, I wonder: sympathy award?). If I didn't win music, I certainly won enough awards in that area before graduation.

The effect was confidence. Not a lot, but enough. I decided that if I was so brilliant, I could control my own destiny. I could be outgoing, I could make friends, and nothing was going to stop me.

And nothing did stop me. High school saw me become a new person. Well, that's unfair; even though my school was K-12, and the high school and middle school were only separated in terms of location, the turnover between 8th and 9th grade was enormous. As a result, I could be friends with people who had not known me before.

I remember little of my first day of high school. It was cloudy, looked like rain all day long. I made friends with Sarah S., who came in with acne and flannel shirts and graduated with beauty queen looks. I remember seeing Bettina--my soon-to-be best friend--sitting huddled on the steps outside, looking perhaps like she thought she was the only new kid. In a sense, she was right; she had moved here from Belgium, and most of the rest of the newcomers had merely changed schools.

And I remember the older kids, too. I remember modeling my behavior after Lizi D, a junior who I'd met on a band trip in years previous--and perhaps the person who unknowingly convinced me I wanted to be an extrovert and not an introvert. I remember meeting the "foolish elf," a senior, Erin M, the first agnostic I ever knowingly met*. I remember Elliot H, James R, and most of the drama kids, who served as examples of how I could turn my weirdness into quirky-coolness.

I also remember that the people who had been primates in junior high were mostly still primates in high school. In fact, I would eventually run into a few of them while back from college. I mean this literally: they tried to hit my car with their car in the Safeway parking lot.**

Then there was Oxford. Suddenly the people who had known me before were a very small minority--twenty-two out of some three hundred--and I could again become someone almost completely new. While I was in Oxford I discovered that girls actually fancied*** me occasionally. In Oxford I was the most extroverted I'd ever been; it was then that I made friends with such shy types as Darcey, Caitlin, and Heidi (all love interests at some point(s) in my life).

Now. College.

The arrival I remember vividly. Leaving around midnight to drive the four-point-five hours to Blacksburg with my mother, cousin Katie and Uncle Jerry in the other car, so that I could be the first one there on the first day of move-in. (I wasn't the first, disappointingly.) We listened to the Monty Python CD thesaucypickle made for me, probably a couple times over.

I wore a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt I'd bought at the beach during beach week (a ceremonial drinking event for high school graduates at Rehoboth Beach). I'd just gotten my hair cut, I was wearing all of my favorite clothes, and damned if I was going to waste this experience.

RA check-in outside O'Shag, shook hands and introduced myself, got my key, along with Einstein's Dreams. Shaking hands with Brian Bluhm, who lived directly across the hall from me, and whose death by bullets I never could have foreseen. Hours of moving in. The annual shuffling of furniture necessary for introduction of the traditional dormitory carpet. Borrowing a screwdriver from Brian's dad.

Mom--completely tired by eleven AM or so--bringing me a wrap from Souvlaki, back when I still ate wheat but avoided dairy. Everyone giving me hugs goodbye by four or so. Unpacking my things into the ill-designed computer hutch of my own construction. Realizing I was starving, all of the sudden, and venturing outside despite not having a clue where I was.

Setting foot outside, panic attack. Going back in, sleeping, ultimately finding a pizzeria that was open till "late" and gorging myself on their breadsticks.

I remember this first day very clearly. I remember also my second day, hanging out with Jacqui, an extraordinarily sweet person upon whom I'd developed a huge crush at orientation. Jacqui the ever-extroverted introducing me to others, one of whom made me my very first offer of sex (which I turned down). Who went on to say that she couldn't believe it was the first offer for sex I'd received, Which really changed the way I looked at the world, believe you me.

I remember that I was outgoing in my classes in college, that I participated in many student activities (Rocky Horror, Tae Kwon Do, and for a time SYNTCO), but I don't remember the details. Everything leading up to meeting the people I would become friends with, but not the meetings themselves. What led me to introduce myself to them? How did I shed the fear that now holds me back?

Eventually I would become a little less outgoing than I had been, but by then extroversion was unnecessary. A blue mohawk made it hard to be afraid of anything. I mean, what could people really expect from someone who was informally called Mohawk-John? Actually, I think I managed to pleasantly surprise a lot of people; perhaps they were expecting Sid Vicious. I was also teaching Tae Kwon Do by then, and participating in all of the Club's activities. In other words, people knew who I was without much effort on my part, and I got to know them as my students.

Things changed when I came to Texas.

I swore to myself that I wouldn't let the shooting affect my relationships. I also swore that I wouldn't let any of the people who died be forgotten. I made a lot of promises, and kept very few; but it was not for lack of trying.

I thought I'd be afraid to lose people. In part, I am, but that's not what stops me.

At first, I was stopped by a fear of having to explain my past. What if people asked me what happened? Did they really want to know, or were they just hoping I'd say I hadn't been there?

Eventually I figured out what I could say to those questions. But the fear remained. Why? What is the source?

Is it fear that I will forget people? Fear of their disapproval when I introduce myself a second or even fifth time? (It does happen.)

Is it that my life lacks extremely extroverted people, who in the past have set an example for me to follow?

Is it that I participate in fewer activities because I'm so busy studying?

Or is it that people at UT are simply less receptive to being friends, since they're all mostly from around here (quite different from VT, mind you, where most people were from either Northern Virginia or out of state)?

Perhaps the problem is that I form friendships best with girls, but it means something different to suggest hanging out than it did when I was in college. People are (more) serious about relationships now. There's no way to ask someone to hang out without making it almost offensively clear that it's not a date.

I think it's many of these things. But I miss how I used to be, and I desperately want to get back there.

Can a person stop being an extrovert and become an introvert? I would go nuts without my independence, but was I always like this, or is it new? I suppose the long walks across campus at Tech gave me enough alone-time that I didn't need it elsewhen. Or perhaps this is old scar tissue from rejections long past, back when I was still the new kid, finally manifesting itself as I am again the new kid?

I want my fucking personality back.

I tried briefly doing the mohawk thing again, but I felt too self-conscious. When I was Mohawk-John, the hair was a way of avoiding self-consciousness. How did things change so drastically?

I want to have a community again. A place where I can walk down the street and see someone I know every two minutes and we smile and wave. A place where I always run into someone I know at my favorite coffee shop, even if I never introduce myself to anyone there.

This is not too much to ask. I know this, because I have had these things before.

I'm prepared to do almost anything.

* Though now, oddly (or maybe tellingly), I'm the atheist, and she goes to church.

** To be fair, I think they wouldn't have actually hit me. Still, I was surprised they hadn't grown up even a little bit.

*** This is a British word meaning "liked" or "were attracted to."