So, it's Homecoming Week. About which I care nothing. And every day has a theme. About which I care nothing. But today was Poser Day: Dress Up Like Someone You're Not. And really, I cared nothing. But I took the excuse to engage in 'unhealthy behavior,' as I considered it at the time. For me, 'unhealthy behavior' is not drugs, or sex, or staying up all night or standing unprotected in the rain to let my cottony clothes drench through and weaken my immune system or eating vast quantities of potato chips. These are things that do not even tempt me. For me, unhealthy behavior is indulging in thinking or reading about my secret obsessions and/or letting them be known to the general populace, or indeed to pretty much anyone but me and the vast anonymity of the Internet. So what so unhealthy did I do today? I wore glasses. Yup. I posed as Solace. And all I needed to do that was spectacles. Since in other respects I've pretty much been posing as him for a couple of months now.

It turned out not to be so unhealthy. Making a conscious effort to be like Solace, no matter how conspicuously (I'd been doing it with the goal of inconspicuity before), helped me even further in realising: Solace is just a guy. He's not some unreachable ideal - I'm already like him in almost all the ways I can be. Maybe I'm even already as great in general as he was. Maybe I'm even better. Except for that thing about getting all muddlebrained around certain girls. He must not have had that.

But speaking of girls.....! I have made a real, audible connection! Well, maybe I haven't made it, but it has been made. Actually, I'm not sure whether it's good or bad that I didn't make it. On the one hand, it proves that my cowardly method - setting up the situation such that the girl in question will actually do the initiating of audible interactions - actually can be effective. On the other hand, it leaves me just as clueless as before when it comes to striking up a conversation. What happened was this:

I couldn't find any of my usual people at lunch. Leigh appeared to be absent, Regi appeared to be playing sports. None of my clubs was meeting. Left to my own devices and, follower that I am, not really knowing what to do with them, I asked myself, 'Where would Solace go?' This was, after all, my day of being Solace, complete with glasses. And just maybe, some of Solace's old nerd friends who might still be around might recognise me as Solace and give me that confirmation that I felt rather lacking. So I headed in the direction of the nerd lair - that's where Solace would go, and today, I am Solace. The plan changed when Sunny turned out to be between me and the nerd lair. She smiled at me, and I took a seat alone at a picnic table in plain view, looking as though that had been my intention all along.

Much to my stomach-butterflies' excitement, this worked just as planned. Midway through my eating, Sunny approached and invited me to join her at her table. I accepted, nervously. A table with three girls, one of them the object of my interest. But I didn't make a fool of myself at all, nor did I sit in awkward silence while the three of them carried on their unfathomable female chatter. All four of us participated in the conversation. Nobody seemed to have previously been more than pleasantly acquainted with anybody else, so there was no awkward newcomer invading upon the intimate camaraderie of two or three close buddies. It was as painless as I could have imagined spending the lunch period with Sunny and two completely unknown girls could be - more painless, even, since I would have imagined it less.

As we were leaving for class at the end, I said something to the effect of 'Well, this was nice, thank you for...' and she said something to the effect of 'Yeah, we should do this again sometime.' We should do this again sometime. Yesss! Victory! Triumph! Successful interaction with Girl of Interest! Haha!

I don't actually believe it's the glasses. Correlation not being causation, and all. But there is a correlation. Solace is Solace, Solace interacts successfully with a girl I like. (Very successfully. Too successfully. So excessively successfully that I hate him for all time. Or close enough to all time. As I was saying...) I become Solace, minus the glasses, I am the same mumbling failure as ever around girls of interest. I become Solace, glasses included, I interact successfully with a girl I like. Ah well. Spectacles of Luck. I will superstitiously carry them around with me, though not wear them. Because I'm a dork that way.

But anyway, very successful incident. And I think we will do that again sometime. Eat lunch together and all. Maybe next time, I'll even initiate it. Maybe...