Bad impressions.

You know, I'm not the nicest person. But I'm not bad.

I'm not the sanest person. But I'm not crazy.

I am not a bar troll. Am I?

I go to the same bar every three weeks or so. I talk to people who, only on occasion, wish to speak to me. Michael the bartender, who I went to college with and generally makes me feel at ease, greets me with a hug.

Jonathan the bartender, who's known me four years, greets me with an "Oh, it's you ..." look most of the time, which is kinda painful, but other times he is genuinely nice, and we have conversations. I say hello when I'm there. I ask him how he's doing.

You ever feel like you're expressly not wanted?

If you walk up to a conversation at work or something, and it just stops.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the rude one.

Tonight, Bob, one of the fortysomething people I'd consider a bar troll, was manhandling this kid, whom I didn't know, and I tried to step in between them. When I explained to the kid that I was trying to help him out of what I would've found an uncomfortable situation, he politely let me know that my assistance was unnecessary and that my labelling of Bob as "Jabba the Hutt" was completely rude.

I don't know Bob outside of the bar. I know how he acts. I know his way. I don't like him. At all. I made a judgment about him that he preys creepily upon younger people, and he's done nothing in the months that I've seen him to prove me wrong.

Watching him do the same thing over and over, with varying degrees of success, upon far younger men and having them treat him as some kind of drunken, amusing fool makes me sorta mad.

He's not amusing. He's toxic, the kind of guy who grabs your ass in a bar even when you don't want him to. At all.

I hate guys who grab me, as one did tonight. It makes me angry. It's not amusing. It's not wanted.

But my judgment isn't cared for by anyone other than me nor is it wanted, so I should just keep my damn mouth shut.

The guy I warned about Bob seemed way more disturbed by my interference than by what he thought of Bob's playful, drunken groping.

He found Bob benign and amusing. And he thought I was a complete rude, judgmental dick possibly trying to hit on him too by protecting him from someone else.

I wasn't trying to hit on him. I was trying to help.

I'm not getting points for meaning well. And I don't know if I should, but I want the points. I want my actions and motivations to be understood.

I sat on a bench alone for 10 minutes after that.

Then, I retreated upstairs to talk to Michael the rest of the night. Michael makes me feel comfortable.

When I left, I happened to walk past Jonathan and the guy I warned again. The guy smirked and grimaced in an "Oh, it's him again" kind of way.

From the center of their group, Jonathan waved goodbye and then reluctantly hugged me, even though he knows I'm not a freak. He knows what I'm about. He knows I don't deserve those labels, yet sometimes he's the one who gives me them. I don't know what to think.

I'm not a freak. I'm intelligent and observant, and I mean well.

I was trying to stop someone from getting manhandled by a stranger. A stranger I've seen do it countless times before.

I know. It shouldn't matter what the fuck anyone else thinks. But, Jesus, why does it?

Because I come off as rude, scorned, jaded, bitter, weird and confusing.

And those are hard first impressions to overcome. It's that way at work. It's that way when I'm out.

At my store, I've started to long for a moment when someone who knows me, a friend who really, really knows me, to come in and just say hello.

But I think that, instead of that, I'm going to have to completely make over how I deal with people. Again.

I want this blog to be happy. I want it to deal with, you know, going out on dates and making gay jokes and planning post-coitus lazy Sundays with someone I've been seeing for a couple weeks.

But that's not my experience. That's someone else's.

That experience is so divorced from my own experience, full of awkward conversations and social misunderstandings and true moments when I'm just a fucking rude bastard, that I don't know how much I'm willing to just accept that this is the way things are going to be.

Fuck it.

I need to take my meds, but my prescription has run out. The pharmacy needs to call my doctor. That has to do with why I'm being so touchy and hypersensitive to the point of paranoia.

Take five minutes. Get a hug. Someone who tells you that it's going to be OK. Really.

I was dressed up at the store Saturday night. Four people complimented my awesome new shirt. I was on top of my game most of the day, and it felt good.

This is probably just a mood swing.

No, wait, I saw how those people at the bar look at me like I was some kind of leper.

My attempts to speak were awkward, grasping idiocy. I said hello to someone I'd met before, and he moved chairs to get away from me.

It's really hard to just sit there and see that and not react to it.

It's really hard to see those looks and ignore them.

But a lot of it was my fault.

I'm coming off as some kind of creepy troll. I'm repelling people.

Jonathan looks at me sometimes like I'm a troll. I can't deal with that.

But he'd tell me I was just being paranoid.

No, he'd tell me that my attempts at flirtation, which I deny I'm doing, are transparent and sad.

I'm not flirting. I'm trying to find a conversation.

What the fuck am I doing in that bar? Any bar?

Things will happen when they happen.

Perhaps it's key to say that tonight, at one point, Michael and I were able to communicate through facial expressions. I just stood there, made a face at him, and he'd make a face back. I started laughing after a bit.

Downstairs, moments before, my confused expressions were making people think that I was crazy and pissed off.

I just couldn't completely - only partly - figure out what I was doing wrong.

This so shouldn't matter. (And, in the morning, this post will probably seem incoherent.)

It shouldn't matter. But it does.