How to Be a Good Conversationalist
Steamworks Brewing Co., Durango, Colorado, USA. Visited on June 20, 2022.
I think it’s funny that everyone has a regular glass, but I am served the giant mug. I didn’t ask for a big glass. I didn’t ask for any size, but they gave me the big one. Even T has a little one. After one-and-a-half beers, I’m buzzed. I’m also exhausted from driving. It’s a pretty god-damn great feeling, to be honest. A delicious feeling. To be this tired, to drink a beer, to be in a strange place that feels far away from home: I feel very relaxed.
I ask the guy next to me what he’s drinking. He’s young. He’s glued to his phone. He tells me, then goes back to the phone. He doesn’t want to talk. No problem. I don’t push. I don’t annoy or pester people. I’ve been in this situation a million times, on both sides. Sometimes people want to chat. Sometimes they don’t.
The important thing is, be respectful, not creepy, not overly eager, and not a pest. You have to be comfortable with yourself to be a good conversationalist. You have to come to conversation with a generous spirit. You have to recognize and care about other people’s boundaries, their feelings, their personal space, what they want and don’t want. You have to recognize and care about your own.
But here’s where I differ from some people. I don’t generally assume that someone is not open to a conversation. Some people go out but they want to be left alone. Others go out and they want to talk, but they don’t know how to signal they want to talk or how to start a conversation. So, I’ll ask. I’ll get a yes or no.
If you try to start a conversation with a stranger because you want attention, or because you want to pester them into giving you a number, or because you’re hoping to get laid, or because it’s a game, or whatever — then don’t be surprised if you get dragged on social media.
All of those motivations drove me to start conversations when I was younger, by the way. But they were superceded more often than not by deeper motivation, a concern that people are lonely (an assumption that might actually be more problematic than the desire to seduce someone.)
One of my goals and hopes in life is to be an ear for people who need someone to listen or who just want to have a good conversation, without any stakes or expectations. I want to give people the opportunity to be themselves, knowing that I’m a stranger they will never see again. When I was younger, that is what I loved about traveling and meeting strangers. Now that I’m older, I want to be the stranger.
Anyway, nobody at the bar seems interested in talking to a couple of strangers which is just fine. So T and I eat and talk to each other. The bartender gives me big glass, and T doesn’t particularly like her beer, so I drink that too.
It’s too much. Now I’m too tired. I don’t feel like walking back to the hotel, but it’s really not that far, so we get up and go. We’re a block away when I realize I left my hat on the hook beneath the bar. My favorite hat.
I trudge back and ask the people sitting on the stools we vacated to let me get my hand between them to reach my hat. Because the hook is between their legs, and because the way they’re sitting close together with the stools right against the bar, it’s a little awkward when they consent, and I reach for the hat. My hand is really in between their legs, but — and I want to make this clear — they did nothing to get it themselves. They were in engrossed in conversation with each other and their friends such that I was basically invisible. They kind of twisted their torsos but not their hips, so when I reached down to get the hat, my hand was inches from their crotch. And when I say inches, plural, I mean more than one inch but less than three.
After some deft maneuvering, I manage with one hand to lift the hat from the hook and crumple it into a small ball and carefully, surgically lift it over their leg and out from under the bar. Nobody pays me any mind.
T and I recommence our walk to the hotel. On the way, we see one of those paintings of a person with a hole cut where the face goes. The painting is of a cowboy. We set up and a passerby offers to take our photo. That was probably my favorite thing about Durango. The two of us making goofy faces in the cut-out.
When we get back to the hotel, I think once more and for the last time about the guy and his German Shepherd running up and down the parking lot. T and I get a nightcap at the hotel bar. We wanted to sit outside by the river, but a private party had reserved the whole patio for a networking event. It was a lot earlier in the evening than it felt. Maybe we’d have tried to crash it had we been less tired.
I drink another beer, and we talk about how excited we are to be living in Las Vegas for a month. We talk about how once upon a time we fantasized about how nice it would be to go live somewhere different for a month and work remotely, just to try it out. We talk a lot about ideas, wishes, dreams. None of them are that grandiose, to be honest. Usually, we say things like, “Someday, let’s have a dog.” and “Someday, let’s have a garden.” But some dreams are more ambitious, like “Let’s learn Basque so we can speak to each other privately in public with very little chance anyone will know what we’re saying” or “Let’s live in another country for a year.”
Somewhere in between are dreams like “Let’s live somewhere for a month and work remotely.” The thing is, sometimes a dream becomes reality. Tonight, our conversation is less about what we wish and more about the strangeness of a realizing a dream.
It’s finally getting dark, and that’s when we feel we’re ready to sleep. I order a beer to go, and we head to our room. Tomorrow is another long drive. Our destination — the Grand Canyon. I finish the beer while we get ready for bed.
When I wake the next morning, the first thing I notice is the empty beer can, next to my favorite hat. Had I left that hat in Durango, I’d have been frustrated. But then I would have gotten over it. I would have bought a replacement if it was available. If not, my second favorite hat would become my favorite. No big deal. Things in life come and go.