Don’t Take It So Personally

Yesterday I was hanging around outside with the guys at work during a slow part of the night (most of the night was slow, but that’s another story), and one of my bosses turned to me and asked me for the second week in a row how my weekend went.  For the second week in a row my face and mind went blank, I paused, and then told him, "I dunno, I can’t remember.  Hold on, gimmie a minute…"  I proceeded to consider my weekend, told him a few vague things about doing a lot of yoga, hanging out with friends, and spending time alone at home – all of which was accurate, but none of which actually really told him anything about my life.

It’s at the point where I can tell my coworkers are a bit confused and maybe slightly frustrated with me – why don’t I share anything about my life, why don’t I talk about what I do when I’m not at work, why do I mostly either stay quiet or ask questions to make conversation?  I’ll get them chatting about their own lives or get a conversation going about work, but won’t actually really tell them anything about myself – in fact, in over two weeks of working with them I haven’t even alluded to being either gay or straight yet.

At first I thought this might be because I’m working with men – a group of manly straight men, in a kitchen – and that I need to adjust to interacting and working with straight men in a non-sexual context.  But as I turned this thought over in my mind through the night it occurred to me that that’s not true because I’ve actually been like this since well before I ever became involved in the sex industry and before I even lost my virginity to a man.

In my first job out of high school I remember my (mostly male) coworkers becoming frustrated with me after months of working by my side and still not getting me talking about myself in a personal way.  At one of my next jobs, in an office, I was an enigma to my (all female) coworkers – I would leave the office at lunch or sit at my desk and I didn’t smoke, which immediately isolated me from the rest of the team.  It took almost a year for them to find out I was gay and when they did it apparently became a gossip topic for the department (hey, I’m not stupid – I may not socialize, but I know how the grapevine works and to keep my ear to it).  People there would ask me how my weekend went and I’d tell them I did my laundry, hung out with friends, and cooked up [insert dish here] for dinner one night – all of which was true, but carefully left out the fact that I was drinking and doing blow all weekend every weekend, and during the last month I was in the office omitted the fact that I was a stripper on the weekends.

Now, aside from the fact that I’ve had experiences with drug use and addiction, kinky and polyamorous sexual involvements, and illegal activity – ASIDE from all that – is it really anyone’s business what I do with my time?  I understand wanting to get to know me, but why can’t people just accep the information I give them and work with that?  It’s not that I’m trying to hide anything about my lifestyle – even if my coworkers were kinky, polyamorous queers, I still wouldn’t tell them details about my life – and I know this because it’s happened before!

Whatever happened to getting to know someone and get comfortable with them, close to them, before sharing personal information?
(* note: I will admit I am a bit of a hypocrite on this point – I won’t share information about myself, but if people are willing to talk I’ll dig as deep and as personal as they’ll let me, mostly for entertainment/interest)

I don’t need to vent about my life or share details about what I think of it.  I have close friends, a diary, and a (mostly anonymous) OpenDiary for that – I don’t need the world knowing all about it.  Am I being unreasonable?  Is it wrong to think that some things should be kept to one’s self?