Friends and Acquaintances

I've said it before and it bears repeating because I feel so naive.  I always considered myself a good judge of character and I consciously repress those feelings because I don't want to be prejudiced.  I want to be fair to everyone so I give people a chance.  Stupid me.

I went to a co-worker's house, he made this cranberry-grape and Skyy drink.  You couldn't taste the alcohol at all...wow was that a bad idea (because it was DELICIOUS!).  So here we are playing poker, there are about 6 of us.  We all go out for a cigarette (I don't smoke but I wanted to be social so I went out there to accompany them) and at some point the host's brother whips out two half-smoked joints.  I haven't smoked in about 3 years so I figured there was no harm in it.  My boss did as well and a friend of ours just stared at us and told us how disappointed he was.  He proceeded to really lay into my boss for it because she has kids and what not.

Before I continue this story, let me say that I don't condone drug abuse.  I normally don't smoke but I have no problem with recreational use every once in a while.  It'll probably be another 3 years if I ever smoke again and it's not for lack of availability, I've turned it down plenty of times in the past 3 years.  That being said, I'm not going to give anybody shit for doing the same.  If you smoke every week though, then there's a bit of a problem and I'll try to convince you to stop, but I most certainly won't go on and insult you and so forth.  Let's continue where we left off...

I went inside, it was cold out.  We basically took 2 puffs each and it was gone.  Apparently they stayed outside smoking their cigarettes and he really let her have it.  He then goes on to say some really fucked up stuff about her marriage and how her husband thinks she's having an affair with him but he should really be worrying about me...all within earshot of our host, which I said earlier, we work with.  Wonderful.  Apparently he also continued to say shit at the table while we were playing poker.  I honestly don't remember half of this because I was just beginning to sober up from the vodka but I'm told things were said and friendships are on the rocks now.  He said something to the effect of "You need to slap your wife around" and my boss' husband responded with a firm "keep your mouth shut".  Needless to say, he won't be invited to further get-togethers.

This is some good shit.  When I met him he looked like a complete asshole.  I didn't talk to him at work for months before I had to work with him on the same team.  At that point, we became friends and he was recently laid off.  He was always a bit of a dick to people but it was mostly funny and somewhat harmless.  Now I'm realizing my initial observation was correct and I completely ignored it.

I'm not the kind of person that's emotionally open.  For me to open up to somebody takes time, lots of it.  Even then, even though I may have opened up to them I'm still very guarded and nobody really knows anything about my life and the goings-on in my head/heart.  I keep few friends for this reason and to lose one this way means I have even fewer now.  Amazing.  I used to consider my lack of friends a virtue because I go for quality, not quantity but now I'm starting to feel alone but still unwilling to waiver in the quality of friends I look for.  Do I consider more people friends and simply take what they say and do with a grain of salt and chalk it up to their personality or do I have fewer friends?  I guess this is where somebody says "Welcome to the real world".  I'm not ready.