You may not know this, but I happen to be the founder of a very elite professional guild: The South Bay Freelancers. We meet every Wednesday at the local Coffee Bean and forge the kind of essential professional alliances that will dominate the beach and beach adjacent cities of Southern LA County for decades to come. As you might imagine, membership is extremely selective. Potential candidates have to pass a series of rigorous tests, all of which revolve around showing up at the same Coffee Bean every Wednesday. So far, only one other freelancer has the wild thirst for glory one requires to be victorious in the Attendance Challenge (TM): Sean McCabe – Systems admin and photographer, Redondo Beach.
Basically, what I’m saying is I tried to start a freelancer club, and only one guy showed up. But, we have a ton of fun, so we meet every week. Usually, we hang out for a few hours and then I go eat lunch with Ben, who only works a couple of miles away. This week, I introduced the idea of Sean maybe having lunch with us.
Fun fact about Ben: It took six years of me eating cooked broccoli and him eating raw broccoli before he thought he might like to try his broccoli cooked. I’m not even talking about separate meals. The same meal, we would sit together and eat broccoli and he never once in six years thought he might be even remotely interested in trying things my way.
My boyfriend is not what I would call a man of action. Which, given my history, is like a balm on an otherwise tumultuous social landscape. However, this peaceful lifestyle sometimes means that potential lunch guests get asked for their full name and website URL before he considers their company.
Meanwhile, in the Coffee Bean, the conversation went like this:
Me – I’m going to grab some Indian food with Ben
Sean – Sweet. Maybe I could go with… You talk about him so much, but I never met him.
Me – I’ll IM him, see if he’s cool with it.
[Incredibly long silence filled with my typing]
Sean – I don’t have to go…
Me – What’s your full name?
Sean – Yeah, I’m not going.