Dating Follies: After Midnight… Yes, We Let it All Hang Out?
By Fay A.
I have always been one to pay a good deal of attention to people around me and how they behave in different environments. There seems to be something that happens to just about everyone after Mother Nature’s lights go out. Sometimes when I sit outside, I think about people I know in other places who either just saw, or will soon be seeing, the same stars that I’m enjoying. Sometimes it causes me to be contemplative, or emotional, and sometimes… they make me go a bit out of character.
Twilight seems to give people the courage and patience to enjoy to the fullest every single morsel of fresh air that they are gifted. Being wrapped in moonlight, warm gentle breezes, and shadow, not only makes our pupils dilate, it make our personalities broaden. All things, though more hidden, are much clearer in the elusive dark corners of twilight. The truth seems to come out there. I believe we all feel safer, more mysterious, and more receptive to exposing parts of ourselves that don’t normally see the bright light of day.
Darkness inevitably invokes something in people that gives them the liberty to release the floodgates, if you will; all of their inhibitions seem to wash away. Their freak flags fly at full mast, and at the end of the day, if they are one of our fellow Folly folk, we all understand, forgive, and forget; because every one of us has been there before. Almost anyone I know that considers themselves a regular to the scene knows that sometimes we fall down, sometimes we fall on the way up, we fall for each other, we fight, we make fools of ourselves, we clearly fumble in the midst of both good decisions and bad ones.
Tucked up in the middle of all of that aforementioned craziness, and my coincidental alliterative “f” kick, is one lovely notion, however. It’s often after the sun has set that we find ourselves meeting those people that we are the most compatible with. It’s when so many people find themselves falling for each other.
I wonder if that’s why the golden rule of not dating people you work with exists? Maybe meeting people at the end of your day; when the stress is on hiatus until the alarm rings again, after a martini, after a deep breath and the chance to sink back into yourself once more… maybe, this is the best time to meet someone that you can actually spend comfortable quality time with.
Let’s be honest, I am quite possibly biased about this whole darkness thing, as I am myself nocturnal. I worked this evening on our beloved Center St. got home at 3:48 a.m., showered, started writing, and now the clock reads 5:37. Yet, I will say, as an avid observer of the night time crowd, some of the best pairings I have ever seen — be them beautiful friendships or more — have occurred between people who were in a state of truthful relaxation. No one was pretending, there were no ulterior motives; just people being people… letting it all hang out.
Those are, to this day, the relationships that have lasted. And those are still the reason that Folly is Folly. Everyone who comes here falls in love, not only with the beauty of our secret little island, but with us, because we are a cumulative ‘Us.’ We are a Folly family that everyone wants to be a part of, but only the chosen few actually get to experience.
As another summer comes to a close, we will find our streets clearing out as all of the tourists return to wherever they came from, and it will just be us again. Let’s be sure to savor it.
I suppose this is my love letter to you, my Folly friends and family, for all of our mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings, mistakes, and misbehaving… we still have each other; one big conglomerate of miscreants. And I love you all. 5:56a.m… Fay A. signing off.
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