--{ the social life of lawyers }------
Let me sidestep talking about the law or even my particular practice and talk about being a lawyer a little bit. Or, rather, lawyers' and other dcdenizen parties.
(As an aside: Do you do that in your head when you go to parties? Try to figure out if there's a "set" that's there, if such a "set" can be characterized? I do, and it was a very government/lawyerey weekend.)
Friday night seemed to be a Kennedy-School-State-Department set. Saturday morning wasn't particularly characterizable because it was just five of us having brunch. Saturday afternoon was a pleasantly mixed set, because it was a random mix of friends of my friend the realtor---meaning high school friends of his, former/current clients of his, and other random social friends of his. It was very grown up, though, with both opposite-sex and same-sex partnered couples and their two-to-five year olds.
Saturday early evening was a half (neutral) government lawyer set/half firm lawyer party. It bordered on the conservative side of the parties I attend (conservative meaning conservative legally and politically), and it was young adulty, but not crazy young adulty. Saturday mid-evening was very professional liberal lawyerey. Saturday later-evening was liberal pseudhipster liberal lawyerey. Saturday end-evening (which was the one I wish we'd stayed at longest, but alas, no) was slacker rockey, and not very lawyer at all.
I don't know what I mean to say by this entry. I'm certainly not saying the individual parties weren't fun, because they all were in their own way. I think I'm just saying that I'm sick of these easy subcharacterizations for parties: oh, here's the hipster lawyer group, oh, here's the schmoozy group. I'm sick even of running into the same people at parties. I'm not sure if my annoyance can be cured by going to nonlawyer parties because then it would divide into other subgroups I've seen and experienced---queer asians, rockabilly addicts, bloggers. I'm sick of the display of parties, the I-belong-here-and-this-is-why that happens at these things.
Here's what I want. I want a party where my identity (as a lawyer or otherwise), and others' identities, don't matter. I want a party where we can talk about external matters---contemporary Japanese authors, the top cities for thrifting, Tomlab, Dalkey Archives, whatever---not because we're using these to code for Who We Are, but because we just want to talk about them to talk about them. Or whatever we want to talk about. I want to disappear as me, and just see . . . substance? Is that possible?
And maybe my discontent is just me, or just the way I end up at parties. I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot.
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