Returns on Humor

Generally, humor serves me fairly well.  I think it eases social situations, can be a stress-reducer in romantic situations, and even finds a place in my internal narrative about the world.  There's no way to take everything seriously, all the time, right?

Wrong.

I was at dinner the other night in a needlessly expensive restaurant--needless, because I wasn't there on my own volition, but for a friend who is leaving town, and so, would have otherwise eaten at home (no, not needless in the sense that it served the purpose, but needless in that I wouldn't have picked it for the same purpose), and, of course I sat right down next to an acquantence of mine, though not one that I've had any real personal correspondence with.

About half way through dinner, I realized that he never laughed.  Not once.  There are a few possibilities.

1) He feels like shit.  This is definitely possible, but this is a repeat performance.

2) Nothing was funny.  Okay, fair.  Except there has got to be a few funny moments in an entire dinner, right?  Even if we conceive of "funny" as very different."

3) He's holding back and alway does hold back.  I don't know why he would, but perhaps that's just who he is.  If that's who he is, I still feel a tremendous pressure to make him laugh, just in response to something, anything, just to break the tension.

4) He's secure in himself and need not laugh if he doesn't think things are funny, and so, he didn't laugh, becuase there was nothing funny [to him].

5) He only laughs in private.  Because he doesn't like the way he laughs.

6) I laugh for the wrong reasons, and he's uncomfortable with me.

7) I laugh for the sake of it, out of insecurity.  He laughts authentically.

8) I'm an idiot, laughing all night.  He's sane and rational, and more synchronized with that which is truly funny--whatever it is--and my laughter obfuscates the truly funny from the merely funny, which isn't funny. i.e. he can't laugh because I do laugh.

9) He feels no need to make other people comfortable, even when they're uncomfortable (and I most definitely do).

10) Nothing is funny, or nothing was funny, at the restaurant in the east village.

11) He was pissed off at the prices, but socially obligated to go, and couldn't say no, and wasn't willing to put up a facade about his feelings, and also wasn't willing to abstain from going.

12) He just had a fight with his girlfriend.