After a bit of deliberation and carrying on about how shy and nervous I usually am, I eventually convinced myself to go to COAP’s game night tonight. In retrospect, I’m glad I did. To be honest, I’m not sure when I’ve had that kind of fun.

I arrived at the coffee house a little before 6:30pm. As I was early, I decided to take the time to pull out the laptop an work on my writing. As I was finishing up the next chapter in A Journey to Queerdom, people started showing up. So I finished editing the pages locally, then turned off the computer, ordered another iced tea and went over to introduce myself.

By the end of the night, there were a total of six of us. Originally, four of us played Gloom, which is probably one of the most morbid games I’ve ever played. (Is it bad that I enjoyed it?) I almost won, but Woody cleared all the modifiers off one of my family members just before Paul killed off his last family member. As a result, Paul won the game.

The next game we played — involving all six of us this time — was Phase 10. Now I think I vaguely recall playing this game once before, but it was a few years ago. Fortunately, it was similar enough to other games that I caught on rather quickly. In fact, for the first few hands, I managed to take the lead. Eventually, that changed and I was probably close to being low man on the totem pole (kinky!) by the time I had to leave. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stick around and finish the game, as I have to go to work early tomorrow and I’m working a ten hour or better shift. In fact, I shouldn’t be taking the time to write this, but I figure I need the chance to wind down, anyway.

Overall, game night was a great experience. It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down with a group of guys (and the first time when I wasn’t the only gay guy in the bunch) and just hung out. It was nice to chat, joke around with one another, and just have a leisurely visit. In a lot of ways, it reminded me a lot of the nights my family will get together to play cards. I’m alread looking forward to the next game night at the end of this month.