Socially awkward, asexual; the substance/social rituals

texture · STANDING

• When: STANDING
• What: Troeltsch sits inside the substance-using social circle — he knows Hal gets high, drinks with Hal at Commonwealth Avenue clubs, and joins the private Interdependence-Day-Eve ritual supper (the Unexamined Life blowout) and the pre-supper shared duBois — but is kept out of the inner DMZ-sampling circle ("no real reason to involve... Troeltsch"). Sexually he is marked as a flat non-entity: "Jim Troeltsch and sex: no way," never close to dating anybody, one of the academy contingent for whom sexual tension reads as oxygen deprivation. He addresses groups by darting his eyes from listener to listener.