I'm Not a Friendly Person. That's My Secret Weapon.

New York Times

3 hours ago

Washington, D.C., where I'm from, is not a friendly town. President John F. Kennedy famously described it as 'a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.' The implication is that the nation's capital partakes in swampy indolence without offering any of the South's signature hospitality. Insulting stuff, but as someone who is herself indolent and inhospitable (and, on 90-degree days, pretty swampy), I can't argue with the substance of it. It's not hard to see why Washingtonians might act this way, seeing as they're swarmed by professional transients every legislative session.
Even as a very young child, I evinced the archetypal D.C. desire to be left the hell alone, to my parents' dismay. I was jarringly reserved, quiet and observant in the way of children in horror movies, who always turn out to be possessed by demons. Though I avoided hugs and small talk, I didn't intend to be unfriendly, exactly. I liked being among people, but did we have to natter away about nonsense to justify spending time together? I could never explain this properly to my parents, much less to the endless parade of adults tormenting my shyness with questions whose answers I knew didn't really interest them.
My mother and father kept trying to socialize me as they would a skittish Chihuahua — I vividly recall one episode when my father paid me to ask out a boy I liked. My father's desperation felt like a rejection of my personality, even before the boy in question also rejected me. This Freudian double whammy made me realize that I needed an attitude adjustment — a rude-ectomy.
I remained convinced that my aloofness was the problem until I got my first job at 16. During my interview, I'd lied strenuously to the coffee shop's manager about my upbeat attitude and perma-smile. I still thought I could fake my way into a better personality. I cared so much about being liked that I was in danger of bursting a blood vessel.
Then I realized I wasn't alone. Most of my co-workers were townies, as I was. And as they taught me how to serve the seasonal suits who made up our customer base, I realized they were as unfriendly as I was, too. They didn't waste their energy performing false affinity. They knew how easily unfriendliness can be mistaken for malice, and they didn't care. It electrified me, that they didn't care. The quality I'd grown up resenting was starting to serve me.
I spent my adolescence tasting every flavor of Washingtonian unfriendliness. There was the reserve of my co-worker Kathryn, a girl about my age whose soft voice always reminded me of melting vanilla ice cream. Hers was an unfriendliness that didn't reject customers but rather intrigued them. Less popular was Jeremy, who in his jittery volatility was like a shot of espresso. His favorite gag was to pretend he couldn't see customers who tried to order from him while carrying on a phone conversation. Lord, it has been almost 15 years since that job, and I still swoon when thinking about it.
I began to see our different kinds of mild hostility as not only collective but also as a public service, the way local residents try to defend any place with a large transplant population. Our unfriendliness fended off glad-handing Capitol Hill workers, just as it fends off tech bros in San Francisco or snow bunnies in ski towns. If these people had moved here to inflict their focus-grouped friendliness on our home, we would distinguish ourselves by rejecting it.
Still, as with many Washingtonians with no connection to politics, my de facto role as an extra in my own hometown grated on me, and I moved to New York after college. (Another city whose residents are unfairly stereotyped as rude? Sign me up!) The pace of the city agreed with me, as did the pleasant way its residents minded their own business. As an expat from another city beset by clueless transplants, I did everything I could to ease the burden of my presence in New York, which mostly amounted to observing military-grade etiquette in public spaces. I thought of myself as the tech in the middle-school play that was Manhattan: What I lacked in star quality, I made up for with a certain brisk diligence. 'She's our most polite, efficient customer,' service workers might say. 'How does she do it?'
But this behavior didn't quite work as it did in D.C. I reacquainted myself with the downside of my inability to be peppy, which is that almost nobody bothers to break through a hard exterior to someone's melting caramel center. I had come to see my unfriendliness as part of a group antipathy between local residents and professionals who treat D.C. like a Godforsaken company town, but here I had to deal with its consequences on my own. I actually wanted to put down roots in New York, but I could neither schmooze my way into it nor magically turn into someone who grew up in the city. Back home, I could at least be unfriendly without being lonely.
But of course, in a city of more than eight million people, a few dozen were bound to like me despite my aloofness, if not because of it. I couldn't be ashamed of the way I've always been. I just needed to give them a chance to fall in love with me, which takes time and effort. Trying to affect a perkiness that didn't belong to me would have led to false starts and shallow friendships — I've always known that. Maybe this time it will sink in.
Rax King is the author of 'Tacky' (Vintage, 2021) and 'Sloppy' (Vintage, 2025).