This is spoiling my pseudonymity in a way that I haven't before (linking
directly to my real name in a way that's not plausibly deniable, like the _An
Algorithmic Lucidity_ link I left in the "Joined" repost; or buried in the
source repo linked in the footer), but that's a joke, anyway (I've made links
in the other direction, from my real name to _Untrue Thought_, several times)—I
want to link up all the relevant context that I can.
The party was amazing, as always, but there's one exchange that haunts me to this day, a moment when I was caught off guard by having been _seen through_ in a way that, at the time, I couldn't permit myself to anticipate or understand. I wish I had an actual transcript of it, so I could pencil in "corrections" of how it _should_ have gone. (Narrative optimization should be a _deliberate_ process: you should keep separate track of what actually happened and what _should_ have happened, rather rather than letting them get blurred together in the murky, unauditable process of reconstructing the scene from an eight-and-change-year-old memory and a Diary entry from the Monday after.)
-A blonde woman wearing a red dress and black high heels stuck out among the predominantly male throng of geeks. I struck up a conversation with her. (It turned out that we had previously had a tense exchange on the blog in which I had protested that gender-stereotypical behavior shouldn't be conflated with the fact of one's sex, but I didn't know that was her at the time.)
+A blonde woman wearing a red dress and black high heels stuck out among the predominantly male throng of geeks. I struck up a conversation with her. (It turned out that we had previously had a tense exchange on the blog in which [I had protested that](http://lesswrong.com/lw/xe/changing_emotions/q6j) gender-stereotypical behavior shouldn't be conflated with the fact of one's sex, but I didn't know that was her at the time.)
At some point (to my eternal regret, I cannot recall the exact context), she casually said something about my desire for social dominance. She said it matter-of-factly, as if she were commenting on something as innocuous and indisputable as my height or hair color.