Five or Six

Ideally, I only talk to about five or six people - it's always been that way.
On days the club's aren't open I take my SIM card out of my phone and put it into a burner-phone with only a few numbers saved.
I turn my ringer off and only check to see whether someone has called or texted every few hours.
If someone's number is not saved to this phone I'm probably too busy to deal with them at that time and if it's important enough they can call someone who can call me or they can wait.

I know thousands of people.
I'm friendly with hundreds of people.
I'm friends with several people but I'm only close to a few.
My inner-circle has an inner-circle and most people know where they stand.

My business facebook account has over a thousand people waiting to be accepted as 'friends'.
My personal facebook account has just over fifty people who have been accepted as friends.

Back in the day one of my best friends used so say, 'Man, I don't even know why we like your bitch ass.'.
People think I'm nice.
I'm not nice.
I do nice things, I'm polite and I think people confuse that with actually being a nice person. (Most of the time I only do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.)
But in a club full of people most of the time I feel as though I'm in a room by myself.

I think that's why my clubs work.
For some reason people like being around me.
I'm sure not everyone but enough people where other clubs offer to pay me to come to their clubs.

In politics I had to explain to a judge that I'm not really popular.
He said that he couldn't get away with some of the things I get away with.
'Well, you're not me. To be honest, I'm not 'me'.', I replied.
'You talk to me because you saw me out with so-and-so. People watched you get up from your table to come speak to me so they will want to talk to me. People see people coming up to talk to me so they then assume that my level of importance or influence is more than it actually is. I'm only friends with a handful of people in this room.' I concluded.

The guy handed me his card and invited me to lunch to discuss a paid position on some board or committee.