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By Root 426 0

the floor. There on the floor is my bag, and as I look at it, I’m so aware of what’s inside it: the postcard from The New School. I reach in, fish around, and pull it out. I flip the card over in my hand. I read the crisp, white lettering: It’s not too late to sign up for spring classes! And then, suddenly, everything flips. I’d been so sure that the problem of the speech was the one problem I surely couldn’t do anything to solve. That, I realize, just might not be entirely true. It occurs to me right now that maybe my biggest problem, bigger than Evan or Elliot, or even the speech, is that I refuse to face my fears, and that I never want to confront my issues. With the way the world has been lately caving in on me, it’s become really clear that something’s got to give. It occurs to me that now, right now, is as good a time as any to start facing my fears.

I all but lunge for my mouse. I click open the IM again.

hopemcneill: Evan?

EVAN2020:y?

hopemcneill: I’m not mad, but I’m really sorry but I don’t

think I can make it to dinner tonight.

EVAN2020: why?

hopemcneill: I have to go downtown

I sign off before there can be more, before there can be anything else.

chapter seven

Overcoming Presentation Anxiety

For the rest of the afternoon, I manage to only think, “Elliot Death, light of my light, heart of my heart,” once. And yes, I know that such a phrase isn’t quite as poetic as it could be, but if you think about it, these days, so few things are.

And then, as an added bonus, when I leave the museum, it isn’t even so cold out at all. I walk down Fifth, all the way to Central Park South. I stop and look at The Plaza, wishing briefly, as I always do, that instead of me, I were Eloise. I persevere in my mission, get on the R train and take it down to Union Square. After a dread-filled but brief subway ride, I’m walking down Twelfth Street, and then I’m standing right outside The New School.

I take a deep breath, and walk in. And there it is, a wall display, just teeming with Spring Bulletins. Slowly, I approach; even more slowly, I reach out and take one. Back out on the street again, Spring Bulletin in hand, I open it up and start flipping through the pages of course offerings, hoping and not hoping all at the same time, that there might be the right class.

There is a class called Overcoming Presentation Anxiety. I like that name: so Zoloft-like in spirit, it makes so much more sense to me than something generic and simple, like Public Speaking I. There is still part of me that hopes there won’t be a class that fits into my schedule. Because wouldn’t it be nice to attempt to face your fears but be momentarily off the hook because scheduling-wise, it just wasn’t going to work out? But alas, Overcoming Presentation Anxiety meets every Thursday night for six weeks, and it starts next week.

It all seems so perfect, so terrifyingly perfect; the last class is in the last week of April, just a week before my parents’ party. If I sign up for this class, I will be training in the complexities of public speaking, dealing with my fear of it, right up to the point where I will actually have to face it. I fold down the page the class is on, along with the page that explains how to register for the class via phone, fax, or Internet. It occurs to me that so much of this—the timing of the class, the duration of the class, the very Zoloft-esque name of the class—it all really seems like it might be meant to be. There is part of me, though, that wishes it wasn’t.

I head to the bus stop to catch the uptown bus. Though the bus is perhaps not the most efficient means of getting oneself from the Village to the Upper West Side, I prefer it. And even though in the interest of time, I take trains up and downtown much more often than I take the bus, I’m actually a little bit afraid of trains. An express bus pulls up, oxymoron that it is, and I get on; luckily, as I’ve got a ways to go, I find a seat. I wonder, as the bus heads sluggishly uptown, about all the things that are meant to be, and how it seems with me