Pug Hill - Alison Pace [49]
And then, the second I think that what I want most in the world is to get as far away from this moment as I can, I am inexorably drawn, right into the center of it, by the hissing.
Beth Anne has unclenched her fists to the other extreme, fanning her hands out, stretching them out in front of her. Her eyes are unscrunched, they are the polar opposite of unscrunched, to say the least; they are open wide, bulging right out of her head. The other features of her face are just as assaulting; her mouth is as wide open as I’ve ever seen any mouth, her tongue is flattened out and protruding, wiggling around. Little bits of spittle are flying from her mouth, and with this, through all of this, is all the hissing. Hissing, I don’t even know if that’s the right word. It reminds me of a much exaggerated, grotesque version of the sound people sometimes like to make when they’ve just had a sip of soda, that sort of ach sound, but stretched out.
The rustling around from before is gone; everyone is now perfectly still, the silence that just moments before was so awkward, has now morphed into shock.
“That, class, is The Lion,” Beth Anne says, wiping a bit of spit from her chin. “Let’s try it all together.”
And as much as I want there to be, it still doesn’t seem like there is any escape. I look around at the rest of the class, and everyone is scrunching their face up. I picture them all at some point in the future: brilliant public speakers. I picture myself in the future: still seeing public speaking as a slow, painful, excruciating death. The reason for this future difference between my classmates and myself is that I wouldn’t do The Lion. I scrunch up my face and wait for the sound of everyone else hissing. And then, there it is.
I open my eyes wide. I stick out my tongue. I splay my hands out in front of me. I hiss right along with everyone else and as I do so, I cannot say that I feel I have learned a great lesson about how to be a better public speaker, but what I can say is that people do not look well when they are doing The Lion. People, in fact, look quite disgusting.
And if there is any advice I can give anyone, I would like that advice to be that if you find yourself in an Overcoming Presentation Anxiety class, and in that class you happen to find yourself doing The Lion, just look at the floor, or out the window while you’re doing it. Whatever you do, don’t look around at your fellow classmates, eyes wide, tongue thrusting and wagging, spit flying all over the place, so that you are repulsed by your classmates as surely you are to them repulsive. And if you just can’t listen to me, if you just have to look around, at the very least don’t look right up and into the eyes of the really good-looking and well-dressed guy in your class while you are both in full-extended Lion so that you pretty much kill any (admittedly quite slim) chance you ever had of sleeping with him.
“Okay, class,” Beth Anne begins again, and The Lion it seems, thankfully, has come to an end. “Let’s talk about our Deities.”
I look at my watch. At this point I’m thinking it’s a pretty safe bet that I’m in the type of situation where things, if they change at all, are only going to change for the worse. I look across at Martine and I think she is exhaling very heavily, but then I think also that I might be projecting, so I steal a quick look at some of the others. I look at Rachel, so frizz-haired and freaky, staring blankly, robotically ahead; Lawrence is still actually practicing The Lion. Alec just looks hot. Oh, right, I