Pug Hill - Alison Pace [68]
Amy doesn’t stand up straight, but she does Take the Room in a way that I’d have to say is more threatening than it is confidence-displaying.
“I-I ...” She falters for a moment, and it’s obvious she is scared, and for some reason this surprises me. I never think that people who clearly spend such a great deal of time thinking that they are so cool, actually get scared of the same things that I get scared of. Though I guess I could have been clued in, maybe by the fact that she’s in an Overcoming Presentation Anxiety class with me, that sometimes they do.
“I’m going to read a haiku I wrote,” Amy says.
Oh, right, I remember, about despair.
“I am a hot, dark ...” She pauses, stares at the floor.
“Vagina and the world is ...” She pauses again for a little longer, still staring at the floor.
“My yeast infection.” She looks back up, runs a hand through her spiky hair, the index card in her other hand shakes slightly. She doesn’t say anything else, and now it’s even more uncomfortable in the room than it has been before.
Beth Anne speaks up at last. “Well, that’s very evocative Amy.” Amy nods. “But do you think you could read for a bit longer?”
“A haiku is a seventeen-syllable verse form,” Amy says, speaking with quite a bit more authority than she had while reading her haiku. “Five, seven, and five syllables; it can’t be longer,” she explains defiantly, condescendingly.
“Yes, yes, would you like to read one of my poems, then? I have some mimeographed.” Beth Anne reaches into her vinyl folder that doubles as a clipboard and begins shuffling through a stack of papers.
“No,” Amy says and crosses her arms in front of her. “I’d like to sit down now.”
“Okay, maybe for your next assignment it could be longer?” Beth Anne asks hopefully as Amy clomps to her seat and hunches down in it with her head bowed.
“Oh, yes,” Beth Anne remembers to ask, “What was your anxiety level?”
“A ten,” Amy snaps, and Beth Anne tells her, really rather nicely, “Well, you wouldn’t have known.” I think that it’s nice of Beth Anne that she doesn’t point out to Amy that she spent the entire one-minute duration of her haiku staring at the floor. I’m pretty sure I would not have been as nice.
“Okay, Alec, you’re up and then Hope.”
And then Hope.
Alec picks Amy and they leave. I can’t even dedicate my thoughts to the fact that (even though, as I’ve said, I don’t lust after Alec) I don’t like that he picked Amy to be his partner, especially after her awful haiku. I am too busy trying to stave off an anxiety attack. I am too busy lamenting the fact that not one of the relaxation exercises we’ve learned can be done without drawing quite a lot of attention to oneself. Alec returns and reads something out of the New Yorker. I do manage to wonder if selecting poetry out of the New Yorker somehow trumps saying, “dude,” all the time or, more likely, if someone just told him he could find poems there. Other than that, I hear nothing. I sit and feel the torrent of activity in my stomach. I sweat. I seriously, seriously contemplate running out the door. And then, like a death knell, I hear, “Hope, who would you like your partner to be?”
And all I can think is OH MY GOD, it’s time! I try to get a grip, try not to think like that, because I’m pretty sure that is a hysterical way of thinking, and I’m pretty sure that a hysterical way of thinking is only going to make everything worse. I look up, around at my classmates. I want to know where it’s been hiding all this time, I’d just like to know: Where is my normal?
Right at this moment, Lindsay returns. While, understandably, right now she may not be the best choice for a partner, I blurt out, “Lindsay!” She looks up at me as if she’s going to run away again, just like I want to. But instead she stands there calmly at the doorway, waits for Beth Anne to pass, and then for me, and follows us into the hall.
In the hall, Beth Anne smiles and touches each of our arms. “Practice your exercises,” she instructs, “and select a Deity, and talk about the things you might want to overcome.” She smiles at us again, so much