Pug Hill - Alison Pace [69]
“Are you okay?” I ask Lindsay.
“Yeah, you?”
“Not really,” I say, because a lot of the time I think what I really want is just to be understood. And at this very moment, if anyone can understand, I think Lindsay might be able to.
“Do you want to do The Lion together?” she asks.
The shakiness has started. I’m not even up there yet in front of all the many people, but that horrible sensation from my adrenaline kicking in has already started. I think about the video camera. I think about all the people. Although there are only seven other people in the room, it seems an amount so vast it can only be qualified as all. I think about the video camera. I clutch my book of poetry and think, how on earth am I going to make it through the next ten minutes? Lindsay is staring at me patiently, waiting for me to say something, and so I take a deep breath, and say, “Okay.”
I close my eyes and scrunch up my face tightly, tightly, tightly, and I wait until I hear the hissing sound coming from Lindsay. I open up my eyes and stick out my tongue and make the hideous sound, too.
Next, we each do a few rounds of One Nostril Breathing and there is, I have to say, a part of me that is relaxing, until Lindsay leans in a little closer and says, “Which Deity do you want to represent you?”
And I don’t know what to say, because I didn’t think about the Deities, because even though I don’t understand why, the Deities upset me. I want to ask Lindsay where she went when she ran out of class. She’s just looking at me now so serenely, waiting for me to answer, and I can’t believe I thought just a minute ago that I was relaxing.
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
“You have green dangly earrings,” she says, reaching over to touch one, and then she adds on, “Why not Diana?” and I’m nothing if not a little bit lost.
“Okay, uh, Diana,” I say slowly, and she smiles at me. By now I’m too nauseous to smile back. I wonder if I might just throw up right here. I stare at her blankly and she stares back. She’s standing too close to me now. Once she stepped forward to get close enough to touch my earrings, afterwards, she never took a step back. You’d think most people would have taken a step back.
“Do you want to do The Lion again?” she asks.
“Okay,” I say and then I turn my back on her, because it’s not nice to look at someone and to have someone look at you while you are doing The Lion. I screw my face up as tight as I can and then I thrust my tongue out and hiss. Then the door opens, signaling it’s time for us to come back.
Lindsay gives me a thumbs-up sign, turns, and I follow her slowly, back into the room.
chapter twenty
Cornered
I walk slowly to the front of the room. I manage to clip my lavaliere mike onto the collar of my sweater without dropping it, and without too blatantly revealing my shaking hands to the rest of the class. I take a breath, and smile, and try as best as I can to Take the Room. I imagine I’m a celebrity standing poised on the red carpet, allowing the throngs and throngs of crazed paparazzi to take my picture. Hope! Hope! Over here! This way! I take another breath. I picture Alec in his underwear. I picture Lawrence reading his poem, and I remember how very good he was, and I try to think how I could be just as good. And I know I won’t be.
“I’m reading a poem by Stephen Dunn,” I say.
“Corners,” I say, looking up. Even though a moment ago
I saw all these faces, now that I’ve started speaking in front of everyone, it’s not so much as if I am seeing everyone for the first time, but as if I’m seeing them all again after we had a big fight and didn’t talk for years. And that fight? It was completely my fault.
Beth Anne is smiling at me, soothingly and encouragingly, but it doesn’t help because the sweating has started. I take one hand from the book for a moment, and rest it on my stomach, trying futilely to quell the millions of little centipede feet running