I'm a gangly girl. Other girls have thin and elegant bodies from hard workouts and disciplined diets. My metabolism simply burns off chocolate cakes, pizza, and beers like it's nothing. That physical identity is a symbol for my whole life. Things simply fall into my whole lap, and I stagger through life without grace.
Mary is my best friend. We met as seatmates on a plane doing shots of single serving, comped for three hours on the tarmac tequila shots with tomato juice, the only vaguely fruity mixer. Those are called Bloody Marias, and Mary gushed out her first period-bleeding-through-clothes-story without any grace to me. She had been on the public bus to school when she noticed the strangely wet sensation in her groin and the growing stain, which she had at first attributed to sitting down on a dirty seat. When she went into all the gory details of the physics and her emotions to me - a mere ten-minute-long acquaintance, I knew that she was cut off the same clothes as me.
After the third Bloody Maria, we were doing impressions of the various stewardesses' noses. The tall, blond Swedish-looking one held her nose high like an aristocrat. Mary pressed her cheeks together like a mouse and paraded her nose around to pretend to be the aristocrat one. I picked the hard-working Japanese one. Her nose had a short nose bone, which made her nostrils appear as two prominent black holes to the viewer in front. We were genuinely concerned in a way that only drunk girls can be about the rain landing inside of her nose. I put my index and middle finger into my nostrils to lift up my nose and snort around like a pig. Our physiques may have drawn eyes at first, but our behavior drew headshakes.
My roommates had a similar experience. In NYC, $50 more or less in rent can make a serious difference. It might mean access to a whole shelf of your own in the fridge or a window that shows more than the wall of the opposite house at a five-foot distance. So I picked a housing situation with five guy roommates. They must have been overjoyed to get a girl into the boy stink dorm, which caused them to undercharge me $200 a month. However, after the first evening, all their interest in the ever-instant hope of guys to get laid had evaporated.
I do want a guy to romance me, but I have no grace at times. The other day at the Union Square subway stop, I pushed a middle-aged guy into the subway door so that the door would close on him, try to crush him, and allow my friend enough time to run down the stairs. He looked angry at me. Those subway doors are pretty harsh, which is why I didn't block them with my own body. Yet, he saw that I was a woman and didn't see it fit to leash out at a woman in public. I think it's a self-reinforcing cycle. Because I don't expect to get romanced and cherished, I don't even try, and because I don't try, guys kind of back away from me once they see my graces.
So Mary is my best friend. We have coffee or dinner almost every day together. We tell each other everything. Like Mary told me when she gave her stepbrother a hand job under the table. He didn't get to cum or anything, but she fondled and pumped him for a good two minutes at the family reunion last year. An act of delayed rebellion of an adult against the oppression of family is how she described her motivation. Sitting there in her mid-twenties, she had the emotions of stifling, life-draining family norm restraint distress her immensely. Breaking family taboo felt so freeing, especially as she listened to the unyielding and unbending tone in her father's voice at the head of the table. "I'll teach you!" she had whispered silently to herself while she pumped on her stepbrother's dick. Dessert came with mom walking around the table, and she had to quickly pack away his cock.
Naturally, when Mary signed up for a stand-up comedy class, she wanted me to join her. I was reluctant at first. That whole thing of being on stage and the center of attention wasn't my thing. I simply wanted to get on with my life, and there were many things that I did that I knew should hide in the shadows. I feel a little bit like a rat, one of those mammals that I see scurrying in the streets in between the garbage bags that leak the black and brown juice on the pavement. They always seem very busy on getting some gain like a slice of pizza, and each time a person steps in their presence, they know that they have to run. I've been through all the drawers of my roommates. And when my clean clothes stack is empty, I think of nothing to take some of their clothes. They are, of course, larger than me. But Gabe has t-shirts with big prints of pop stars like Mariah Carey and Kurt Cobain. I can wear those like a dress with a belt from Doron's collection - beautiful metal, rock, and otherwise studded showpieces of belts. I wear the belt loose so that it hangs on one hip and drapes down below the other hip.
Stand-up comedy wasn't my thing. I got a lot of anxiety being in front of people. I might sound very relaxed as I'm telling you my story, but in front of people, I get tense, I get shaky, and I lose all my words. The instructor told us to let go of trying to be funny. If we simply relaxed and told personal stories, we'd randomly stumble on good material because life is funny. What is laughter? Laughter is a psychological process to release tension. Life is fully of tension and awkwardness. The more we'd let the pure authentic us flow out, the funnier we would get. And the more we focused on being funny, the more we would become tense and artificial. That was the sweet lullaby that he was singing us, but I didn't get any laughter.
As everyone in class got more flamboyant, dramatic, and edgy, they learned how to tingle the nerves of other students in beer-through-the-nose-puking laughter and knee-to-the-groin-shock laughter. All of their success made me more tense. I seriously dreaded going to class. I'd get terrible dreams the night before. The last couple classes, I stopped trying. I simply endured because Mary wouldn't let me quit.
The final performance was the worst. Everyone in the class would perform on the actual stage in the school in front of a live audience. They all had tested and refined punch lines into sequences. They were all so happy to realize their dream. We had a group huddle circle before where we all had to put our hands in the middle. Our instructor gave us a speech. Peering through the stage curtain, I could see those blinding lights. Every sign that hyped them with energy made the muscles in my body tense. My brain shut down in terror.
When it was my turn, I slipped between the curtain onto the stage. I slipped in a way where I still hoped that I could be like one of those street rats where I could slip away quickly enough before anyone noticed me more than a fleeing shadow. But the stage lights overhead blinded me with white. The applause was expected, a little louder like in class, but there were cheers. Cheers were coming from all directions. The uplifting energy of the cheers shocked me. I raised my hand to shield the stage lights. The audience faces were all looking straight at me. "Oh my gosh, fifty people are fully staring at me!"
"Hi, my name is Dextra...." I read from my cue card.
That was the last thing I could remember. I was standing on the stage. I stared at the last of my cue cards. I must have gone through the whole deck. The audience was roaring and applauding like my show was at the end. I couldn't remember what happened. I had started with my name and then blanked out. I tried to get my bearings. It felt like I was standing on stage in silence for an eternity with the audience falling into the rhythm of shouting "encore." The only face that wasn't in complete rapture was Mary's in the front row. She was pale like a ghost. Her mouth and eyes were wide open. Her expression was of utter dismay that said, "I can't believe that you did this." She seemed very upset with me.
