"Do not talk with anyone. You can make eye contact and smile. Keep walking around. I know this is awkward and unusual. It's a theatre technique."
Selena stepped her right flip flop onto the student stage. It was a blue Hawaiian themed rubber flip flop with a big, white flower in between her first toes. Her toe nails the white rim of a pedicure. The center of the toe nails was covered with sparkling dust. The back of the other flip flop slapped her heel with a wet thud.
The tall, intense looking class mate with the full beard stepped out from behind the curtain with a solemn expression on his face that stared into nowhere. The chubby, short blond with the sunshine personality made a U-turn to avoid Selena. Selena turned her head. Her smooth, black, small-of-the-back-long hair flung around in a wave like motion. Selena looked over the other students walking slowly in random directions among the audience chairs.
"Everyone, find a partner. Do not talk. Look into their eyes and hold."
The guy with the sandy hair that was styled in a big, blow dried wave on his head, eagerly stepped toward Selena. His body always felt low, because his beige khaki pants were dropping so low. He also had an oversized white t-shirt on that made him look even more droopy. He smiled at her in an approval seeking way. His facial hair was unshaved for three days to appear cool.
Selena looked into his brown eyes. He looked like he was thinking about a road trip, a marijuana bong, and advanced philosophy papers. He also obviously liked Selena. As the tension of the gaze grew, he escaped to steal a look down her body.
Selena was tall with perfectly round surgically designed boobs that were kept in place by a pink and purple plain t-shirt. The soft-combed fabric of the t-shirt snuggled around her athletic body and left a sliver of belly skin exposed. She was wearing tight daisy dukes with colorful stitching.
One could feel the tension in the room grow of being forced so intimately onto a merely acquainted other student. Laughter broke out in the far end of the room like a spring rain of relief. The silence of the rest of the room drowned out the sound until heavy tension hung in the room again. Selena felt like she was leaving her body hovering among the rigging, lights, and cables under the ceiling of the theatre. There was a "nest" under the ceiling with a steep staircase. That's where the sound and light technician usually controlled everything. It would have been the only safe place during this exercise.
"Okay, guys. You can relax. I have timed this experiment. It was only 2 minutes, which probably felt a lot longer. Let's talk about the experience."
Selena burst out talk and was meat with eager faces of her class mates. Big eyes looked at her. She could see the respect in the eyes of a few of her female classmates with whom she was chatting before class.
"It was really creepy. It felt like he was trying to enter my soul through my eyes. I felt so exposed. It was like he was watching my face like a hawk to figure out any of my thoughts. I felt like I could not have a single thought by myself without him trying to guess what I'm thinking. It was a totally Nazi interrogation."
"Okay, it's very intense to hold eye contact. What did other people experience?"
"I just want to say one thing about what she said. I was mentally repeating Tibetan monk chants to send her feelings of bliss."
"Okay, let's talk about boundaries. We have physical no-touch boundaries in class unless the other person gave you permission. However, there are also energetic boundaries. You might have had the best intensions with your Tibetan chants. At the same time, it is very invasive to try to push specific feelings onto her. During this exercise, you were not allowed to speak. Before you do something like that, you should ask for permission first."
The guy nodded. Most of the classmates were females. They gloated at the guy. They leaned their heads more forward to intimidate him and band together against him. A little girl hissed with a low voice, "I got that creep feeling from him as well."
The teacher clapped her hands to snap everyone out of the intensity of the standoff: "It was a real pleasure to teach all of you. I'm glad that you took this elective in basic theatre technique to enhance your social sciences degree. This is the last class for many of you, before the graduation ceremony on Saturday. I'll have 1:1 feedback for you up on the stage. Everyone else, please be quiet."
A month later, Selena was quietly sitting on her dad's low wooden porch steps. She gazed onto the front yard, the trees, and the suburban road. Her knees were pulled together to show of the lovely summer tan that covered her legs the whole way from the toes to her jeans mini-skirt. A cup of warm tea was cuddled in her hands onto her belly right under her boobs. There was a witty statement about the old president Bush on the cup.
Her father Samuel came out of the house, the fly screen swinging shut behind him. His cups were carefully cupped around something that he was holding in front of him and guiding down the porch steps past Selena. The knocking of his Birkenstock's quieted as he stepped onto the grass and under the tree. He opened up his hands over a thick branch with rough bark. He remained motionless gazing at the bark, towering with his tall, skinny body wearing that old flannel shirt with the lumber jack pattern.
"Rescued another spider, daddy?"
"Yes, it was just an ordinary house spider, a medium sized one."
"Come here, sit with me like in the old times."
He walked with a smooth spirit despite his aging joints. When he sat down, she side cuddled around his arm to snuggle into that soft flannel shirt and smell the familiar scent of her dad, the well groomed, showered, and deodorized old man scent. He pulled her close and swayed her body like she was still his little girl.
"Honey, I have some tough love to share with you. A social sciences bachelor is a great achievement. I'm very proud of you. (Daddy, just hold me.) But it is very hard to get a job. (I really tried.) You didn't get anything at the career fairs. You didn't get anything in the month after graduating. (You make me sad, papa.) You have to start looking at jobs outside of your field. (I know the guidance counselor said so to all of us.) Here is a newspaper clipping for something temporary. All I ask is that you go talk to them and give them a chance to tell you what they have to offer."
Her pouty red lips rolled out even more. Her big eyes with the dark eye liner rolled even more looking up at her dad begging for not having to face it. He looked into her eyes with understanding, ruffled her black hair, and kissed her forehead. The little recycled paper snippet with the smudgy ink dropped into her lap, where the hem of the mini skirt was flipped over, because the steps were so low that her knees were higher than her hips. And then he held her silently until the orange fiery sunset disappeared into the darkness of the night.
Three days later at 10 minutes to 8 am, Selena was sitting on a hard chair with a token of upholstery in the waiting office of career services on campus. A little palm tree was in the window less room that miraculously still lived. A long list of alumni covered one wall. A poster for excellence with politely smiling post boy students was framed across from her. A busy, stern faced secretary labored with a stack of papers behind the reception desk.
There was a round faced Asian girl. She had a pin striped black suit. Her body and face was puffy like a puffer fish. One could feel how she was trying to hold in the anxiety and only kept puffing up even more. She was clutching her leather bound notepad tightly on her lap.
A young lad was sitting next to her. His blue shirt sleeves were so long that they covered his entire hand like a glove. The fabric was twice the size of his arms. Selena could tell his weak spot from her social sciences training. The sides of his finger nails were chewed raw. He tried to hide his fingers under his thighs. Whenever he adjusted his glasses, they looked horribly ruined.
"Selena!"
Selena rose. She was wearing a tight pencil skirt. Her legs had to step in front of each other to have enough stretch in the skirt to make small steps forward. Her legs crossing in front of each other with every step made the silhouette of her butt stand out even more, like a bubble. The formal fabric stretched over her butt to clearly outline the thong stretch horizontally across her butt.
Her shiny black high heels were six inches high. The hard polished leather and thick platforms made them appear heavy like bricks. She swung them confidently in front of each other. Each echo of their thump on the ground made her grow taller with poise. She also wore her long her down the lower back with bride. A tastefully hand sized black satin blow adorned it.
"Have a seat!"
She coyly snapped her knees together to sit down in the hard plastic chair with her knees swiveled sideways to avoid pointing the tunnel that the fabric formed over her inner thighs at the interviewer. The view on the interviewer was obscured by the bright morning sun pouring through the window behind the interviewer. There were two interviewers. One was chubby and over forty, definitely the boss. The other was a couple years her senior. His face silently flashed a bright smile as a welcome that drew into a prideful look down on her. Both of them were in comfortable leather swivel chairs.
The desk was littered with pencils and notepad with the logos of different companies that used the university career office. There was a bowl of token thank you candies that looked like pure sugar with neon bright toxically chemical coloring. A whiteboard had illegible drawings that were permanently dried into the board in their partially erased state.
"Selena, I'll be very forthright with this discussion. I work for People Power. We are a contracting agency. One of our slots is with Microsoft. It's a one week assignment overseas. A big university in India has the interviewing season. We need a recruiter to go over there and hire some computer science graduates. Unfortunately, the hired person got sick. Now, we need a replacement that's ready to fly tomorrow to India. Would that interest you?"
"Yes, I'm ready to go. However, I don't know much about recruiting."
