Helen

Incidents Leading to an Unfortunate Sense of Resignation

There was this one time when I had to return a book at Borders. I had put the book into the original Borders plastic bag that was lying in a corner of my room. “I need to return this,” I said to the cashier as I slid the bag across the counter. “Ok,” he grunted. As we both looked down at the bag, there it was, a lone pubic hair stuck right in the center of all that plastic. His eyes zeroed in on it just as mine had and I knew I had very few options in this terribly unfortunate situation. My right hand swooped down with the stealthy intensity of a hawk. Lacking proper aim, however, my talon landed with an impotent thud just to the side of the hair. Not ready to give up, I went in for the kill again, only to have the pube lazily roll over to the other side of my landing.

There was this other time in college when I pulled an all-nighter on campus. I decided to take a shortcut back to the dorms, which required climbing over a wire fence. My Birkenstocks didn’t fit in between the wiring so I took the sandals off and threw them over the fence to the other side. As I climbed, the thin metal dug deep against the flesh and nerves of my toes, the pain growing more intense with each new foothold. Beads of sweat dribbled down my back. I did my best to breathe through it but the pain was too overwhelming even before I reached the top of the fence. I decided to hoist my body over to the other side with whatever brute strength I had and hoped for the best. I somehow managed to do this successfully, only my feet never touched the ground. Like carcass hanging from a meat hook, I hung from the top of the gate by the neck of my t-shirt, breathless and grunting at the strain and facing the street which was now abuzz with the morning’s rush-hour traffic.

Then there was this other time when I was at my friend Shannon’s karaoke birthday party. Even though we were close and I’d known her circle of friends for years, I’d always felt a little intimidated and never quite cool enough to fit in. I did my best to act natural and join in on the fun, my attempts feeling decidedly unnatural. Terry, who I thought was particularly cool, was sitting on an ottoman in the middle of the living room. I had just finished belting out “Material Girl” and he good-naturedly slapped his thighs, indicating for me to sit down. I approached him and his thighs with calculated nonchalance. The unexpected and intimate proximity felt strange, and being that I was also self-conscious about my weight, I perched what I approximated to be 115 pounds of my weight on Terry’s lap and propped the rest on own my thighs. This resulted in an awkward and compromised version of an exercise squat and after about three minutes it was clear that I had not thought things through. My abs and thighs, unaccustomed to exercise, began to tremble uncontrollably. I had no doubt that Terry could feel this but I didn’t know how to end the charade—being stuck in a hover/squat position over Terry’s lap until the end of time seemed to be not only possible but an imminent punishment for everything ever. When I came to my senses and realized how weird things were getting, I made an apologetic coughing noise and stood up unceremoniously. Terry and I did not exchange any words for the duration of the party.