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2001-05-07 || 10:05 a.m. || i think wallflowers are pretty. || saturday night at the film festival. after the films were shown, after we had become dehydrated and drunk from too much alcohol and not enough fresh air, after the pats on the back and hand shaking and tucking a program in my bag for posterity, after my sister and her boy and owen had left early and i had slumped in a chair in a very unlady-like fashion in the back of the room, holding a budweiser, my skirts hitched up enough to see i was wearing inappropriate shoes and black knee socks underneath my ballgown, i heard a voice in my head. the voice of god maybe. or the voice of a saint, possibly the patron saint of wallflowers everywhere.. why do they all sound like charleton heston? he said, and i quote, 'you hate mingling. hate it. ha-a-a-a-ate it.' in a very serious yet plucky type way. and i said 'i know i know' and kicked my bud can in the general direction of the voice, accidentally taking out a few innocent passersby. boyfriend was busy being very charming as master of ceremonies, his friend was busy dj-ing and there are only so many polaroids you can take to pass away the time before the subject starts to feel a little uncomfortable. his other friend was out getting beer. thankfully the room was very crowded: i felt like i could stay slumped in that chair and watch all the fashionable people get drunk and network and toss their heads back as they laugh and perfect their small talking skills. but boy's ex-girlfriend was sitting directly beside me, rather close, talking to two women, all of whom were not sure whether to include me in the conversation. so they would throw these looks to make me feel involved i guess. and it was harshing my powers of invisibility. so i got up and found my boy and stood beside him. but that made me feel like a six-year-old waiting for my mom/dad to stop talking. every movement i made felt amplified, or felt jerky, like a puppet. like when all of a sudden you're afraid you've forgotten how to breathe: everything becomes very unnatural. so i grabbed cigarettes and went outside and wished i was really tough and felt normal and could sit on the curb in my goddamn ballgown smoking cigarette after cigarette looking at everybody with tough squinty eyes. just because i didn't feel like talking to all those people at the moment. just because i needed a breath of fresh air. not because the thought of small talk, of running out of things to say, of direct eye contact from strangers can sometimes give me hives. sometimes i can pretend. but that night i could not. i think because the overwhelming number of beautiful fashionable people had worn my powers of self-confidence down to the strength of an old old t-shirt, the kind you can see through when you put it up to the light, the kind whose holes grow larger just by breathing on them? it was very thin, not keeping me very warm. or tough. and as i was concentrating on blending in with the walls and paint, two boys i had met a few times stopped me and said hello and confessed their wallflower tendencies. so we all made our way to the sidewalk in that sneaky nonchalant wallflower way, although i do admit i had the urge to grab their hands and skip the whole way. because it finally felt alright, and i didn't have to pretend i was something i'm not. it was like a support group. i could breathe again. and it felt the way it feels when i spend time with a group i can truly truly relate to in a funny way, in a way that binds us regardless of the fact we don't know each other well or we don't hang out. wallflowers. nerds. ex-shy people. i pledge my allegiance to thee. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |