11.04.2004 - 3:56 p.m.
Thursday
If there's ever been a sentence that strikes cold, queasy fear into my heart, possibly even more than "So, the invitation says bring a swimsuit", it's this:
"Okay, everyone find a partner."
Oh man, I hate that. I hate that I hate that I hate that.
This happened Tuesday night in my yoga class. There we were, doing various bendy things, when the instructor told us to 'pair up' for the next exercise. Now, the same fucking thing always happens when I'm in this situation. I start shyly looking around while everyone else seems to be leaping towards each other with the fervor of reunited military families. Seconds tick by in an agonizingly slow manner while the instructor trills, "Someone can partner with me if we have an extra!".
No way do you want to partner with the teacher. First of all, you look like a big loser dork, and yes, I am thirty years old and I'm still paranoid of looking like a big loser dork. Secondly, do you really want to be doing whatever tortuous exercise the instructor has dreamed up WITH him/her? No. No you don't.
So, as usual, I found myself peering around the room last night, trying to find my partner. The thing I try to avoid is the awkwardness of locking my gaze with someone at the exact moment they are nodding towards someone else, because that just sucks, kind of like when someone waves at you and you bemusedly wave back even though you're thinking "Who the hell is that?" and then you realize that they're waving at someone behind you. So when I comb the room for potential partners I sort of peer up through my eyelashes so I can pretend I was looking at someone else if my target has their little partner hookup at the same moment I'm staring at them.
What? That's normal, right? Um...right?
Finally, a woman in the row behind me looked over with a receptive sort of air, so I flung myself at her and wrapped my arms around her legs. "Be mine," I hissed, getting a little drool on her leggings.
No, not really. Instead, I performed some sort of jerky head movement combined with an eyebrow raise, which was meant to convey my unspoken request to be her partner, but which probably came across like a Tourette's symptom. She smiled tentatively, which I took to mean "sure, as long as your social malady is limited to facial tics, you poor poor retard".
And THEN, like it wasn't traumatic enough to have to choo-choo-choose a partner from a room of complete strangers, the exercise that we had to do together - well, we had to rub each other's hands. We were supposed to massage the wrist and hand area, which, you know, it's not like rubbing someone's, gah, feet or something, I have no problem with hands, except it's kind of, like, weirdly intimate somehow. I don't mean sexy, because yeah, no. But okay, here you are with this person you've met all of half a second ago and you're rubbing their hand and trying desperately to figure out what to do with your eyeballs because surely it won't do to direct a moist, cow-eyed stare at their face like you're sharing a special moment together, and yet it seems oddly rude to look off in the distance as though you were counting the seconds until you could do something, ANYTHING other than knead their meaty phalanges, even if that IS true, so what I did was I peered very studiously at the instructor the whole time, in order to give the impression that I was observing her technique in order to incorporate her hand-mushing moves into my own performance. AM BRILLIANT.
I plan to attend class tonight despite my ongoing crushing disappointment stemming from the election results (hey, don't look at me, I voted for the other guy - whatshisname, the guy with the face) because skipping the gym Hurts America, or maybe skipping the gym means the terrorist win? Something. Anyway, here's hoping my agoraphobia doesn't get put to the test. Because I am a big loser dork, thank you very much.
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