Learning to Talk

I’ve just spent an evening out, at a bar, with a group of colleagues. I spoke with a few people, but I didn’t engage the way other folks did, I mostly sat outside the group and watched their interactions. Surprise! I remained sober while others fell about giddy with booze and plans to continue their intoxication into the night. Oh, the promise of the early evening buzz--who knows where the alcohol and the evening will take us? To curious bars, to strangers' beds, to pavement pukings, to sprained ankles from staggering in heels, to Godalmighty hangovers and the morning shame. . . .

I'm not pointing fingers here. I simply spent the evening watching these much younger people getting ready for a pre-term blowout (good for them). So, I spent a bit of time at the sidelines nursing a dirty vodka martini. A wallflower? At my age? Hell yes.

I wrote a few blogs back that I am fairly incapable of walking up and saying “hi, I’m SG, how are you etc.” I need to be introduced to people before I can talk to them. This aloofness isn’t intentional, and it isn’t a reliance on etiquette.

I’ve always been convinced that my lack of social success is due to some freakery on my part. I’m fundamentally unlikable, unlovable. But, how much of it is me, and how much of it is “them”? Do “they” sense my sordidness, my seaminess, before “they” even know who I am? I don’t know. I’ve always struggled with social settings, be it classrooms, parties, recess, or professional meetings. It’s not just awkwardness; maybe it’s like Prufrock being pinned against a wall.

One problem is that I can get so tongue-tied that I am simply inarticulate, and people can’t grasp what I’m saying. So many thoughts begin teeming in my head that I swear I get confused. Usually ½ xanax helps to level that mental calumny--which poses the question: is it anxiety that provokes the confusion? Maybe, maybe not.

Although the xanax generally does the trick, I took some prior to my PhD oral exam; even so, that was a disaster. I swear, I don’t know how I passed. It's ot that I didn't know the "answers," I just couldn't respond clearly to the questions posed. I am convinced that the paper I presented saved me. And the fact that my advisor is confident in me (but then, what if he isn’t, and he just doesn’t like to see his students fail? In the post-exam debriefing he assured me that he had seen the other committee members fail examinees--and this without my asking him “how did I pass?” I assume he either sensed my concerns or he and the other committee members had spoken of my inability to speak extemporaneously). Anways, there's a bit of shame in here; I humiliated myself in an arena where I should excel.

Which brings me to the reason I couldn’t sleep tonight. I’ve been passed up, ignored, for several opportunities I’ve been entitled to within the parameters of my program, which ends in June (please forgive me for being vague here. It‘s necessary). I’ve tried, twice, to bring authorities’ attention to this. Once, it worked. The second time, nothing. And I’m at a loss. I’m afraid to nag, But I do know that “squeaky wheels get the grease.” But why are people who aren’t squeaky, and who aren’t as advanced (in the program) as me, getting all the grease? Again, this isn’t paranoia. I just keep getting skipped. Either I’m invisible or people are picking up on the social ineptness. It certainly is not my job performance (I’ve got great evals). I’m thinking that, perhaps, my inelegant articulation impeded getting my message across to aforementioned authorities. Then again, they just might not give a whatever (the latter worries me, because one of the authorities is my advocate).

Anyways, I can't sleep because the clock is running out on my time in the prgram, and it looks like I'm going to leave with next to no real experience in my area, and I'm wondering how that will help me acquire a decent job next year.

Note: although my job requires me to speak publicly on a regular basis, I have few problems. I always prepare a “script” (with footnotes, believe it or not) before it’s necessary, so I’m seldom required to think hard on the spot.

Elementary: exclusion

I've always been called an "exceptional student," beginning in elementary school, but academic success resulted from a sort of forced seclusion: I found it difficult to assimilate into groups of other children, and they, in turn, avoided me like the plague. I'm not certain why, but it's as though the other kids distanced themselves from me by instinct. Then again, much of my behavior was pretty off-putting. I alternated between introversion and hyperactivity. You know that kid who would be dead silent, perhaps frightened, but would abruptly change gears and start acting up? Laughing loudly (hysteria?), always looking for attention? That was me. (I still tend to be loud, and I’m horrified when I realize I'm doing it). You can’t really fault the children for keeping a safe distance--I probably scared them with my instability.

So, being isolated, I focused on my homework and I began reading. My parents had an old set of the Encyclopedia Brittannica--the volumes were off-white with brown labels on the binding--and I started playing with them. I'd just open a volume at random and see what I could find. The illustrations attracted me, and this is where I discovered Graeco-Roman art, Henry Moore, Big M's Pieta, Brancusi's Bird (of course, I didn't think of these things as "art," but it was my introduction to aesthetics). In the second grade (what is that? Seven years old?) my teacher escorted the class to the school library; the librarian explained to us what a library is, and then let us loose. That's when I found the first major literary influence on my life: D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I adored it (and, nearly as much, the D’Aulaires’s book on Norse mythology).

In the third grade I focused on getting through the Little House books. I also picked up a few Alfred Hitchcock anthologies for young adults. This was my introduction to the "hook handed killer," the "roommate without a head," "the black ribbon," etc. All tried and true, albeit basic, scary stories. Funny. I've never realized that I began reading "horror" as young as eight.

After I learned what a library was, I demanded that my mother take me to the town library. Mind you, we were living in a very small town at the time, and it held an equally small library. Half of its space was devoted to children's books, which is good. Especially because the librarian made sure that children stayed in the children's section and didn't venture into the adults' stacks. So I whipped through their selection of Beverly Cleary books, some Judy Blume (Are You There God? It's Me, Maragaret and Forever weren't included in the stacks). But these bored me. My thrills came from fairy tales, sort of. Twisted fairy tales with bitter endings. I recall loving Ruth Manning-Sanders's wonderful series of folktales. I think I can still recite "Goldenhair" from A Book of Ghosts and Goblins. I loved her Book of Mermaids as well.

By the fourth grade, we'd moved. I immediately began haunting the Ocotillo Branch of the local library. Although it was probably a modest-sized building at the time, I thought it huge and wonderful; morever, I was able to break free of the children's area. Consequently, I found myself in both David Copperfield and Jane Eyre (these two read largely under the sheets with a mini-flashlight). I identified with these characters in numerous, probably obvious, ways.

At my school, as with many, there was an end-of-year convocation where administration would distribute awards. Mandatory attendance, by the way, for the entire school body. Like my fourth grade colleagues, I was to gain a certificate in mathematics. A piece a paper that announced I knew the multiplication tables etc. My teacher that year, Mr. Emerson, announced each child's name, and they went up on stage to retrieve this certificate. As is cmmon, everyone applauded. When it was my turn, someone began booing. I don't know why. Probably just your average child's cruelty kicking in. Anyway, other kids picked up on it. Soon, everyone was booing as I crossed the stage. I grabbed my piece of paper and began to take off. My teacher took hold of me. He had something else to give to me--a lovely, diploma-sized piece of paper that announced I was the "best reader in the x area." It was signed by the governor. Okay, I know that seems hokey now, but it impressed me then, and it made up for, a little bit, the booing that hadn't stopped while I was onstage.

Later that afternoon, I was helping Mr. Emerson clear up our classroom. He was hesitant, but kind. "It must have been hard going onstage with all of that." I don't know how I responded or what I replied, but chances are that the family's macho stance bore me out. But I appreciate Mr. Emerson's sympathy. Because it was hard to have several hundred people deriding you. and the faculty didn't do anything to intervene. (Now that I think of it--the faculty's non-interference might be perceived by the audience as authorizing the audience's behavior; I probably took it that way too--"Nobody intervened because nobody thought I shouldn't be booed"). Anyway. . .

At the end of my fourth grade year, the school suggested to my mother that I take an IQ test. I ranked 159. I don’t know if that number was true or not. As a result of the IQ thing, the school placed me in an experimental class for “gifted” children. The curriculum focused on self-study. Several “topic” stations were distributed throughout the classroom, and your task was to spend an hour at each one at some point throughout the class day. You completed assignments at your own pace while the teacher and a teacher’s aid floated about offering any necessary help. I loved the class, I loved my schoolmates, I learned about Phyllis Wheatley, Judaism, Henry VIII, and Medieval living conditions. I felt “right.”

After six months (in the middle of the school year), I was returned to my “normal” fifth grade class, much to my “normal” classmates’ mirth. I was humiliated. Nobody explained why I was moved from the “gifted” class, so I assumed it was because I wasn’t smart enough and was, therefore, deserving of my classmates’ scorn.

Years late, my mother told me that it wasn’t because I wasn’t “smart enough”; rather, my excitability proved too distracting for the other students.

The following year, in a different school, but my loudness again backfired on me. My teacher placed my desk so that it faced the wall, outside of the group. He ignored me if I raised my hand in class, and my classmates were ordered to not speak with me. This continued for several months. When I was time to rearrange the desks (as this fellow was wont to do), I asked him, in private, if I could please be re-admitted to the group, and he agreed. He changed his mind when “rearrangement day” arrived. I remained facing the wall. Allow my sixth grade self a little pity: this extends beyond being the last one picked for a kickball team.

Then again, this all certainly looks very whingy, doesn’t it? Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m making mountains out of molehills; alternately, I’m concerned that readers will think I’m exaggerating these experiences. But this is the way things were done in the late 1970s.

I should add that, following my eviction from the “gifted class,” my “acting up” didn’t cease. In fact, it was compounded. I began to behave inappropriately in a sexual sense. It was compulsive more than anything else, and that, I think, was associated more with how adults had sexualized me more than some precocious sex drive. Anyway, I got called into the school counselor’s office one late spring afternoon. My teacher had asked the school psych to meet me. I stopped my actions dead after that--the shame that other people knew. Yes, I should have known better. But I didn’t. My “boundaries” were more than “squiffy.” They just didn’t exist.

When I think about this, I'm overcome with self-loathing, disgust, and shame about my actions, by not knowing what I was doing to myself; that is, setting myself up for scorn and others' disgust. This is the first time I've ever discussed this episode in any capacity whatsoever. I'm a bit torn, a bit ambivalent, and I might delete the entire entry.

Coward's update: I caved and edited the latter part of this post. The details are beside the point anyway.

The last time I fell asleep in class

So, why do I drink so much? Well, at first it was to help me get to sleep. Believe it or not, I’m terrified of sleeping tablets--Ambien, Valium, those kinds of things. My mother, however, has taken such things as long as I can recall. I think she’s as hooked on them as I am on booze (not that she’d admit it). Okay, tangent time:

Anecdote: when I was in high school, my mother worked graveyard shift. I was too afraid to sleep those nights when I was alone in the house, so I’d pull all-nighters. It wasn’t bad: we had cable and MTV was still in its infancy. I’d drink coffee and stay awake with Toto Coelo, Duran Duran, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and a few other bands I'm too ashamed to admit I enjoyed.

One day I went to school after one such all-nighter, and I dozed off in class (admittedly, it wasn’t the first time I’d done this). My teachers discussed my naps, and decided to phone my mother. One did and asked if she had any pills I might have been taking because I was falling asleep in class (funny that drugs ranked first in their suspicions and that no one had thought to speak with me about the situation).

My mother responded by counting out her pills; as I’d been nowhere near her tablets, the counts must have been acceptable. Even so, she still asked me if I’d been into them. This wasn’t the first time she’d falsely accused me of something when I was innocent, so I didn’t overreact. I just said “no,“ and left it at that. But I went to school the next day with a good deal of guilt and shame knowing that all my teachers were convinced of my “drug abuse.”

I’m sure this little scenario isn’t uncommon; I assume it’s happened to many, many teenagers--then as now. Especially now with our drug paranoia at such an extreme--and mine were merely the days of “just say no.”

I should add that, for various reasons (none drug/alcohol related), I was enrolled at an “alternative” high school. Three teachers (addressed by their first names), 60 students. A very cozy situation lacking none of the power struggles and angst of “regular” high schools. There were, however, fewer jocks because we had no gym.

Why is this important? It might not be. Like I wrote: it's an anecdote.

Three's a big girl, then

As a child, I was something of an insomniac. Like other kids, I would fight to stay up with my parents. But I don’t think it was simply a case of not wanting to go to bed. I actually didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to be alert, awake just in case something happened. I don't think nighttime scared me as much as bedtime did, for, as children, we went to bed when it was still light out (about 6:00 during the school year, 8 in summer).

I think my anxiety about bedtime began when I was three.

We moved around quite a bit while I was growing up. When I was three, we (myself, parents, two younger siblings) moved to California. We lived just outside of Los Angeles, and this is where my memories begin. I’m not certain of the chronology, but three big events happened:

1) Fourth of July celebrations! Our parents got us ready for bed, and as soon as it grew dark, my family went out onto the street where neighbors were setting off fireworks. A kind man gave each of us children a sparkler to play with. Poof ! I went up like a firework myself. The sparkler had ignited the cheap, blue, synthetic nightgown I was wearing. I must have passed out. I woke up in the hospital, smelling something horrible (disinfectant? burned skin?).

The next day my mother drove me to my grandmother’s house nearby to show off the nightgown’s remains. She appeared proud of my having been burned; she was clearly excited as she told my grandmother about the sparkler.

(Years later a friend of my grandparents told me that he’d been the one to give me the sparkler, and that when I caught fire he threw me to ground and smothered the flames with his own body. My mother says he’s full of nonsense. I don't know who to believe--I think all of the adults on that July 4th were drunk on ring-pull cans of Coors).

2) First Earthquake! I woke up in the middle of the night because the bed was rocking. My mother, nude, was crouched over me, holding me to the bed (my siblings were cradle-bound at this point). I didn't know what to be more scared of--the earthquake or my mother. Bless her. It was her first earthquake as well.

3) First Abuse! My mother's brother agreed to babysit my siblings and I while the parents went out to play. It was a regular evening, uneventful. When it was time for bed, I helped fill my siblings’s bottles with sugary water and prepared for bed. When I came out to the bedroom to say “goodnight,” he said that, since I was the eldest, I could stay up a little bit later than the babies. I was delighted. I started to watch t.v. with him. I was so young I didn't quite understand what it was he was watching, but I do remember a laugh track, so I'm guessing it was a sitcom. Just a few minutes after I'd settled down ont he sofa, though, he picked me up and bent me over the couch, across the armrest, and he assaulted me.

And then the typical post-abuse story: he told me I was a big girl. A good girl. I wasn’t to tell my mother; I went to bed feeling sick, dirty, ashamed, and unsure.

The next day, I was playing in our empty garage, which smelled of old oil on warm concrete. I was setting “table” on a large, overturned cardboard box. The dishes were cheap, tin toys with Charlie Brown characters on them. A door connected the garage with the kitchen, and it was open while I played. I could see my mom getting things ready for lunch, and I could hear her talking on the telephone. When I heard her hang up, I called out and told her all about the previous night's event. I don't know why I just ignored my uncle's directive. Perhaps I was just a brave kid. Perhaps I wanted my mom to know my uncle thought I was a big girl, a good girl.

She didn’t respond. I went inside to see if she’d heard me, and I found she was on the phone again. When she replaced the receiver, she said “Grandma and grandpa know, and you aren't to tell anyone about this.” Nothing more was said.

Inconveniently, perhaps, I remembered all of it, in a rush, when I was 12. I don't know what provoked the memory (I think my uncle might have been planning to move into the area). Regardless, I remembered. I told my sibling about our uncle had done to a three year old girl. I thought relating the event was perfectly acceptable; all the grown-ups knew. Surely there wasn't anything to hide. Well, my sibling went to the family adults--including our mother--to report what I'd said.

My family--including my mother--told my sibling that I was a liar. They told me I'd made it up. I was misremembering. I had to apologize for telling horrible stories. They pretended I'd concocted the event in order to grab attention and to scare my sibling. Even though I knew I was right, the feelings of dirtiness and shame escalated, compounded by guilt and humiliation. I was pushed out of the family's safety net, usurped by a sibling's need to feel safe around my uncle.

When I was 18, my mother confirmed my story. She justified forcing me to lie by saying "we just didn't talk about things like that back then. We thought it was better if nobody knew" She's right, I know, but that doesn't curb the betrayal I feel. We haven’t spoken of it since.

Two years ago my uncle shot himself in the chest with my grandfather's gun.

Years before, his wife had left him, taking their two little girls with her to another state (I'd always wondered if he'd forced his attentions on those girls, but it could be that he'd never touched a child after me). Following his divorce, my uncle wandered. He actually spent some time doing the hobo thing and jumping trains. Alcoholism and drug abuse incapacitated him to the point where he couldn't work. So he hang out in bars and received disability checks for some ailment.

I felt ambivalent when he died. I still do. I understand the tragedy of a life wasted, of the pain that must drive one to suicide, but I know that if he'd never touched me, everything in my life would have been different. That one action kickstarted a chain of actions. and here I am.