A Pilgrim’s Digression

I got on an elevator about an hour ago, and just as the doors were closing a well-dressed, sweet-smelling woman quickly got on board as well. Instead of pushing the button for her floor, or pushing the button to close the doors, she stood there smearing Burt’s Beeswax lip balm on her lips.

She didn’t seem to care that she had just delayed the departure of the elevator for another ten or fifteen seconds, long enough for someone else to get on and delay it further. She kept dipping her index finger into the lip balm and smearing more of the waxy stuff on her lips. Then all of a sudden she realized the elevator wasn’t moving, and with the same finger she was using to apply the balm to her lips, she pressed the button for her floor. Then she went back to applying her lip balm.

Looking at the greasy spot on the button, I thought to myself, “I am so glad I got on the elevator first.” All I could think of was a big, fat cold sore arising on the upper lip of some unsuspecting, otherwise herpes-free soul who unfortunately got on the elevator after this woman.

How many germ-laden elevator buttons have I pushed? How many snot or spittle-smeared hand rails on Metro and public bus have I gripped, then wiped my eyes or mouth? I feel ill just thinking about it.

I was in the elevator going to a department Christmas party. In past years, I have usually tried to inconspicuously skip such affairs. But last year, I was made to feel guilty for skipping out, when my absence was noted and someone made up a plate of food and had it brought upstairs to me. Therefore this year, when the email went around asking for volunteers to bring food, drink, and utensils, I actually did volunteer. I brought the utensils, not because I’m cheap, but because I’m lucky. Utensils were what I was asked to bring.

Nonetheless, all morning I was rather dreading the affair. I would much rather have spent lunch alone at my desk or bellied-up to Pete’s lunch counter, a book in one hand and a fork in the other.

My usual lunch being forbidden me, however, I spent about an hour or a little more with my colleagues. There was a tremendous amount of food. Someone baked a whole ham–not the canned variety but a real ham–and another person brought an exquisite beef brisket. There was pasta salad and canapés made of butternut squash spread on rye bread, raw vegetables and ranch dip, tiny egg salad sandwich hors d’oeuvres; and for dessert: fondue with strawberries, pineapple, and cantaloupe, an unbearably sweet raspberry tart, homemade marshmallow candies, and three different kinds of homemade cookies.

The conversation was unremarkable. I conversed when the opportunity arose for me to say something, but otherwise I kept quiet. Sitting there amongst these people, I began to think about why I feel uncomfortable and out of place during these kinds of social events.

It has always been my way to avoid social gatherings. I never went to dances in Middle and High School. Even family reunions were events fraught with stress, for me. My family are a garrulous bunch, and I have never fit in. My reticence, or perhaps my inability to be socially comfortable, always made my family ill at ease and irritable with me, such that I remember one family Christmas party at which my grandmother angrily forced me to play with a male cousin whom I knew only a little. I sat there feeling both cold and hot inside, embarrassed and also angry at my Grandmother, until the cousin grew tired of me and asked snidely, “What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

I didn’t say anything. He shook his head and left me. I crawled under the table and hid behind the draped table cloth until I heard my Grandmother looking for me. Then I slipped out and pretended that I had just come from the bathroom. Bathrooms also make great hiding places from people, incidentally.

No hiding today, but there was one event that did make me wish I’d been in hiding. And it highlighted why (I think) I still have difficulty feeling comfortable around other people.

As I was going through the line, putting food on my plate, the woman in front of me put her elbow in my canapé, smearing butternut squash all over the sleeve of her red Christmas sweater.

The woman turned and said, “Oh, would you look at that! All over this sweater, and I just had it dry cleaned.” Then she looked at me coldly. I guess she thought I’d bumped my plate into her arm. What should I do?

Was I supposed to apologize? I guessed so. “I’m so sorry!” I said, deciding instinctively to take the blame rather than have a confrontation. I took a napkin and wiped at her sleeve. Luckily the spread was thick instead of watery, and it came off without staining. Other people were looking at us.

“Hmmm,” she said. No “it’s alright” or even a gentle laugh to let me know that there were no hard feelings. Just “Hmmm,” as if she were contemplating legal action, or asking me for money to have her sweater dry cleaned.

I don’t even know who she was. Just someone from another department, probably one of those people who show up at every party because they know someone who works in that office.

This circumstance passed away quickly enough. I sat down and ate, conversing with folks as necessary, and when people began excusing themselves, I said my goodbyes and went back to my desk.

Here is what I believe I discovered today, however: I am uncomfortable in social situations out of an inherent lack of confidence. That is probably no big surprise to those who know me. But what I feel in these situations can best be described as awkward. I can’t eat without concentrating overly hard on how I am eating. Am I using my silverware properly? Can I belch silently so that no one hears? Got to be careful not to speak with food in my mouth! What if my plastic fork snaps because I was too oblivious to pick up a plastic knife? Do I risk going back up for a knife? I really didn’t get much food…can I go back for seconds? Are people looking at me and thinking, “What a slovenly hick!”

That latter seems to sum it all up. I come from a West Virginia family that commonly uses their fingers to scoop food onto a fork and who leave napkins lying on the table beside a plate, instead of placing them in their lap. After a meal, it’s nothing for my Dad to look under the table at the food on the floor and say, “Someone better let the dogs in”…and he isn’t joking.

My Dad’s family are earthy people, and my mom’s family even more so. But it has created a sense of inferiority in me. I still feel uncouth at any kind of social event, even an event as low society as an office party. I feel like my upbringing is obvious to anyone with eyes to see.

Of course, this does not explain why I should feel out of place at family gatherings. I used to think my ambivalence towards my family was due to the fact that I have nothing in common with any of them, nothing to talk about with them. From the time I was six or seven, when my Dad bought me my first .410 shotgun, my Dad and Grandpa forced me to go hunting with them in the winter; but that subject can only stretch a conversation so far…especially if one of the parties (me) no longer hunts at all.

I have no knowledge of or interest in sports. Indeed I have a deep, abiding antipathy to anything jock-like or athletic. My current job provides some degree of conversational material; however, although my grandparents and parents like to brag about where I work, I get a sense that no one really understands what I do, and their eyes glaze over when I try to explain it to them. So I usually just shorten my occupation to “I work on the website,” which also shortens people’s interest (and which would probably offend all true web designers employed by the federal government).

But I don’t think this lack of understanding between us fully explains the pain I feel in family social situations. After all, they are my family. Aren’t they supposed to understand me better than anyone?

So I guess, in a way, I don’t yet have an easy explanation for why I feel uncomfortable in family situations. This Saturday, we are going to be attending my Dad’s family Christmas party, which I have attended every year that I have been alive, as far as I know. And which has always made me feel sick with dread. Why?

Well, when I was younger, it was a sickness borne of the fact that I felt I had to be something I was not. My family wanted me to be friendly and playful, but I was really shy and retiring. I wanted to sit quietly at an adult table and listen to adult conversation; my parents or grandparents would shoo me away, sometimes angrily telling me to go play with the other kids. To this day, I remember the hurt I felt hearing my Grandma embarassedly excuse my behavior by saying to family members, “He’s just backward.” I was standing right there in front of her. Those family members looked at me in the same pitying way they probably looked at retarded children.

Backward. Yeah, that’s me. I mentioned that story to my 93 year-old landlady, once, and she said, “That’s a mean thing to say about a child. It’s also a very old-fashioned word; I don’t hear it much, today.”

I suspect that, although I have overcome my “backwards” mental illness to an extent, I am still carrying around a pile of baggage from my childhood. After all, I remember something my Grandma said about me to someone else nearly twenty years ago. I retain psychological baggage the way some women retain water. Even going to an office party becomes an ordeal which I try to avoid, and failing that, I go like a convict to the scaffold.

It’s a wonder I ever made a friend, or met someone and got married. There is a part of me, even now, that often finds associating or relating to others so difficult and even traumatic, I’d rather be alone. Sometimes I fantasize about being absolutely alone, hiding underneath some metaphoric table, behind a different kind of tablecloth; perfectly alone, such as I could have been in college, when I was single and lived alone and had no responsibility to anyone but myself.

I also remember how lonely and unhappy I was back then, being alone. (Yes, I am a mass of contradictions).

And so I don’t really want to be alone again. But there are times…sometimes it does feel as if I am absolutely out of sync with everyone else in the world. I don’t make friends easily. I don’t have enough in common with other people. I don’t know how to talk to other people. Sometimes it feels good to hide from my inadequacies. Often it’s easier, even if lonely. A rock feels no pain; an island never cries, as the song says.