Connective Cube

Performance and vulnerability perhaps go hand in hand, especially without a script. Enter improv. This opening up to people in a group setting elicits fears of a whole group of people sitting away from me, with their backs turned, finding awful things to say about me. Okay, that is not really happening in the present, but the outsider schtik was comfortable and easy. If I don’t try, then no one can hate me!

In most group interactions, I want to curl in a pompazon chair and bury myself under a fleece blanket. Put some water on it, and you have a wet blanket once I go out, sweat from moving around and place my chair in the center of a setting, a room, or a gathering. Group interactions inspired a deep desire within me to hide out in single stall bathrooms, and sit next to a toilet my best friend.

Bathing in my own solipsism and living in my chair for 50 years is not particularly an option, and eventually, I would need to attempt to connect with people again. Also, all that wetness gets cold, or sticky, or moldy.

After all:

Well, shyness is an embodiment of anxiety for some. Others are quiet, and prefer to not speak until they are ready. I was more of the variety who had 10,000 things to say, but the feedback of the past reverberates in my head. The motto ‘Trust No One’ binds to ‘Don’t Speak Until Spoken To.’

Apparently, people brand this combination unapproachable. And why not? The chair seems more comfortable, anyway. Especially if I dab lemongrass lotion all over my hands. It smells good here too! I don’t need anyone if my nostrils excite with cellular action! I am my own diffuser!

I can’t say the people I love in my life particularly liked that, so I would leave the chair for them. Only them.

I decided one day that I need to get over my fear of group interaction when I moved to Baltimore. After all, I am going to live here for some time, and it isn’t feasible to walk into every group interaction assuming that I am just too much of a smelly pus scab to even bother with. And in ten years, scabs that are too big become scars.

Do I need to keep picking my own scabs? When can I just ignore the scabs, the bruises, yesterday, and just focus on interacting with people in front of me? New people do not know about yesterday, or five years ago, or my childhood.

Speaking in front of a group, attending an event alone, or dancing in the midst of a crowd? No problem! Actually speaking to someone after the fact without my heart racing? Chair, please, and wrap an entire roll of twine around me inside the fleece blanket.

This all plays out in improv classes. Now, I am into my third class. To say unequivocally that ‘I love improv, it has changed my life and cured my social anxiety’ would be quite the stretch.

The first time for anything is often easy for me in a group. I pick up new ways of doing things quickly, and I initially blend into the crowd. The 20+ person 101 class had cool people in it, looking to break out of their shells. We all cracked, emerged from wet blankets, and some people dreamed of becoming improv stars, or performing in a troupe.

It was easy enough to take the second class. The unique challenge was being the only woman in the room. As if I already had fears about being different and laughed at perhaps did happen, as I was awkward as hell around vocal, bombastic men. I realized I could listen to what people do, but the blend of trust no one let no one in started taking its toll. I rarely went out after, and if I did, it was with the one or two people I trusted in the class. A little under half the class dropped out, and the half that stayed painstakingly worked through awkward scenes.

I also realized my memory can fail, I can forget certain scenes happened, and then remember with an alarming alacrity that I just deeply offended that person and confirmed my worst nightmare for them.

Ugh! I took a break. Now I am in my third class, and opening up to the new group has been a trepidatious, yet rewarding experience so far. The harder part about this class is a lot of the people have already taken classes together. Which means I have to rely on the quality of performance to open up to people. When I feel like I perform badly, I mentally slink away from opening up to people. I also do this thing where I could pay closer attention to scenes. So here is my attempt to remember last weeks class.

The scene revolved around the building of a normative relationship. one where you have an introduction, a connection, a conflict, and then a resolution.

1. Scene 1: This took place in a podiatrists waiting room. The couple talks about corns and ingrown toenails. They bond over skateboarding, and they go off into the sunset and skateboard together. One has sweaty hands, and they both discover they have sweaty hands. They are overall very sweet to each other throughout, and hold hands often.
2. Scene 2: Fishing boat – Singles vacation. The two in the boat hit it off and eat chicken parmesan by the lake. Then, they catch a fish together! Except dude thinks it is his fish, and they argue weather the fish is shared or not. Mmm, then they cook the fish and take selfies.
3. Scene 3: Baseball game! It starts with a frank conversation about their dawdling boyfriends grabbing food below. They bond as feeling abandoned. Then, the conversation goes to conversations about the amount of Instagram followers. One has 1000s of followers, and the other has none. After a scuffle, the popular Instagrammer agrees to tag the other in a photo.
4. Scene 4: Myyyyy sceeene. My scene partner and I were at a bus stop. He meets people at bus stops, and I am on my way to an interview. I reveal initially that I took two years off from formally working, and he mentioned his role as an office manager. We bond over our love of smoking. He tries to convince me to skip the interview and smoke, and I say no. Then, we resolve that he will come to the interview with me, and we will eat crabcakes (forget the cigarettes) afterwards.
5. Scene 5: Okay, this scene involved three nine year olds in the principals office. One is an artist, the other is a budding business person, and the third is an athlete. They are in the office for drawing a penis, talking back to a teacher, and throwing a ball, respectively. They decide they want to have the business child steal porn magazines. Lots of friendly jabbing.

Clearly I have an issues with vulnerability and intimacy. Shall I say, I need to learn to open up without silently screaming with my body interactions ‘I don’t trust you’ and ‘Yer right, I am not going to initiate any interaction with you! That is all on you!’

K, a few more classes here. I do need to process all this group interaction somehow, so here I go again, on my own.