Beth Anne Nelson
is written largely across the blackboard. Underneath it, slightly smaller, she has written,
Overcoming Presentation Anxiety!
The exclamation point, justifiably so, causes me concern. Yet the writing is so loopy, in such a big, sweeping script that it makes me want a drawing of a flower, or at the very least a smiley face, to follow it. I look to the woman standing before her girlish handwriting on the blackboard. She’s wearing a long, flowing skirt and a necklace of large brown shellacked beads. She wears her graying brown hair behind her in a long braid. I think her eyes seem kind. I wonder if what she is going to teach over the next six weeks will indeed unlock the secret of how to be normal. It’s a secret that’s been kept from me for so long. I tell myself I will pay attention to every word; I tell myself I will try my very best to embrace this.
But first, I have to check out my fellow public speaking-impaired classmates. I am concerned, of course, that there are only eight other people here. I double-check, thinking that maybe there are more. But no, there are only eight, and while you might think that eight is a good number because it’s not as hard to get up and speak in front of only eight people, that’s not true. If it’s hard to get up in front of a room and speak, I don’t think it matters if there are eight or eighteen or eighty people in it. It is hard no matter what. Trust me on this. I am nothing if not an expert in the field.
What causes me grave, grave concern is that eight people is actually not enough. The thing about eight is that, including me, it is still only nine. This could mean we all have to get up and make speeches in front of the class a lot more times than if there were, let’s say, twenty people, or even twenty-five. Are there not twenty-five people in all of New York City who need help overcoming presentation anxiety?
My inner math whiz, the one I’ve never come close to letting out, is stretching out inside of me. It’s raising its hand, and for some reason that I don’t fully understand, it’s doing somersaults as it tries to figure out how many people will have to give speeches each week. Two? Three? Four? And if there’s six weeks, then what’s the maximum amount of time we’ll have to spend giving speeches?
My inner math whiz flips over and disappears without answering any of the questions it posed. I think with dread that, worst case scenario, we could each have to stand up and give a speech
every week.
I don’t need to have an inner math whiz to figure out that I very well could be making a speech in front of all these people six
times.
Six times seems like an awful lot. I wonder if that’s what everyone is thinking? I wonder if they are looking around the room, in a similarly panicked, though much more mathematically organized frame of mind, trying desperately to figure out the same thing as me.
“Why don’t we all introduce ourselves?” Beth Anne says, freeing me from my fun with numbers. I snap back to the present, contemplate my position in the room and think, Oh no,
I bet she’s going to start with me.
“Let’s start here,” she says to the guy right across from me, and really,
thank God.
I relax ever so slightly.
“I’m Lawrence,” he says, and I wonder if he hates his chair as much as I, right now, love mine. Lawrence, I’d say, is in his late forties. He lisps a little bit on the end of his name. That, along with the way he’s got his legs crossed in a very ladylike way, and the way he’s got his arm stretched out across the chair-desk with his wrist hanging off the end, makes me wonder, I hope not stereotypically, if he’s gay. I notice there’s a gold band on his finger.
“I’m Diana,” says a serene and peaceful-seeming woman in a wrap dress. Next to her are two women in pantsuits, their chairs are angled in toward each other, and they seem so similar, their pantsuits both so elegant and tailored. The way they keep looking up at each other makes me think they’ve come to the class together. I notice how nicely accessorized they are, one has a Marc Jacobs purse slung over the back of her chair.
“I’m Lindsay,” “I’m Jessica,” they say, just short of in unison. I envy their camaraderie, along with their outfits, as much as I am intimidated by it.
“Amy,” says the woman next to them. Her exhausted tone is matched perfectly by the expression of boredom she wears and her tight-fitting black sweater, black skirt, heavy wool tights and clunky boots. She has very short hair; almost white it is so blond. She has black roots, the kind that look deliberate, the kind of hairstyle that makes me feel even more un-hip than I generally do.
“
Je suis,
uh, I am Martine,” says a very thin blond woman with a French accent. Maybe it’s just the accent but she seems haughty, mean, hostile. And this has nothing to do with the accent, but I wonder if she’s anorexic and then, if she seems hostile because she’s hungry. Anorexics, I imagine, are generally hostile. I would be.
“I am Rachel,” says a woman with black frizzy hair and enormous breasts. Her eyes are very glazed over, a little freaky looking, if you ask me. And I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking that maybe I’m being jealous right now because it’s pretty much a toss up as to what I want more, to have enormous breasts or to be really skinny. But I’m not being jealous, I’m really just being descriptive, this is what they look like.
Then finally, right next to me, “I’m Alec.”
I turn in my chair to look at him.
Hot guy
, I think,
and really well dressed.
Instinctively, I look to the floor: excellent taste in shoes. It occurs to me that this is very much not what I need: to have another crush on someone else, to spend my time in Overcoming Presentation Anxiety class lusting after yet another guy. That’ll make it real easy to concentrate, regardless of how much poorly executed practice I have at concentrating on things in the presence of a hot guy. I turn back to face forward and cross my arms in front of me. As I do so, I knock my pen off my desk. It hits the floor and starts rolling, I can feel everyone watching its progress across the floor.
Beth Anne walks over and stops the rolling of my pen with her foot. She picks it up and hands it to me.
“And your name is?” Right, it’s my turn.
“Hope,” I say quickly, and look away from her.
“Well, welcome everyone,” Beth Anne says warmly. “Does anyone have any questions?” I think I have a question or two, but none so pressing that they override my desire not to raise my hand and draw any more attention to myself. Clearly, I’m not off to a brilliant start.
“What’s your background?” one of the pantsuit girls asks, I no longer have any idea which one is which.
“Yes,” Beth Anne says, standing straight, and looking around at each of us. “I’m an actress slash cranial-sacral therapist slash anthropologist slash social worker slash movement trainer slash public speaking coach.” I notice Amy, the punky-looking blond woman, rolling her eyes. I don’t think that’s altogether called for, but as against eye rolling as I am, it’s not that I don’t entirely see her point. It really is quite a lot of slashes. I mean, yes, even though Beth Anne is dressed very earth mama chic in her long flowy skirt and a tunic-style shirt, a look I usually find quite comforting, she makes me very uncomfortable. But I think, just by the very nature of my fear, I may be predisposed to dislike her. I endeavor to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Alright then,” Beth Anne says authoritatively, once it’s clear there won’t be any more questions. “Let’s all get up in front of the room and introduce ourselves, and say what we do, when we’re not here overcoming our presentation anxiety.” She pauses to smile. “Then, if you’d like, why don’t you share with the class what brought you here.” She smiles again, in a way that I think she means to be soothing.
“Now, concentrate on pausing before you begin speaking.
Try looking around the room, making eye contact with each person before you speak. This is what I like to call ‘Taking the Room.’ It’s an excellent exercise to begin with. Hope, let’s start with you.”
I take back anything I said about giving her the benefit of the doubt. I don’t like her.
I get up slowly and walk the few steps to the front of the room. Beth Anne slips off to the side as I take my place in front of the desk. Instantly, my stomach is in knots. I can feel the sweat beginning to break out, behind my knees, under my arms. My turtleneck, it strangles me. I take a breath. Did she say to do that?
Eye contact,
I think,
eye contact.
I look first to Lawrence, his arm still stretched diva-like across his desk, his lips pursed, his eyes bright. That’s enough. I can’t stand up here and make eye contact with everyone. It’ll take forever.
Forever
, I think, is
way too long.
“My name,” I begin, and I can hear my voice betraying me as it cracks, “is Hope McNeill, and I’m a paintings restorer at the Met.” And how do I summarize, how do I say, really what brought me here, when all I’m sure of is that it has been so much? Do I tell them about Mr. Brogrann’s tenth grade English class and
The Grapes of Wrath?
Do I tell them I think it might have something to do with the fact that I am Jan Brady, that I’ve never been slim of thigh, have always been better with dogs than with people and that a long string of bad boyfriends ending with Evan, has only served to cement the fact in my mind that dogs really are so much the better bet? My God, I think, in between all the shaking in my mind.
And the thing is, I knew this could have been a question, I knew it was coming. I should have prepared. I realize that I’m standing frozen in front of everyone, so much like a deer in headlights, and right then, before I’m able to do anything about it, I think of the Rothko. I think how the problems of the present can be just as hard, if not harder, than the problems of the past. I take a deep breath. I turn and head right back to my seat, hoping with every part of my being that Beth Anne doesn’t say, “You should try again because you hardly came close to taking the room.” Thankfully, she doesn’t say anything and I am allowed back to my seat. The firestorm has spread from my brain to my chest and stomach. I wish I were alone, not only because then I’d be alone, but also because then, I could lay my head on the desk part of my chair-desk, just until this feeling goes away. I’m sure that once everyone has gotten up and said what they do—that is when they’re not smack dab in the middle of a nervous breakdown over the fact that they can’t speak in public—I will get a special mention as the worst one. I’m sure that Beth Anne will pull me aside and ask if perhaps I’d like to work with her privately.
As I focus on the floor, out of the corner of my eye, I see Alec get up from his seat next to me. He takes his position at the front of the room, in front of the large metal desk that I wish I could crawl underneath, just really stealthily so that no one would notice. I look up at Alec and notice again how strikingly tall, dark, and handsome he is. The tall, dark, handsomeness distracts my heart from its mission of beating right out of my chest. In a reversal of the usual effect of seeing someone so very good-looking, the pace of my pulse begins to slow.
He doesn’t look at anyone and begins to speak right away. “Uh, uh, I’m Alec, and I’m an attorney. Uh, I’m here because public speaking gets me very hot under the collar.” He smiles wanly and looks to Beth Anne, who nods a stoic approval. He heads back to his seat, and I think he did so much better than me, and I have to remind myself that this is not a contest. And, even if this is in fact a contest, it isn’t a fair one, because Alec isn’t as hindered as I am by frizzing hair.
Rachel, with the very frizzing hair, walks quickly to the front, stares out at us with her freaky eyes. Really, so blank and so glazed. She opens her mouth to speak, and a long, slow gurgle comes out. I think a little bit of validity has just been added to my frizzing-hair/poor-public-speaking-ability theory. Perhaps all either of us needs is a good blow-out. The gurgle ends, and she returns to her seat. Beth Anne, to her credit, does not ask her if she’d like to try again. The thin French woman glides gracefully to the front.
“I am Martine. I am director of New York City Board of Le Lait. We work very hard to get le message out about the importance of, how do you say, how do you say, breast-feeding. I must work on speaking public.” Martine, out of everyone, I feel has done very well.
Amy, blond and punky, stands up with an exaggerated exhale, and clomps to the front of the room. “I’m Amy. I’m a novelist,” she says and pauses, and exhales again. She seems to me so much less nervous than just really put out. I wonder what her last name is, what she wrote. “I’m here to practice for readings,” she tells us with a huff and trudges back to her seat.
“I’m Lindsay,” the first pantsuit girl says softly, her hands clasped together. “I’m an accountant, I work at a big accounting firm. This
thing
happened a few years back, this
e-mail thing,
and I’d rather not talk about it, but ever since then, I’ve had a really hard time, um, um”—she reaches up and tucks her hair behind her ears, one side and then the other—“I’ve had a really hard time with presentations.” I wonder what happened. I am amazed by her endurance because rather than returning to her seat, she continues. “Jessica, here”—she gestures to her pantsuited twin—“is doing this with me because she knows how hard this is for me, and she’s a really great friend.” She smiles over sweetly at Jessica, who in turn gives her a sorority girl thumbs-up as she heads back to her seat.
Jessica walks up to the desk and as she does so I’m sure she’ll be the best speaker, the best at introducing herself, as she’s not here because of any deep-seated distress, but more in a friendship/ moral support type of way.
Jessica turns bright red and runs from the room.
“Uh, I should go see,” Lindsay says softly, a few moments later, and walks out the door with her head down.
“I’m Diana, I work in insurance,” the wrap-dress woman says quickly, not nearly as serenely as she seemed initially. I wonder if it’s cheating that she got up there so quickly, before everyone’s attention was back from the door.