The Pleasure of My Company (14 page)

We were
introduced all around, and honestly, it was clear I was the normal one. But as
motley as we were, I suspected there was a unifying thread that ran through us
all. It was a by-product of the instinct that made each one of us pick up the Tepperton’s
entry form and sit home alone in our rooms writing our essays. The quality was
decency. But it had not really been earned. It was a trait that nebbishes
acquire by default because of our inability to act upon the world with a force
greater than a nudge. I stood there that day as a winner but feeling like a
loser because of the company I kept. We weren’t the elite of anything, we weren’t
the handsome ones with self-portraits hanging over their fireplaces or the
swish moderns who were out speaking slang at a posh hotel bar. We were all
lonely hearts who deemed that writing our essays might help us get a little
attention. We were the winners of the Tepperton’s Pies essay contest, and I,
at least for today, was their king.

This
sinking feeling did not last. I reminded myself that my entry into the contest
had been a lark and that it had really been done to extend my Rite Aid visit by
a few extra Zandy-filled minutes, though I guessed that my competitors had
taken their efforts seriously. I thought of them slunk over their writing pads
with their pencils gripped like javelins and their blue tongues sticking out in
brain-squeezing concentration. The spell was also broken by Gunther Frisk’s
triple handclap and cry of “All right, people.” It was time, he said, to start
the Freedom Walk. He tried to gather us into a little regiment, but there were
enough docents and officials trailing us to make the group seem a bit ragtag.
We trudged up a concrete pathway. I needed to walk slowly enough as to not
break a sweat, so I cleverly started at the front of the group, hoping that by
the end of the march I wouldn’t be too far behind. The sun beat down on me and
I worried about a sunburn singeing one cheek, or the heat causing a layer of
oily skin that would make my forehead shine under the spotlight like a
lard-smeared cookie pan.

The top
of the hill held an unholy sight. It turns out that Freedom College is a
little village, pristine and fresh, with its classrooms set back on fertile
lawns surrounded by low wrought-iron gates. In front of each of these
bungalows, hung from natural wood supports, were white signs with the name of
each department in calligraphic script, and each compound was set on its own
block, with a Street in front of it, with sidewalks. And curbs. Curbs I had not
counted on. In all my preparations for this day, the problem of curbs never
occurred to me. Yes, there was the occasional access driveway for supply
trucks, but they were never opposed by another driveway or were in some way
askew. And worse, students of both sexes, sporting matching blazers, lined most
of the sidewalks to hail our arrival, creating an audience for my terror. Our
troop had gathered a small head of steam and was not about to regroup or swerve
for my unexplainable impulses. The pathway fed onto a sidewalk and I saw that I
was on a direct path to curb confrontation.

False
hopes arose in me. Perhaps, I thought, the other contestants too could not
cross curbs. But I knew the odds of finding anyone else whose neuroses had
jelled into curb fear were slim. Perhaps my behaviour would be cancelled out by
someone else’s even more extravagant compulsion. Perhaps we’d find out that
Danny Pepelow needed to sit in a trash can and bark. Maybe Sue Dowd couldn’t go
a full hour without putting a silver Jiffy Pop bag over her head. But no rescue
was materializing and the curb was nigh. I could turn back. I did not have to
speak at Freedom Hall, I said to myself. I could stop and cower in front of the
curb, collapsed in a pool of stinking sweat, weeping and moaning, “No, no, I
can’t cross it,” or I could simply move backward while everyone looked at me
and my ashen face and my moon-walking feet. These cowardly solutions were
complicated by another powerful force, the fear of public humiliation. The
students had started to applaud thinly, probably because they had been
instructed to. My fear of the curb and my fear of embarrassment clashed, and my
extremities turned cold. My hands trembled with the chill. I felt greatly out
of balance and widened my stance to keep from reeling. I breathed deeply to
calm myself, but instead, my pulse raced into the danger zone.

If I’d
allowed my body to do what it wanted to do, it would have fallen on its knees
and its head on the ground, its arms stretched out on the sidewalk. Its mind
would have roiled and its throat would have cried, and nothing but exhaustion
would have made it all stop, and nothing but home could have set the scale back
in balance. But instead, I marched on, spurred by inertia and the infinitesimal
recollection that I had recently crossed a curb and had not died.

My feet
were like anvils, and it seemed as if the curb were nearing me rather than I
nearing it. My fear represented the failure of the human system. It is a sad
truth of our creation: Something is amiss in our design, there are loose ends
of our psychology that are simply not wrapped up. My fears were the dirty
secrets of evolution. They were not provided for, and I was forced to construct
elaborate temples to house them.

As I
neared the curb, my gait slowed. Most of the party had passed me and was
happily, thoughtlessly mid-street. Even Brian, who at first had hung back, was
now even with me, and as we approached the curb we were stride for stride, our
arms swinging in time like a metronome. Just before Brian stepped off the curb,
I slipped my index finger into the cuff of his jacket and clipped my thumb
against it. I was hanging on to him for my life. I don’t think Brian could feel
my minuscule clamp on his coat sleeve. As I raised my foot into the air above
the road, I relived Brian as leader, how his leap across my curb weeks ago had
shot me over it, too, how his he-man engine had somehow revved up mine. My foot
landed on the street and it was like diving into icy water. The sound of the
clapping students became more and more distant as I submerged, and I kept my
fingers secretly clasped to my lifeline.

When
the next curb appeared I came up for air and stepped up onto the sidewalk.
Muffled sounds began to clear and sharpen. By now, Brian had felt the
to-and-fro tug at his sleeve and he turned to me. My blood pressure had soared
and had pushed streams of red into my eyeballs and he saw them wide with fear.
But Brian seemed to think it was okay that I hung on to him for safety. And I
felt safe, too, even though the contact point was only the size of a small
fingerprint.

There
were four curbs in all and each step down was like the dunking of a Salem
witch. I would be submerged into the fires of hell and lifted into the sky for
breath. My persecutors were Tepperton’s Pies, and my redeemers were my thumb
and forefinger pinching a square half inch of wool. When I finally saw Freedom
Hall a few yards in front of me, its name now held a double meaning. My pulse
lowered to acceptable; my tongue became unstuck from the roof of my mouth. But
my God, was I drenched. I attempted to walk so my body would not touch my
clothing, trying to centre my legs in my trousers so my skin would not contaminate
my pants with sweat. I held my arms bowed out so my underarms could aerate and
dry, and I could feel that the hair at the nape of my neck was moist and
starting to curl.

Finally
we were backstage in an air-conditioned office. The chill matched my own body
temperature, which had plunged to freezing, and my evaporating perspiration
cooled me into the shakes. My nervousness was increasing and I was afraid that
if anyone spooked me I would spring in the air and hiss like a Halloween cat.

Soon we
were escorted to the wings, where we stood waiting to be brought onstage. We
could hear our introduction through the curtain but the words echoed vacantly
and were hardly intelligible. Several students lingered around us and I
overheard one of them whisper “How’d he get away from his gardening job?” and
then with a snicker nod his head toward Kevin Chen.

We were
told that we would give our speeches in order, “worst first,” which was quickly
changed to “least votes” first. This meant I would be going last. A stage
manager paged the curtain and waved us onstage with a propeller elbow. We
entered almost single file, and I realized it was the first moment since I’d
left Santa Monica when Brian was not nearby. I looked back. The stage manager
had barred him from the wings with a hand gesture.

Out on
the stage, the four of us sat on folding chairs while the college dean
introduced us one by one. I don’t think any of us could make out a word he
said. We were behind the speakers and all we could hear was the din of
reverberating sound. Occasionally, however, the dean would throw his arm back
and gesture toward one of us, at which point we would individually stand and
receive enthusiastic applause. From where, I wondered, did this enthusiastic
applause generate? Certainly not from the hearts of the audience members, who
had no clue who we were or the extent of our accomplishments. I figured it was
an artificially instilled fervour, inspired by a version of reform school
discipline.

Sue
Dowd spoke first, and though I couldn’t understand a word she said, I wept anyway.
For some reason, her body movements and gestures captivated me. She punctuated
sentences with an emphatic fist or a slowly arcing open palm. Her oval body
swayed with each sentence like a galleon at sea, and she concluded her speech
with her head humbly bowed. There was a hesitation before the applause began,
indicating that the audience was either so moved they couldn’t quite compose
themselves, or didn’t realize her speech was over.

Danny Pepelow
was next and inordinately dull. When I think of the trouble I went to to dress
nicely, I wondered who’d suggested to Danny that a lumberjack shirt, jeans, and
leather jacket would be fine. I was able to catch a few words of his essay
because he spoke so slowly that the sound waves couldn’t overlap themselves. I
wondered how he could have possibly gotten more votes than Sue Dowd. At least
she gesticulated. Danny stood there like a boulder. His voice was so monotone
that I welcomed the few seconds of audio feedback that peppered his speech. He
sat down to half the applause Sue Dowd had coaxed, but still grinned as if he
had spoken like Lincoln at Gettysburg.

The
spotlight then swung to me, but the intro was for Kevin Chen. When the operator
heard the Asian name, the light instantly bounced over to Kevin Chen, provoking
a laugh from the audience. He walked confidently to the podium, but I still
heard a few racially incited snickers from small pockets of the audience. Kevin
Chen was supremely intelligent and quite moving, his essay involving an
immigrant family success story with a true and abiding love of America. When he
sat down, there was nice applause and I think Kevin Chen had shown them
something real that must have touched every heart but the coldest. There was
also a specific locus of exuberant cheers from the darkened rear of the
auditorium that I presumed was family.

That
left only me, and the college dean gave an overly winded intro of which I did
not hear a single word. Toward the end of it, though, Gunther Frisk appeared
and walked over to him and whispered. Then the dean intoned a few sentences
more and I did hear a few words that gave me that icy feeling in my toes and
fingertips: “dead,” “friend,” “Lenny Burns.” What? I thought. The dean signalled
and waved me over. I stood, and Gunther Frisk met me halfway and hugged me with
crushing force. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Don’t mind what?” I asked. “Don’t
mind saying a few words about Lenny Burns,” he said, handing me Lenny’s essay.

I
approached the mike, tapped it, and blew into it; I don’t know why. “It’s
really Lenny who should have won this today,” I said, knowing that Lenny was
me. “Lenny was a high school friend, and we continued our relationship…”
Oops. Sounded bad, like we were boyfriends. But I could see the first few rows
before they were lost in the lights and they were still a stretch of frozen
smiley faces. “Lenny loved the ladies,” I said, countering myself. I felt I was
now even. “And what is America if not the freedom to love indiscriminately?” I
had fallen behind. I said a few more words, each sentence contradicting the
last, and I wrapped up with, “I will miss him,” and managed a little tear in my
voice on the word “miss.” I read a few lines from “his” essay and secretly knew
that had the winner—me—not already been decided, my display of grief over the
missing Lenny would have softened the judges and won him a prize right then. I
finished the speech with a flourish, stealing Sue Dowd’s head-bowing bit, which
worked terrifically. Lenny Burns received the applause he deserved, and not
just because he died so horribly, as I explained to the audience, from knee
surgery gone awry.

I
fumbled for my speech, which I realized was not only sticking out of my jacket
but about to fall onto the floor. I buttoned my coat and noticed my fly had
creased up like an accordion, plus my pants were hanging too low. I pulled them
up by the belt, then bent over and tugged at my cuffs to stretch the pant legs
straight. This eliminated some of the wrinkles and I felt ready to read. I
began my speech with an “ahem,” a superficial throat clear that I thought
showed a command of the room. I spoke the first few sentences confidently,
though my voice surprised me with its soprano thinness. Then I noticed the
rapt looks on the faces in the audience and felt myself become more
impassioned. After all, I was scoring. I invested myself more and more in every
word, and this was a mistake, because I began to realize that my speech made
absolutely no sense. “I am average because the cry of individuality flows confidently
through my blood”? I am average because I am unique? Well then, I thought, who’s
not average, every average person? My tricky little phrases, meant to sound
compelling, actually had no meaning. All my life an inner semanticist had tried
to sniff out and purge my brain of these twisted constructions, yet here I was,
centre stage with one dangling off my lips like an uneaten noodle. The
confusion of words and meanings swirled around my head in a vortex. So I bent
down again and pulled at my cuffs. While I was inverted, I was able to think
more clearly. I remembered that my speech was not meant to be a tract but more
of a poem. More Romantic. And as a Romantic, I had much more linguistic leeway
than, say, a mathematician at a blackboard. Still upside down, I reminded
myself I was in front of an audience who wanted to be enthralled, not lectured.
I decided to reach deep down, to the wellspring of my charisma, which had been
too long undisturbed, and dip my fingers in it and flick it liturgically over
the audience.