The Wallflower
I sit on the edges of a friend’s party, watching everyone else – the infamous five or six – playing Rock Band 2, while I sip at a coke and vodka. Sipping is all I do and if I get drunk it will only be because I am a lightweight who only drinks when she is with these people because drinking – just like drugs – is something I never fell in love with. I don’t drink because I am afraid of what I will do or say, because I am afraid of making a fool out of myself. More of a fool than usual, anyway. So here I sit, with my drink in hand, watching as everyone, including my husband, goes nuts on their fake, plastic guitars and drum set, as one of my friends screams into the microphone at top volume. I’m thinking she has a very good voice, especially considering that she’s had about five more drinks than me and is holding on to the mic stand for dear life. While I watch them having fun, I start to wonder about myself. I never join in, not unless they threaten to kick me out of the house, and it is not because I don’t want to be here. I love Rock Band night. It is, like, something worth living for.
My reluctance to join in is nothing new. As a child I could be found sitting on the swing or in the sandbox watching as everyone else divided up into teams to play basketball or tag. As a teenager, I went to every single school dance. I never danced unless someone asked me and that happened about as often as I got an A in math. That would be about twice a year. Instead, I would sit up in the bleachers, in the darkest corner. Our school bleachers were possibly the coolest thing in our school, if you asked me. They rolled in and out on a mechanical sliding system, so that, when there was a game, they were available to seat our school, our rival’s school, and the three other schools that came to make notes on how our rivals played the game. My school, of course, was always the pathetic underdog that only won if half the other team got the flu… or ate the brownies in the hospitality room. On the occasions that the bleachers were rolled back, the person at the controls would double check to make sure no-one was lurking under the bleachers making out because no-one wanted to be the one responsible for a spreading pool of blood on the gym floor. During the dances, the chaperones checked under the bleachers about every ten minutes. They always found some couple groping each other in the dark, and there were always detentions Monday to account for it.
I loved those bleachers with their worn, gleaming wood seats. I used to curl up in that corner, the highest I could get, and watch as my friends had fun. It has taken me over fifteen years to examine this particular habit. Some might say I was shy, and they would be right. I was painfully, terrifyingly aware of my own capacity for making a fucktard of myself. The very thought of tripping or getting sweaty enough to smell bad was enough to make me tuck my head in and stare at my hands when any of my friends came up to drag me down to dance. So why did I bother to go? During Rock Band night, while having a fit of introspection – probably due to the vodka and my already fuzzy vision – while curled in the darkest corner of Ari and Dragon’s couch, I discovered the answer that I was never able to give myself in high school while sitting in my favorite corner watching others gyrate and cling to each other with the absolute oblivion that is almost symbolic of teenagers.
It wasn’t something that was unordinary for me. I was the quiet kid, the one others forgot was there. Even in college and my brief, but ultimately doomed, flirtation with becoming a pot head, I was the one sitting slightly outside the circle, watching and listening. I had no witty comments or advice to impart. On the rare occasions I did make a joke or try to join in the fun, I was rarely heard simply because no one was paying attention to me. They never paid attention and this is not some whiny dissertation on what others did wrong, because I never saw it as wrong. I still don’t. In fact, I kind of like it. This was the first realization I had while making long, slow love to my vodka and coke. When I was a kid, if anyone had asked me what superpower I would like to have, the answer would not have been about x-ray vision or flying. I would have chosen to be invisible. Thinking back on the way people treated me, I realize I largely succeeded. Understanding this brings me quickly to the memory of a teacher telling me not to be such a wallflower. At the time I tried to follow her advice and ‘put myself out there’. I ended up, after five minutes of inept squirming to music I could barely make sense of, back in my corner, wrapped in shadow.
Some people, I think, are born to be in the thick of things. They enjoy all eyes on them, making gossip and entertaining those around them. I think there are also people born to watch. I’m a watcher. I sit in corners and record the details. And the shocking realization that came at the end of this line of thought? I like my role. I like what I do. I love to go to dances and watch the couples on the dance floor clinging so close there isn’t a molecule of air between them one second, and breaking up in a flurry of screaming and crying the next only to slip into the darkness beneath the bleachers to make up – and get detention. I like watching my friends singing into the mic, too drunk to stand solidly, but having a blast anyway. I like to be at a party and sit down, listening unremarked to the myriad of conversations that pass by me. I am, I realized, a fucking writer, whether I like it or not (most days I love it) and that watching is just another part of what and who I am. I am the shadow, the ghost you only catch out of the corner of your eye, endlessly and forever the wallflower, and I’m happy with it.
