There must be a word for this nauseating, tingly feeling, but I haven’t found it yet.
If it were a seafood stew the tomato base would be embarrassment, ruminating and bubbling about. Regret and guilt would be the fish, chunks floating and falling apart, ready to surprise with the quick prick of a bone. Fear would be the muscles and clams, pried open for inspection to reveal a slimy thin little nugget which sometimes slips away to be lost among the rest.
There is no crab.
My friend Nancy and I had worked together on an online course before. She was brilliant; extremely organized, compassionate when people missed their deadlines, ever rolling with the punches and herding our feline workflows toward the checkerboard finish.
When she asked me to speak as part of her new online course – she was having trouble finding someone with technical skills – I said yes! I was actually planning on taking Gender Data with my co-worker anyhow. Even though it was one of the busiest seasons in our department we coordinated and researched and even did a run through for our boss. And before we could congratulate ourselves on making the deadline, it was presentation day.
At the first invitation to speak I felt Special, with a capital S. I of all people knew the right person, had the right skill-set, possessed the right intentions for the job. Special is euphoric for me. Maybe addictive. But over time a bit of self-doubt crept in, informed by my age, the length of my career, the even smaller length of time spent studying this particular topic.
I banished that stew to my stomach. It got in the way of the Special. It frothed and churned and the flap that covered my esophagus rumbled uncertainly, but I swallowed down that acid bile.
We finished the presentation and were onto Q&A. I had sweat through my shirt. The steam from my stomach rose into my brain to cloud my thoughts. It said:
Did you say something wrong?
Or something offensive?
I gulped and pushed them down but they escaped through my fingers, as steam does.
I caught a glimpse of the chat, which Nancy was reading from. I shouldn’t have. Someone asked a question my brain wouldn’t dare interpret. It was the last question.
Nancy asked it out loud.
This question turned my Special into a cold, wet, deflated balloon. It was one of those short questions, direct and clear, often leading, whose answer carries the weight of two questions: the one at hand, and the one underneath. The question underneath was this:
Are you a bigot?
Nancy asked me this out of kindness, so that I could answer well certainly I am not a bigot. I couldn’t even tell you now what I said. The stew came up and out and onto my professional clothes, and I sat in it and smiled the last of my smile until someone told me that we were no longer streaming.
There were many more questions in quick succession, but it was the questions underneath I was concerned with.
“Am I a bigot?” I asked Nancy.
“No, you’re not a bigot” she said.
“I hope no one thinks I’m a bigot,” I said.
“If that person was trying to call you out as a bigot, they weren’t being very nice” she said.
“Mmmm” I said.
On second thought…maybe this feeling was fear all along.
Hello! Thanks for making it to the end of my short story 🙂
Please leave your comments and writing critiques below!
Short Stories
Likes
602 Views
Share: