Carla Bruce’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Dramatis Personae:
Friend #1
Friend #2
Friend #3
Friend #4
(Friends to Boyfriend)
Boyfriend
Girlfriend
Scene: Generic NYC Restaurant/Apartment/Bar
Social Anxiety In Three Acts
[ A C T 1
Scene 1. Brooklyn. An apartment.]
Enter Girlfriend and Boyfriend.
BOYFRIEND: You about ready? Friend #3 is meeting us at the bus stop. (CHECKS PHONE.)
GIRLFRIEND: (APPLYING EYELINER) Yeah, gimme five more minutes. (WINCES, SHARPENS EYE PENCIL.)
BOYFRIEND: Okay. (CHECKS PHONE, CHUCKLES, TYPES.)
GIRLFRIEND: How far is it?
BOYFRIEND: About 20 minutes by bus, why?
GIRLFRIEND: Just wondering. (STARES AT SELF IN MIRROR, GRIMACES, WIPES LIPSTICK OFF TEETH.)
GIRLFRIEND: Does this look okay? Am I too dressy?
BOYFRIEND: You look beautiful, baby.
GIRLFRIEND: (IS SKEPTICAL.)
BOYFRIEND: Ready?
GIRLFRIEND: (IS NOT READY.) Yeah, let me grab my purse.
[Scene 2. Brooklyn. A bus stop.]
Enter Girlfriend, Boyfriend, and Friend #3.
FRIEND #3: (GIVING HUGS.) HEY, HOW’S IT GOING????
GIRLFRIEND: (RETURNING HUG). Good, how are you?
FRIEND #3: Good, good, staying alive, loving life. What have y’all been up to?
BOYFRIEND: Chillin’, man, today was a lazy day. Adventure Time marathon. (GLANCES AT GIRLFRIEND.)
GIRLFRIEND: (SMILES, NODS.) Mm-hmm.
FRIEND #3: That’s cool, enjoying the weekend. I’m trying to think of if I have any new gossip…OH, did you hear about this thing that happened to this person in our shared past?
BOYFRIEND: I saw that! So here is some commentary on that event! Can you believe that after all of the time that has passed, they are still doing that thing?
FRIEND #3: No but actually it isn’t that surprising when you consider this fact that I am bringing up right now.
BOYFRIEND: That is so true. (LAUGHS UPROARIOUSLY.)
FRIEND #3: (LAUGHS UPROARIOUSLY.)
GIRLFRIEND: (CHECKS TWITTER.)
[ A C T 2
Scene 1. Brooklyn. A restaurant.]
Blast of voices and heat. Darkened room, swarming with laughing figures. Enter Friends 1-4, smiling and familiar.
BOYFRIEND: Hey, what’s going on, y’all? (GIVES HUGS.)
FRIEND #3: HEYYYY! (GIVES HUGS.)
GIRLFRIEND: Hey! (GIVES HUGS.) How are you? I’m doing well. Good! Yeah, I’ve been good. Haha, yeah. Just working, yeah… Good! How have you been?
FRIEND #1: So what’s been going on, Girlfriend?
GIRLFRIEND: Not much, just working, haha…
FRIEND #1: Gotcha, gotcha. On the grind.
GIRLFRIEND: Yeah. (PAUSES A BEAT TOO LONG.) Uh, how about you?
FRIEND #1: Same, man, working on a thing I’ve been working on since we met. We talk about this at every outing, but I’ll pretend it’s the first time we’ve talked about this.
GIRLFRIEND: Oh right, this thing again. This is safe topic, because there is only so much to be said, and then we can politely end our conversation.
FRIEND #1: Exactly, see, at this point, there is nothing left to say but we’ve been catching up for the appropriate amount of time, so I can meander away without it seeming rude.
GIRLFRIEND: And I can slink into the corner for a minute or two, until it seems strange that I’m not talking to anybody. (CHECKS FACEBOOK, ACCIDENTALLY LIKES A STATUS, UNLIKES IT.)
BOYFRIEND: What are you doing?
GIRLFRIEND: (chastised) Nothing. (PUTS PHONE AWAY.)
BOYFRIEND: Why don’t you say hi to Friend #2?
FRIEND #2: Hey, Girlfriend.
GIRLFRIEND: Hey! (HUGS.) How’s it going? (LISTENS ATTENTIVELY, EYEBROWS RAISED.)
GIRLFRIEND: (THINKS: WHAT FACE AM I MAKING RIGHT NOW?)
GIRLFRIEND: (THINKS: I SHOULD STOP STANDING LIKE THIS. MY HIP HURTS.)
GIRLFRIEND: (THINKS: MY ARMS ARE REALLY LONG.)
FRIEND #2: So what’s happening in your life, Girlfriend? Tell me everything.
GIRLFRIEND: (SMILES AND CHUCKLES AWKWARDLY.) Not much at all, just, you know, working. (WONDERS, NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, IF HER LIFE IS LACKING SOME ESSENTIAL ELEMENT THAT WOULD MAKE THESE CONVERSATIONS LESS AGONIZING.)
FRIEND #2: I either don’t know or don’t care that you’re trying to weasel your way out of this conversation, so I’m going to continue asking different versions of the same question in my relentless quest to make you talk some more.
GIRLFRIEND: Haha. Yeah. (SIPS DRINK.) (SIPS DRINK.) (SIPS DRINK.)
FRIEND #4: Oh hey, what’s up, y’all?
GIRLFRIEND: (EXHALES IN RELIEF.)
FRIEND #4: Hey, Friend #2. I’m going to respond to your question appropriately, being sure to include engaging dialogue and details.
FRIEND #2: I’m going to gently tease you about what you just said! (LAUGHS.)
FRIEND #4: I’m going to acknowledge your teasing in a blasé, unaffected way! (LAUGHS.)
GIRLFRIEND: Hahaha. (CHUGS DRINK, LOOKS AROUND.) Be right back.
[Exeunt Girlfriend.]
[Scene 2. Brooklyn. A restaurant bathroom.]
Enter Girlfriend.
GIRLFRIEND: (BREATHES.)
GIRLFRIEND: (ENTERS HANDICAPPED STALL. WIPES TOILET SEAT. SITS DOWN.)
GIRLFRIEND: (BREATHES.)
GIRLFRIEND: Ugggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
GIRLFRIEND: (STARES AT HANDS. STARES AT FEET. CLICKS HEELS TOGETHER THREE TIMES. LAUGHS BITTERLY.)
GIRLFRIEND: (BREATHES.)
GIRLFRIEND: (STARES AT WALL, GRIMACES.)
GIRLFRIEND: (BREATHES.)
GIRLFRIEND: (STANDS, FLUSHES TOILET WITH FOOT. WATCHES WATER SPIRAL DOWNWARDS AND OUT OF SIGHT. WATCHES WATER SWIRL UPWARDS. WATCHES WATER SETTLE.)
GIRLFRIEND: (BREATHES.)
GIRLFRIEND: (EXITS STALL, WASHES HANDS SLOWLY.)
GIRLFRIEND: (mutters) It’s flu season. (WASHES HANDS AGAIN, MORE SLOWLY.)
GIRLFRIEND: (STARES INTO MIRROR. SCRUNCHES FACE INTO THE SHAPE OF A SMILE. FIXES HAIR. FIXES HAIR SOME MORE.)
GIRLFRIEND: (BREATHES.) (BREATHES.) (BREATHES.)
Exeunt Girlfriend.
[ A C T 3
Scene 1. Brooklyn. A bar, four hours later.]
Thumping bass. Alcohol stink. Hot press of bodies. Enter Boyfriend, Girlfriend, and Friends 1-4.
BOYFRIEND: Are you feeling better?
GIRLFRIEND: (IS FINALLY DRUNK.) Yeah, I’m great! (DANCES AND LAUGHS WITH FRIENDS 1-6.)
BOYFRIEND: (SMILES, DANCES.)
Tags: anxiety, carla bruce, health, humor, mental health
oh dear god I’m glad I’m not the only person who’s gone to the washroom and just sat there, equally dreading/reflecting/self-distracting with a cell phone, then gotten all nervous about “Shit how long have I been in here, someone is going to notice, gahhhh” and tried to come up with a reasonable excuse to leave early.
I love this!
This made me feel anxious.
Oh god… yes, this is me.
Also, sometimes there’s an Act 4 where I start crying for no reason due to all the residual pent up anxiety that I can’t hold back due to the drunkenness. 🙁
Oof just reminded me of a wedding I went to for some friends of my boyfriend. I was just bawling on the ride home and I wasn’t sure why. Just crying and crying.
Yeah, there’s rarely ever a reason for it, but once those tears turn on, I can’t turn them off for anything.
My act 4 is replaying in my head everything I said at the event and panicking about how idiotic it was. Except now that I’m married, I can replay it *out loud to my husband* and make him tell me it wasn’t idiotic. I am a joy and a treasure.
every time!!
I need to learn this skill. I ask my husband – “was I an asshole after I was drunk last night?” and he reassures me, but then points out some moment when I was at least a little bit ridiculous.
And then I die of shame.
Your husband is doing it wrong! Maybe you need to post a “no feeding the anxiety” sign so he can remember what his job is here.
YEP
My Act 4 is the next morning, when I agonize over every single thing I might have said while drunk that I don’t quite remember, and assume that because I was enjoying myself uncritically I must have been an utter ass to everyone around me.
haha… i don’t even get drunk because the post-drunk social anxiety self-hatred (“why did i SAY that???” etc.) is terrible.
and i still spent all of Sunday and most of Monday in bed after my sister’s wedding Saturday, and stress-cried on the way to work Tuesday.
I think I’m mostly recovered, but Christmas is next week, so I’m just going to spend the next 7 days hiding in bed playing some new phone games if I’m not at work.
Why oh why does the heel clicking never work. *sighs*
Carla has apparently been watching me. So.
You and me both.
WONDERS, NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, IF HER LIFE IS LACKING SOME ESSENTIAL ELEMENT THAT WOULD MAKE THESE CONVERSATIONS LESS AGONIZING
I often wonder this! What is it that I’m not doing, that, were I doing it, I could talk about it?
Sometimes, before a social event, I try and look up three things (a positive news story, a movie/theater event I would potentially be interested in, and a medium-length joke I haven’t heard before). When I feel like I’m supposed to have something in my life that I would talk about at that point in the conversation, I either say “Hey, did you hear about [good or funny news story]” or “Are you thinking of going to [event], I liked the last one but I’m not sure, the trailer looked ok” or “I heard a great joke yesterday, so a doctor and a physicist are going to the racetrack…”
Then the other person doesn’t say much and I run out of things and feel awkward again, but at least there was a moment where I emulated normal human conversational mode!
A wise start for sure.
Clearly, the others are feeling panicked at your gigantic social skills, and are fighting the urge to go hide in the handicapped stall.
And yet, sometimes having nothing to say is far more agreeable than having too much to say about nothing.
‘No, please, do go on for another 20 minutes, Coworker, about the various greys you’ve painted and repainted your bedroom with and how you were so certain that the last ‘mushoomy’ colour would be perfect but looked ‘purply’ in the cold light of day.’
this. gave. me. so. much. anxiety.
which i suppose means its brilliant
“My arms are really long” – I SO related to this!!
also: giant hands.
Tiny wrists. I find myself wondering, on occasion, if someone else is noticing my tiny wrists.
A year ago I was in a photo with a friend and everyone was like “wow in this photo your hands look so big!!” and then I realized, it wasn’t the photo. I have GIANT hands, and I cannot un-see them now. They follow me everywhere.
I have giant hands, too! GIANT HIGH FIVE!
Me too! They are larger than my boyfriend’s, as are my feet. I have had the nickname “Man Hands” in the past. I pretend it makes me look less chubby.
Thirded on the giant hands. On the plus side, it makes musicians (especially pianists) extremely jealous.
Yes! Except, they don’t cause me anxiety because I’m weirdly proud of my long, long gorilla arms.
(My giant, gorilla barrel rib cage is another matter.)
This: (THINKS: WHAT FACE AM I MAKING RIGHT NOW?)
I do that all the time. Basically every conversation I have with coworkers.
And I also use the restroom as alone time.
YES all the time! And then I’m like – oh shit now I’m making an even weirder face now that I’m thinking about what face I’m making, can’t I go back to the previous face, that one seemed ok!
Often I get so absorbed in the face conundrum that I end up kind of laughing – and then realise that the person talking to me hadn’t noticed my entire saga up until that point, but now they’re wondering why I’m laughing at them…
Basically I try not to converse.
I used to think I had social anxiety but it turned out I was just hanging out with a bunch of people I didn’t particularly care to interact with.
Social anxiety, or “everyone I know is an idiot?”
“How come I never have anything to say to these people and I never want to be in the same space with them for more than a few minutes? Could it be because we have little in common and I find them excruciatingly boring and shallow, and every interaction I have with them is mindnumbingly awful? hmm”
I made different friends and now this is no longer a problem. Thanks, college!
(SIPS DRINK.) (SIPS DRINK.) (SIPS DRINK.)
Yep.
this is so familiar to me that I can’t decide if I feel reassured that I’m not alone in feeling this way, or slightly disappointed in myself for being so generic in my social anxiety..
Maybe we all need to be sharing tried and tested talking points to minimise the awkwardness while we’re all hiding out in the toilets together.
I’m going to start graffiti’ing restroom stalls with conversation starters.
I can’t recommend enough that everyone watch at least some television, or just cultivate general television awareness. One of the most successful group social interactions I have ever had was one where where a discussion about TV shows that were spinoffs from other shows came up. I got to participate by just yelling the names of shows. “Family Matters!” “Amen!” Then I got to go home!
An older coworker advised me once early in my working life that it would pay to at least nominally follow a sport, in order to always have a work-appropriate topic to bring up and bond with people over. I took his advice and it has saved me in so many awkward situations, both at work and socially. I can literally just say “go Giants!” and then repeat back some recent newspaper headlines and that’s my whole side of the conversation. Thank you, former coworker.
I feel like this is the entire point of fantasy football.
(SIPS DRINK EVEN THOUGH SHE KNOWS THERE IS NOTHING LEFT IN THERE BUT NEEDS SOMETHING TO DO WITH HER HANDS AND HOPES NO ONE NOTICES SHE IS DRINKING NOTHING.)
(WONDERS HOW WEIRD EVERYONE THINKS SHE IS NOW THAT SHE IS PRETENDING TO SIP FROM AN EMPTY GLASS.)
Ah, but the best escape from any conversation is ‘I’ll be right back, I just need to get a new drink.’
Unfortunately that’s also how I end up getting uncomfortably drunk at social events.
I pour half a glass so that I need to refill faster. and you can use non-alcoholic drinks.
This is So. Real. Though even without the drinking, the social anxiety means I never really know ahead of time what’s going to pop out of my mouth. This is… kind of terrifying, can be exciting, but also terrifying. It helps to hang out with people who find me hilarious. It also means that replaying past conversations in my head is a hobby/habit I’ve spent years trying to quit. If what I said (or worse, posted or emailed) is so bad that it needs an apology, I apologize and move on. If it was merely embarrassing, I’m learning (slowly) the discipline of “pretend I did it on purpose and am really that much of a badass” and play it off like a rockstar. It ain’t easy, but I’m just so damn tired of being afraid. m/
Fistbump of empathy.
I’m still replaying conversations in my head from twenty-four years ago when I was fucking six years old. I had a therapist once do this weird hypnotism thing on me with some of the weird anxiety things I would ruminate and hate myself for that I remembered vividly from about the same age, and she tapped and rubbed my palms in a rhythmic motion while I described them and now I can’t really remember what those memories were, and it’s great! but i’m thirty years old and i don’t have thirty years to hypnotise myself out of anxiety about every single memory that eats at me (even the ones that I’d consider utterly benign if someone else told me about)
In my house I am forever trying to get the TV turned to reality shows, but husband thinks they’re stupid without giving them a chance. He has just absorbed that the Kardashians are terrible and worthy of ridicule. And I keep trying to explain that I have to keep up with these shows so I can contribute in social situations! We were at his work holiday party last week, and someone blessedly turned the convo to reality television. VINDICATION!
Jezebel was great for that, back when I used to read it. I’d be up on all the celebrity gossip and reality show goings-on without ever needing to tune in at all.
I have cut down a lot on smoking, but it’s hard to quit completely because at parties it’s an excuse to leave – and no one else smokes anymore, so I get to be totally blissfully alone. I think I can manage the quitting via strategic (and dishonest) use of my phone though – e.g. “oh such and such a thing came up, I’ve got to go answer some emails.”
Facebook also helps if you can remember something that someone has posted about recently. Obviously this is useless at a party where you don’t know most of the people enough to already be FB friends. In those cases I recommend finding the cheese tray and hovering near it. Not only will you get to eat a lot of cheese, you will meet other people who like cheese more than people and then you will have something in common to talk about.
I have found something just horrifies me about parties where people stand around and talk at each other. My back itches and I want to run away. Especially if there’s background music up so loud that you can barely talk to anyone unless you’re all yelling. No no no no NO.
One of the things I like about gatherings of introverts (these exist) is that generally speaking, people are more likely to be sitting down, and there’s a much higher likelihood of there to be non-people things to interact with or talk about- games, or familiar movies playing, or people cooking, or books. So even if you couldn’t think of anything to say, you could ask people you wanted to interact with if they, say, wanted to put a puzzle together, and now there was structure to your interaction.
I have extremely fond memories of going to a party with a lot of geeks, and one of my dear geek friends and I looking at each other after a while and saying “Do you want to go sit in a corner together and knit and not talk to anyone?” and she said “YES!” and so we did and it was awesome. After about half an hour we wanted to talk to people again, so we did, but in the meantime folks left us both alone.
This sounds like me! If I’m standing around I’m standing in the way of other people who want to move around so I have to pay close attention to everything that is going on around me in case I’m in someone’s way AS WELL AS trying to understand what people are saying over the music AND think of something to say myself? Hell no. I find somewhere to sit and one person to talk to, and tune out everyone else. If no one wants to be my exclusive conversational partner, I find somewhere to sit and tune everyone else out with a book/phone/knitting.
And this is why I only go to things with people I can talk to or to trivia.
And why I enjoy several alcohols.
it’s good to be married.
“oh, i’m so sorry i can’t be there. the wife, you know.”
*makes noise like whip cracking*
*leaves*
*sits on couch with wife doing absolutely nothing all evening*
*calmly smiles*
*fuck all social events*
Yes! I threw myself a birthday party recently, and my sister's happy baby was so helpful in keeping awkward moments to a minimum. Whenever we ran out things to talk about, we would just watch the baby crawl around being happy and then talk about how happy he is, and trying to lure him into walking.
Hey, some of us girlfriends can dress up and then be like, “Bf, why the FUCK do you not have any pants on, it is time to leave.”
Hey, some of us girlfriends can dress up and then be like, "Bf, why the FUCK do you not have any pants on, it is time to leave."
I was having a little vexed moment re: use of “exeunt” for one character, but then I realised WE ARE ALL GIRLFRIEND and it is perfection.
Your husband is doing it wrong! Maybe you need to post a "no feeding the anxiety" sign so he can remember what his job is here.
Social anxiety isn't the same as introverted, though. I'm extroverted as fuck when the anxiety turns off.
This sounds like me! If I'm standing around I'm standing in the way of other people who want to move around so I have to pay close attention to everything that is going on around me in case I'm in someone's way AS WELL AS trying to understand what people are saying over the music AND think of something to say myself? Hell no. I find somewhere to sit and one person to talk to, and tune out everyone else. If no one wants to be my exclusive conversational partner, I find somewhere to sit and tune everyone else out with a book/phone/knitting.