The Exact Opposite of Okay(12)
8.48 p.m.
Danny’s hanging out with Prajesh tonight to make sure he’s doing okay. I think he plans on showing him his collection of vintage Nintendo consoles and having a Mario Kart marathon, so he rain-checks on me and Ajita. To be honest, I’m pretty glad for the girls’ night. With everything that’s going on with Danny’s newfangled feelings toward me, I’m finding myself monitoring my jokes and general behavior around him. It’ll be nice to just relax and not have to worry about making things worse.
We’re chilling and eating junk food in Ajita’s basement, and I decide to fill her in on the latest developments in the screenplay competition and Mrs Crannon’s unbelievable generosity. I mean, fifty bucks. ?Fifty bucks. I’ve never been in possession of fifty bucks in my life. I’m practically Bill Gates.
“Ajita, consider this. What if – and hear me out, please, because I know this is going to sound absurd – but what if not all teachers are Dementors in human clothing?”
“You’re right, that does sound absurd.” She tosses a Pretzel M&M into the air and catches it in her mouth. This sounds impressive, but you forget her ridiculously long tongue. She’s basically like a lizard catching flies.
“I’m kinda scared, though,” I admit. “About entering this competition.”
“Why?”
I pick at some stray lint on the sleeve of my sweater, despising the admission of vulnerability, but needy for my best friend’s reassurance. “I just keep thinking that I’m too working class. Too ‘common’. They’ll write me off as trash. These opportunities are not for People Like Me, you know?”
Ajita issues a funny kind of smile as she pours the remaining M&Ms down her throat straight from the packet. “I’m Nepali-American. Trust me, I know.”
“Right,” I agree. “And I know your experiences of marginalization are much worse than mine. But do you ever just feel like the deck is stacked against you?”
“All. The. Freaking. Time.” She crumples up the packet and shoves it down the side of the sofa for her parents to uncover in about a year’s time. “And I think I’ll feel that way as long as I live in this country. But what are you going to do – not even try? What’s the worst that can happen if you enter a competition and it doesn’t pan out?”
I properly think about this, and my fear really comes down to this. “I’ll be laughed at. And not in the good way.”
Turning to face me head on, Ajita replies, “So what?”
I smile. I know what’s about to happen. “So I’ll feel stupid.”
“So what?”
“It’ll be embarrassing.”
“So what?”
When one of us is scared to do something for fear of rejection, this is how we talk each other around it. By asking “so what?” and forcing ourselves to justify the fear, we soon realize there’s rarely anything to actually be afraid of.
I’m already struggling to come up with more answers. “So it might make me want to give up writing.”
One more time: “So what?”
Watching as she tucks her legs smugly under her butt, I concede, “All right. You win.”
“No, you win,” she grins. “No matter what. Just by putting yourself out there. Look, it’s human nature to shy away from situations where we might experience shame, especially in public. There’s something primal about wanting to avoid embarrassment at all costs. Not to get too academic on you, but from a psychoanalytic standpoint, it’s about preserving your ego – and thus your sense of personal identity.”
“Calm down, Freud,” I say. “Spare a thought for the idiots in the room.”
“Sorry, I forget about your below-average IQ. All I’m saying is that self-preservation and resistance to shame is natural. But it’s also not logical. And because it’s not a logical fear, it can’t be countered with a logical response. You have to face emotion with emotion. So channel all your passion and bravery and wildness, and shove them in fear’s face, okay?”
“Okay.” I grin back even harder. “You’re the best. Even though you’re far too intelligent to be my best pal.”
“I know. I tell myself this on a daily basis. And yet I’m the one who has absolutely zero idea what to do with my life. Figures. So what are you going to focus on next?” Ajita asks. “You have to be working on something else so you don’t go insane waiting for the results of the competition.”
“I’m not sure,” I say, digging my fist into a bowl of salted popcorn. [It may seem like we’re always eating, but that’s because we’re always eating.] “I had an idea for a short film about a couple in a failing marriage, and one of them – an extremely extroverted individual who never listens to their partner – loses the power of speech to a rare brain disorder. And it, like, totally changes their entire relationship. It upends everything they thought they knew about love and communication and humor. It forces the dominant one in the relationship to swap roles.”
“That sounds cool.”
“Right? But I can’t figure out whether the extrovert who loses their speech should be the man or the woman, because either way the underlying message could be considered problematic. If the man is the outspoken, domineering type, and the wife is super submissive and meek, it feeds into a relationship stereotype you see so often. But then if it’s the woman who ends up losing the power of speech, the message is kind of like, you can only have a successful marriage if the woman sits down and shuts up. You know?”