This Weird Thing That Happened

Back To School Night Day

Over a decade ago, I went to a party with my parents. As I talked to their two friends, a married couple, the husband acted really interested in what I was saying, which I can assure you, was rather uninteresting details about school or work. I soon sensed he was being flirtatious, and his eye contact was unnecessarily strong. I chose to act like I didn't notice. Really, when someone is coming at you, ignoring them only wets their appetite more. I didn't linger in the conversation longer than I had to, but an unspoken communication occurred that stayed with me much longer than whatever was spoken between the three of us.
The wife of the duo gave me a look of disdain after noticing her husband acting like a coquettish tipsy man-harlot. I took the grief she should have directed toward him. I was in a position where I couldn't win. Had I acted rude to the husband in a nod of sisterly camaraderie to the woman, she would have similarly scolded me through dirty looks and negative energy for being presumptuous and cocky, assuming her husband would be openly flirtatious with me. By staying there, remaining polite and acting naive, I came off as relishing in flattery and a little bit of a cock tease.
In the end, it's over, and I feel fine knowing there was nothing I could do to make the situation better.

Unspoken interactions are complex, and not because of an unsureness of what the other person's saying, its as if their feelings come through crystal clear, bizarrely since its communicated almost telepathically through eye contact and body language. Maybe it's "sexual tension" that can be as loud as spoken language, yet,
even in a crowd full of people, only the people entangled in the moment are tuned into the airwaves loaded with lusty messages.

Last night was Kiki's back to school night. As a person who doesn't go out much, I was reminded how bizarre it can be in a room of people who don't know each other. It started out as most social settings, with everyone sizing each other up. I sat in the back row, and asked a couple questions about the reading and writing program goals. After the group Q and A, all the parents moved to their kid's respective classroom.
Moving through the crowd, I followed Kingsley's teacher, a woman who is barely 5 feet tall, and is as maternal as she is cuddly, like a late in life Queen Victoria, but in her early twenties with tattoos up her calves and ankles. I looked up, meeting eyes of people passing by. There were twinkling eyes from people who seem social and happy. I made a mental note, these are the people to approach next time at an uncomfortable social gathering. Then there were eyes I met that looked unkindly on me, shooting darts. Then there were the fuck me eyes, accompanied with a tiny grin, the kind of look that makes me think they'd be easy to entice, or do the enticing, for a fuck in the coat closet. Look away.

Maybe the eye contact is all a figment of my imagination, cooked up from sexual frustration but, regardless, in the end I feel dirty. My interpretations could be a form of paranoia, which seems more likely than the other option, that I'm reading their mind or confidently assessing their thoughts the same way a psychic does a cold reading.
There is no doubt I have paranoid tendencies. Just the other day at the gym I noticed a speck glimmering on the ceiling, and my first thought was that the glimmering speck was a tiny camera, implanted in the ceiling to get a look at me talking to myself while on the treadmill. That day, I was rather anxious, so as I was jogging, I tried to make myself feel better by practicing a confidence building mantra. If the glimmering speck was a camera, then it witnessed me running with headphones, listening to music I'd occasionally sing along to, drop off deep in thought, and then come to, quietly and firmly chanting to myself, "You are a good person."
I use the same treadmill every time I go the gym, and never noticed the glimmering speck in the ceiling, which I found odd since running in the same place for an hour makes memorizing the space unavoidable. The spider webs in the corner of the giant plexiglass window made me skeptical of the worldwide conspiracy that a camera was implanted, since someone would surely tidy up that mess after going through the trouble of climbing a ladder to reach that height. Then again, tidying up the unkept space might call attention to the tiny camera.

Talking to a therapist about this harmless paranoia is fruitless, since the therapist would be in on the conspiracy, throwing fuel on the fire, igniting me to make an even bigger spectacle of myself. Much like seeing a therapist for entertaining bouts of paranoia wouldn't be helpful, reading body language is not really rewarding. Reading body language is as fleeting as reading Twitter. By the time the moment passes, there is an entire new list of messages to review, and the passing moment took along all the feelings perceived earlier, they dissolved the instant the moment moved forward. There is the lingering filth though, it leaves a film like a bathtub thats recently drained, and that residue blends with whatever new thoughts pop in my head.