Tricks

So I wrote this in one of my creative writing classes. It's a rough exploration.



There’s a trick to becoming invisible. It’s in the blending – becoming a grab-bag of everyone so that you are no one in particular. Absorbing your peers and mirroring themselves back so that when they look at you, they see only themselves, and ignore the fact that you are indeed someone else. By this point, it is not even necessary to speak more than a few words each day. Like a dog staring at its own reflection, they will bark, and hear their own bark back.

There’s a trick to going to church as an atheist. Smile wide and look earnest and keep your heathen mouth shut. Don’t sing to the songs you don’t know, have never heard before, don’t stumble over praises to a deity you don’t believe in. Mouth “watermelon”and your lips look like they know the words. Don’t offend the possibility of God by pretending to believe when you don’t. Close your eyes and be respectful.

There’s a trick to sleeping alone. Dig out that old stuffed animal, eyes scratched and fur matted, hold it like you held those past warm bodies. In your head, repeat the mantra: I am an independent woman. Squeeze harder.

I have too many tricks. I wrote myself a role and played someone else for five years, an amalgamation, a composite character, and eventually smothered myself beneath the layers. I don’t know how to operate without tricks; I don’t know how to be genuine. I’m trying, but when I say “I love you”, when I say “I’d like that”, it sounds hollow and forced. I am told I have a sincerity problem. I maintain that that's not quite it. It’s just that, after this long covered by a character, by makeup, by plasticine smiles, my cleansed skin is raw and cracked.

There's a trick to sounding sincere.


--Jazz