Nonchalance

A capsule memory is a scene from a person’s life that somehow contains the essence of their entire personality or existence. It is the quote situated above the first chapter of a book or the image that a filmmaker opens her movie with as a shortcut to the whole truth—instructions for how to interpret everything that follows. Perhaps we could each choose two or three such moments in our memory to share with those trying to understand for the first (or thousandth time) just exactly who (and why) we are. “I’ll go first,” I said to a friend on a walk in the woods when I first conceived of this little exercise a few years back.  

 “When I was a little girl and a friend was going to come over to play or come pick me up to go to their house, I would tell myself to sit and wait in my room until they got there, but the promise of imminent intimacy (and frivolity) lured me out of my room and onto the couch where I stole desperate glances out of the window until my father, who did not prefer window-sitting found me stationed at a curtain and shooed me out the door. Outside, I would sit myself on the front step waiting for a minute, maybe two, before progressing to the driveway to pace as many paces as I could stand, but always by the time my friend’s car proceeded up the big hill near my house, they would see me waiting at the end of my street waving at them from a long way off, grinning, giggling, occasionally leaping and grabbing some air with a pulled down fist in the universal yesssss motion, woefully incapable of feigning anything approaching indifference.”

That vignette is me, past, present, and, I must presume, future.  

As I got older it was the same with love interests. I tried to convince myself to wait to be pursued (as I had been assured was the divine order of things) but desire never seemed to seize the people I wanted to want me quickly enough, so I had to help them along however indecent such behavior was for a lady. I was called all the things that people (especially women and people of color) are called in these moments— “a lot”, “too much”, “loud”, “aggressive” and all that.

I am not a cool person.

I’m a warm person.

At times,

I am, dare I say, a hot person.

But never, never cool.

In college, I boycotted the show Curb Your Enthusiasm based wholly on the title’s apparent mandate.  “Don’t tell me to minimize my excitement just because your defense mechanism is perpetual underwhelm.” I’d huff.  “Don’t insist on less joy in the world so that you can maintain your mood. It’s gross, dude. How about I let you be as distant as you wanna be and you let me be moved to laughter or tears or literally whatever else I feel.

Before I explain why I think nonchalance can be some bullshit, let me set the record straight. I love illusive, (seemingly) unaffected, not-sure-if-they-have-a-pulse kind of people. I always have. And I know this sounds suspiciously like “some of my best friends are aloof” but if I gave you a list of romantic interests alone, I think you’d agree that I have the receipts to back up this claim.  

The number of sloppy tears and snotty noses I have endured because of my unyielding affection for an affection-averse person rivals the number of books on my to-be-read list—as in innumerable, unending, vaaaaassssstttt. I love being near someone who can wait to be spoken to before speaking. I love to watch someone observing the world from afar— measured enough, strong enough to hold back, if not abstain altogether. And not only do I love such people, I envy them, watching and wishing, I could somehow take them into myself like communion and in so doing become transformed into someone similarly impenetrable. I’d like to say this was merely a desire of my youth, but even in recent years, I have found myself on occasion wishing that I could be the kind of person who could uncare, and therefore unwant.

But honestly, uncaring and unwanting seem to be the specialties of those who need to steel themselves from embarrassment, from overwhelm, from whatever violence will be required of them to endure or to perpetuate, but I don’t want to be steel. I prefer to be flesh, soft and tender, prone to bruise, break, and tear, but also to be fully human. I think nonchalance can be great when applied to coffee dates, dress codes, and parking spots. But I don’t think that being unaffected should ever be confused with intelligence, reliability, or righteousness.

 I used to think that waiting at the end of the road for someone to come and get me the way that I did was pitiable. Maybe in some ways, in some instances,  it was. But now when the movie of my life zeroes in on a little girl kicking at a rock in the road, looking up at the sound of each car, shoulders drooping as each one passes, I see more than uncool.

 I see a person brimming with hope that someone is coming for her,

a girl bent toward walking toward what she wants,

someone willing to look a fool

which is to say willing to be seen,

even in a world screaming at her to hide, be ashamed, be less.