Getting Noticed

To borrow a line from “The Pursuit of Happyness,” “I call this part of my life ‘Getting Noticed.’”

I walk beside her. All eyes on her. Her legs and her figure and who knows what else.

I walk alone. Some eyes on me. My... aye, what do I know?  I got two legs, two arms, and all the other body parts the one next to me had the previous day. 

The packed dance floor. Does anyone else see the civilized vultures moving across the hardwoods? The laughter that is anything but genuine, the hugs that are anything but connecting, the dance moves that are longing for recognition. The fake posture of confidence and ease. I see ill-at-ease. One of the best lines I’ve ever heard was “Those who know don’t speak.” In this case, those who are don’t show.  Don’t show the muscles on steroids, the “cool” walk, the high chin, and the holier-than-thou attitude. Oh yes, that will certainly get the attention of the crowd. We will stare. We will admire. We will indulge. Some of us will fall prey. Some of us will want to cry at the blatant display of self-ignorance and emptiness. The next quality making its entrance is a great nemesis of mine. We have battled many o’ time, and it keeps coming. Aggression rushes in, perhaps, out, like a flood, like a sprinter out of his starting blocks, like a hungry lion out of its cage. You have seen it, too. It’s that woman whose body language, whose verbal language, and whose energy bestow themselves upon her victim and suffocate the innocent. “Notice me!” is her cry. It’s the man whose walk, whose talk, whose lead overwhelms what has now become his quest, to be turned into a conquest, sending her into a space of serious discomfort. “I am important!” is his message. Between the “notice me” and the “I am important,” there is miniscule room for a meaningful conversation to take place. Hence, “I call this part of my life ‘Pathetic, painful, preposterous.’”

I see the two feelings on the dance floor. I see those same two feelings in me, and I ask myself a simple question. A basic question. A question my mama didn’t ask me. What I would like to know, what I really want to know, moving beyond the legs and the arms and all the other body parts, beyond the make-up, and the dress, and the cars, and the jobs, is when on earth will I notice myself?

I would then call that part of my life “A Triumph.”