Noticing

At the party you hope they don’t notice you noticing them. You notice how their skin glows how their nails are manicured. You notice their outfit is new—you’ve never seen them in the same outfit twice. Sitting on the sectional you are close enough to smell their newness, their hair products, the floral notes of the red wine you’re drinking in the long-stemmed glass with the little charm at its base that looks like the Monopoly top hat so your glass and theirs aren’t confused at any point during the evening although that couldn’t happen because you hold your glass tightly throughout the evening because it helps you know what to do with your hands and perhaps if you laugh at the wrong time make a non sequitur forget to agree by nodding they will forgive you because they will think maybe you just had a little too much to drink. You lean in but you are careful not to lean in too closely. Their hair seems perfect their makeup perfect not like a FOX News anchor, but natural, refined, queenly, you think, stately, like Elfrida, first queen of England, King Edgar the Peaceful’s wife, they exude understated wealth, old money, even, though you know it is new money because you live in the west and nearly everyone in the west who has money made it in the dot com tech boom twenty years ago although there are a few old money people starting to move here, who you immediately recognize by their names and it’s possible they are one of them too but you know they are not because you remember their husband went to one of the regional state schools and had a startup and she is a former airline pilot who used the orthokeratology process to reshape her cornea with a series of gas-permeable hard contact lenses so then she could have 20/20 vision and would be allowed to fly packages across the country on brown and yellow UPS 747s. As you notice and listen and smile and hold the wine glass you try to mirror their laughter, their raspy voices that make them sound like movie stars or bulimics or smokers or all of the above, all of which are sexy—there is a checklist for how they are how they know how to be how to check every box. For some reason you admire them but you don’t want to be them but you think you should want to be them but you can’t won’t be them. Not because you don’t have the money that they spend on the private trainer and the personal esthetician but because you can’t stand the thought of spending your money on either and getting naked in front of a stranger at the Korean day spa they talk about so a stranger can scrub dead skin off your body isn’t going to happen and because the last time you went to the hair salon they asked if you wanted them to wax your eyebrows and your upper lip but it never occurred to you before that moment that you needed to do anything to your eyebrows or your upper lip and because the details of their girlfriend retreat to the Palm Springs spa is unbearable and you can’t tolerate having these conversations more than once each year at this holiday party and because you want to be invited don’t want to be invited want to attend don’t want to attend can’t won’t attend but somehow you are here, obliged, leaning in, noticing the wine on your breath and theirs, noticing them noticing who and what is behind you

360 Degree Review

In the management essentials training —

the one they require before promoting you

from an individual contributor to a manager—

they send a survey to your peers and your manager

and your manager’s manager and they ask:

If she was a household appliance, what kind would she be?

If she was a car, what make and model would she be?

What are her assets?

What are her flaws?

Your manager shares the results in your next 1:1 —

blender — mixes everything together and makes it taste good

Volvo — sturdy, reliable yet classy Euro performance car

Nice, helpful

Too assertive, needs more confidence

and your mind wanders

to that sorority initiation ritual

the one where you stood

blindfolded in your matching

Victoria’s Secret bra and panties

in the middle of a circle

of frat boys who marked your

belly button in Sharpie approval

while leaving black Xs on your

inner thighs and A-cup breasts

and something in that moment holds you

like the pause between the click click click

of an igniter and that instant when flames

leap through the artificial logs

and illuminate the room

Detritus

fractured eggshell glistening

in the bottom of the bin lined

with what was once an ear of corn

and that they say is sustainable—

baggie of dog shit left at the base

of the stop sign provoking an internal narrative

(unfairly?) characterizing my neighbors

as lazy and inconsiderate bastards—

fingernails on the desktop

clipped during the Zoom 1:1

with my manager who focused

on my lack of productivity—

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