My therapist Maximus tells me to up my game. With his CrossFit body and his booming voice, it’s hard for me to refuse his assignments. Last week for Maximus, I intentionally:
dropped my gingerbread latte on the ground on busy Market Street, and got down on my hands and knees to wipe, while strangers parted around me like ants avoiding a mound of borax.
punched in the wrong pin number on the ATM machine over and over, as the folks in line behind me sighed and tapped the floor with their boots.
Asked the saleswoman at Fleet Feet to bring out seven pairs of shoes, tried each of them on, and after selecting the one I wanted, said, “I forgot my wallet,” and walked out of the store with the tower of shoe boxes still on the chair.
“You were embarrassed,” Maximus said, in his Austrian accent. “But the world didn’t end, right?”
I agree with the premise, that by deliberately exposing myself to real humiliation, and surviving, I’ll be more willing to take social risks, thereby putting a muffler on my social anxiety. Besides, it’s so pathetic that I worry about people judging me. Like, there are so many worse problems out there. How could I be so full of myself that I care about not being liked?
Anyways, Maximus wants me to increase the stakes. Place myself into situations with higher social complexity.
“Well, there’s this big spelunking conference in New Mexico coming up,” I say. “And I already bought a ticket.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Maximus says, knocking the wind out of me with the strike of his burly outstretched palm on my back.
*
I cancel my ticket to New Mexico. I don’t plan on telling Maximus.
*
How could you be so full of yourself? I say, to myself.
I’m back on the Spirit Air website 10 minutes later, re-booking my flight, for $200 more than I paid before the cancellation.
*
In New Mexico, I:
sprint down the auditorium steps to the podium and shake the hand of the keynote speaker, “Vertical Bill” Cuddington after his talk. I gush about how indispensable his surveying maps of Hranice Abyss and Hellhole Cavern have been for me. He smiles graciously and runs his neoprene gloved fingers through his comb-over.
nod yes when Vertical Bill says he and a bunch of buddies are going out for drinks at the Post Time Saloon on Tuesday night, why don’t I join them?
spend all of Tuesday afternoon in a coma on my motel room bed, curtains drawn, ruminating over the pressure of socializing with all these caving legends, thinking maybe it’d be more comfortable to just stay under these warm sheets until tomorrow or the end of the week.
imagine Maximus wagging his finger at me, so I force myself up at 9:30 pm. At the Saloon, I sit next to “Wild Man” Bill Zhu and his goatee. He’s the editor of Under The Ground Magazine, and seemingly the only other Asian American caver here. I sip my Chimayo Cocktail, and ask him questions about himself. His day job--writing hazardous waste permits for Sandia National Lab. His daughter goes to Swarthmore, and he misses her like crazy.
feel like I can do this, so Wednesday morning I head out to Vendors Row at the conference. Ask them about themselves on repeat inside my head. So many people browsing the equipment tables strewn with sturdy looping harnesses and shiny water-repellant overalls. I’ve met so many of these cavers virtually on Instagram but never in person.
forget my mantra in the blur and speed of live conversation at Vendors Row. My mind going blank, I re-introduce myself to people I forgot that I’ve already met. I babble on and on about the cave dives I’m most proud of, just like Maximus told me not to. When Lindsay Burkey, president of the National Speleological Society, is in the middle of telling me that Stupendous Pit was her favorite pitch to descend, I blurt out Oh, you haven’t truly potholed unless you’ve done Patkov Gust in Croatia, which is 500 feet deeper than Stupendous, and she tells me Thank you for talking over me before she turns around and starts walking away with her friend, who also throws me a judgmental glare as they go off to talk to the climbing harness vendor, and I start to think how there are so many people who seem nice on the surface but are really just toxic arrogant bastards and I don’t want to be one of them but maybe I am, yes I’m a total narcissistic fucker who only talks and cares about himself. I have to get the hell out of here immediately.
*
I’m alone in the cold dark embrace of Slaughter Canyon Cave, not far from the conference. You’re supposed to go caving in groups of four for safety, but I’m willing to chance it. I’m squeezing through tight, twisting passageways. I arrive at “The Big Room,” which opens up into a cavernous theater made from jagged minerals, with a shimmering underground lake in front of me. The rock walls slant upward like a cathedral.
The world didn’t end, right? Maybe so, but it’s incredibly draining to be with other people. I’m going to tell Maximus that it’s just not worth it for me.
I breathe the damp air, and make a bed out of the limestone floor, feeling its coolness against my back. Tiny beads of water drip into the lake.
I reach up to the top of my helmet and turn the headlamp off.
