Yesterday my friend C called from New York. I was both happy and mortified to hear from her, but luckily she felt the same way about calling, which allowed a note of grim authenticity or gallows humor to enter our conversation. She and I were happy because we're old friends and our chats are always lively and funny and about as easy as conversations can be between two people as uptight as we are. We were mortified because we share a feeling of dread about such simple lighthearted social transactions, and both feel humiliated and infantilized by our dread and helplessness. So we enjoy them but find them utterly exhausting ordeals nonetheless. It's both a relief and an extra burdensome layer of self-consciousness that we can joke about this strained quality even as we're in the midst of the conversation itself.

In other words, we're barely functional separately, but together we're simultaneously made stronger in our commiseration and rendered even more pathetic by the combining of our individual neuroses into one twitching inept organism.

When I talk to C I find myself pacing from room to room, taking random objects from the kitchen cupboards, examining labels and reading lists of ingredients, cholesterol contents and so on, or sometimes I'll be lying on the couch yelling into the sweaty receiver for no reason with my head hanging upside down off the cushion. I'm barely aware of what I'm doing. After I hang up it's like I awaken from a dream and find I'm holding a container of oregano or I'm standing in the bathroom, or both. I'm exhausted and my throat is raw, it's like I've been auctioneering for hours while running on a treadmill.