Moted again
By Amanda Nowinski

ASIDE FROM "Damn, she's even uglier than I thought," there is no worse comment one can make in your absence than "Wow, what was wrong with that bitch?" And by wrong, I don't mean rude, but rather, pathetic, sort of like the stinky kid that no one liked in the third grade. As I got up to read at the Bored Collective, a monthly nonliterary event me and Billee Sharp have been producing since last April, I began to sweat, and the fear of god, goddess, and David Copperfield's hair took me over completely. It was as if my head had been severed from my body. My hands shook violently, and I could barely utter the words I had written – and worse, there was nothing I could do to stop it. And as I glimpsed at the audience, I realized that there was no going back. Read or die, I thought to myself, which is kind of like skate or die, but minus the ability to call everyone a fucking dyke and then hop on my board and escape.

Uh-uh-uh. Did I forget to mention that I stumbled? For exactly five minutes, I was the naked embodiment of everyone's worst fears – appearing a total, insecure dork in public. It's one thing to fracture your knee while simply strolling down the street alone on a lovely spring morning in six-inch platforms (me) or to smoke seven bong hits and then call up a snotty N.Y. record exec and request an interview with someone who's been dead for more than 10 years (I proudly lay claim to that one, too), but it's a whole other ball game when you commit acts of extreme dorkiness in front of 100 people or more. No one likes to see it because it reminds us that deep down, many of us are nothing more than sad little subhumans just waiting for this big, scary trip to end.

But visible motedness is one trauma I have not experienced in its extreme since three years ago, during the eye-opening period of the Yuppie, whom I dated for a brief period amid the splooge-filled dot-com climax. I had accompanied him to a dinner party to meet his best friends, who, surprise, surprise, turned out to be Prada-wearing designers who lecture a lot in Europe, have expensive hobbies that involve heavy machinery, and think that noncreative types are pointless humans who have no reason to live (like short people). As they poured the imported merlot and riffed about their cute little factories in Asia, I sat in horror, retreating deep into my custom-made (and exceedingly uncomfortable) chair – so far back, in fact, that my vocal chords diminished in my shoes. After finishing up one money/status/style topic, they would casually say, "And what do you think, Amanda?" And I would say absolutely nothing. But I would grimace uncontrollably, which instantly let them know that I was the worst possible mate for their beloved friend, who kept eyeing me sadly and rubbing my knee. As the night progressed, they stopped asking my opinion, because evidently, my unbearable silences worked as an efficient deterrent.

But it wasn't just the designer bravado that freaked me out. It was also the incongruous vision of how I had spent the weekend before, snorting yellow lines of something in someone's moldy basement with six ravers whose conversations did not expand beyond "That is so whack" and "Fuck off, it's my turn." So naturally, as I sat in that perfectly designed home with glorious wooden beams and couture lamps jutting out of every goddamn corner, I wondered, "Am I a loser?" My people have never lectured in Europe, and if they tried to design a lamp, it would probably end up looking like a crack pipe. Still, these are my people. And like me, my people are dorks.

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