Who are you?I mentally beseech him.Are you this boy, or are you that man? Is it possible to be both?
“What are you thinking?” he asks after several moments of me staring and him staring back, a curious tilt to his chin, a confused squint to his eyes, a wary turn to his lips.
I shake my head, not wanting to go there.
Instead, I joke, “This iswaybetter than an Edible Arrangement.”
12
Despite thirty-odd years spent believing the opposite, I’m not sure I have a natural talent for pottery. A love for it, yes. Atalent? Alex and I end up at two wheels next to each other in the back of a class with eight other people. We’re a couple minutes late, but the teacher, Jeanette, is nice about it and helps us set up. From that point on, everything takes me just a little bit longer to understand than it takes everyone else. Alex, in particular, picks everything up with uncanny ease.
It’sinfuriating.
When Jeanette has us press the clay into the wheel to make sure it doesn’t come off, I don’t press hard enough. Then I presstoohard. It takes me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what exactly she means when she tells us, “Pushdown. Don’t pushlaterally.”
Multiple times, Jeanette walks up to me and sweetly chides, “Give your clay room to go where you want it to go.”
I didn’t even know “sweet chiding” could be athing, but it’s eerily similar to the voice my Two-Dimensional Design instructor, Professor Higgins, uses when she critiques our drawings. Must be an art thing.
It all culminates about a quarter of the way through the class when, despite Jeanette’s constant warnings not to “break a pull,” I… well, break my pull. Which means that I pull the clay too hard upward, making the walls of my… thing—I’m not really sure what I was going for—so thin that it collapses in on itself.
I stare at my catastrophe in shock. I don’t miss the distinct sound of laughter coming from my right.
“Oh, that’s funny to you?” I ask, glaring at Alex and his unnervingly perfect bowl.
I should explain that part of my frustration lies in the fact that we’re supposed to be able to make up to six pieces in this two-hour class, and Alex is nearly done with his second piece, but I was still working on my—now destroyed—first.
He shrugs, eyes widened in innocence, and says, “We can still fire it up. It’ll be abstract.”
Before I can come up with a clever retort—and it would have been very clever, I’m sure—Jeanette walks over, face contorted in a sympathetic frown.
The thing about Jeanette is that I’m pretty sure she’smyage. I mean, she’s the age Iwas, once upon a time. But when she looks at me, she doesn’t see her equal—she sees a teenage girl. And the voice she uses with me is so patronizing.
“Oh no,” she says, her tone pitched up, not unlike the voice I used when talking to my cat, Ruthie. She stares down at the pile of collapsed clay in front of me with pity and continues, “It happens at least once every class. Not to worry, I’ll grab you another ball of clay.”
I shoot her a small, tight smile and sit there, useless, waiting for her to return with the clay. I thank her as she hands it to me and makes a joke about using a gentler touch this time.
“Oh, this is so good, Alex,” Jeanette says, leaning over him to get a closer look at the bowl he’s working on. I feel my eyes roll to just about the back of my head.
“You are doing agreatjob of keeping a firm pressure. There’s no way this is your first time,” she continues, and though her words are innocuous, the way she says them just screamsinnuendo. Alex, I should pointout, doesnotget a patronizing voice. There is no sweet chiding. It’s more like husky praising.
She places her hand on his shoulder, and it’s like a beacon calling my attention.
What in the actual fuck?
Is this thirty-year-old woman hitting on my eighteen-year-old date? And, sure, okay, yeah,I’ma thirty-year-old woman, in a way, but no one knows that. If I wereactuallyeighteen right now and had even a fraction of the insecurities I remember having at this age, I would probably sit here silently, worrying about whether Alex wished I were a sexy art type like Jeanette. I’d worry about him wanting an older, confident woman who could control her voice to the degree that she knows how tohuskily praisea guy.
I’m about to say something—I haven’t figured out what, probably something to the effect ofGet your own date—when Alex leans away from her touch and says, “I’m doing all right. I think someone up front just did the same thing as Joey. Might want to help them.”
His tone is so dismissive that she actually, physically, reels back in surprise, but she collects herself quickly and goes to help the guy who, sure enough, broke his pull. And maybe it’s mean of me, but I feelsorelieved that someone else did it too.
Alex fixes his gaze on me, and I wonder what he sees. Can he tell I got jealous?
His eyes take on a determined glint, as if he’s making a decision. He says nothing as he stands, pulls his stool nearer to my wheel, and leans in close.
“Mind if I join you?”
The thing about pottery spinning is that it requires a pretty awkward posture, your legs spread wide around the pottery wheel. Alex, with his long limbs, takes up a good amount of space, and he’s decided the mostcomfortable position is with his left leg spread out flush against my right one, his knee at my hip, my knee only inches from his…
