Listen to Big Feels on Spotify, bbs! <3 <3
Big Feels on being Prince Charming:
I was saying to a friend a few weeks ago, how like crack cocaine it is to know the moment you’ve charmed someone. It happened to me recently. A new acquaintance. A bit of banter. Badabing, badaboom, you find the exact cadence they respond to and drive the point home. Goddamn enamoured. I could feel the instant they bit the line: GOTCHA.
I’ve been thinking about my mask lately. The selection of cellophane wrappers I crinkle around myself for different settings. My friend said in a voice memo, “You’re so natural in public.” It’s not that. It’s this: I’m so good at performing a natural self in public.
In grade nine French class, our teacher had us do presentations once a week. We were not allowed to prepare these ahead of time, no notes could be brought with us. I understand the thought behind it: get us talking and using the language off the cuff. Of course, this was beyond me. I already prepare my words and little phrases in English, there was no way in hell I could riff in French. So I wrote my presentations ahead of time. I memorized them; and I memorized the pauses, the “comment dit-on”, the periodic fumbles that one makes when one is speaking naturally.
Two years ago, on Christmas eve, I found myself locked out of Value Village. There was a man there, who had also made it to his local thrift store too late. We turned towards each other as only two people on Christmas eve will do. He told me about his girlfriend who had shot herself, and how he could actually be very, very rich if he only apologized to his mother. He said he used to be a professor. There was a story about him with other professors and how they all went on a retreat, took a bunch of drugs, and then got attacked by ostriches. There was a story about how he lost his job for selling drugs to his students. We went and got a chai at an Indian restaurant up the hill. After, when I was walking away, he shouted after me, “You don’t know how charming you are!”
As a general rule, with all my cellophane wrappers, I often know exactly how charming I am, actually.
And, yes, delegating my level of charm depending on the situation is about trying to control my social environment. It is about accommodating for neurodivergence. It is about surviving in a world that already has expectations for how I will show up and behave. It is about having a bit of fun (for once). It is about not revealing too much, ever, actually.
I don’t always pick the right mask for the right moment. It’s amazing how high stakes that feels when it happens. How searing and raw it feels. How full of shame and self-loathing I become.
BUT GOD. WHEN I GET THE MASQUERADE CORRECT HOW LIKE AN ABSOLUTE SEX GODDESS CHARMING QUEEN AM I.
Mostly I am a normal girl.
Talk soon,
Natahna
The recommends: The latest issue of Hungry Zine, Mall Food, which features my piece, “Born Again at West Edmonton Mall.”
Brilliant! And I can’t wait to read more of your piece in Mall Food. Now I’m craving a KFC Twister Wrap 🤤