When I was 19 or so I decided at the last minute to go on Spring Break. I was in my first year at university but I was very much not a Spring Break person. Still, I went. I stayed with three frat boys I had just met. And I had a good time. Somewhere near the end, one of the frat boys, the one we called Pat Sajak, offered me a cigarette. I didn’t smoke. He handed me the cigarette and I held it out in midair waiting for my light. For some reason this stands out as a particularly awkward moment. It had to be no secret by then that I didn’t fit in, that I wasn’t anything, that I wasn’t a Spring Break person, that I wasn’t a drinker or a partier or a smoker, but I felt that that particular moment had revealed everything.

You’re out and it’s the middle of the day and you realize your zipper is way down. You probably have a pair of pants just like these. They are nice and comfortable and perhaps they go with nearly everything and maybe even they are drip dry and they don’t require ironing but they have a sinking zipper and you always forget that.

You sneeze what you think is going to be a regular sneeze only it isn’t. It’s a carrier sneeze. And there you are, palming a sneeze, with no place to put it. Man, that’s awkward.

Waving back at someone who is waving to someone just behind you. Nearly every person of high school age. Overhearing somebody talking about you. Being overheard talking about that person. When accidentally intruding upon somebody, the moment you wait to announce yourself. Opening your apartment door just as the mailman is about to deliver your mail. He’s startled and you’re startled. And now he doesn’t even know where to put the mail so he hands it to you abruptly.

Asking a question that expects an answer and receiving silence. Asking a question that doesn’t expect an answer and getting one. Misconstrued sarcasm. Sex, when it’s wrong, very awkward business, that. Calling a friend on his birthday when you didn’t know it was his birthday. When you’re single, meeting up with recently married friends. They say they don’t want anything to be different, but it’s always different.

SS