Chapter 7:

Two minutes.

I know it's two minutes because I counted and also because I've done this enough times to know what two minutes feels like from the inside which is — longer than you'd think, two minutes is actually a significant quantity of time when you're sitting on the edge of a bed staring at a white wall doing absolutely nothing, when your brain hasn't fully loaded yet, when you're just — present in the most minimal possible sense of the word, just a body sitting on the edge of a bed occupying space, just a thing that exists and is taking a moment to confirm that it still exists before deciding what to do about it —

The wall is white.

I want to be specific: not off-white, not cream, not the particular shade of white that has started to yellow slightly at the corners from years of accumulated light and air — just white, just the committed uncomplicated white of a surface that has made no decisions about itself, that is simply doing the minimum required of a wall which is existing between two other walls and holding up its section of ceiling and not collapsing, and I respect that, I respect the commitment to minimalism, I respect a thing that doesn't attempt to be more than what it is, that doesn't put a design on itself or a texture or a color that is trying to evoke something, that just — is, that just shows up every morning exactly the same as the morning before, reliable, consistent, making no demands —

I could learn something from this wall.

I'm not going to, but I could.

The brain begins producing things.

This is how it starts every morning — not with anything important, not with the weight of everything I've catalogued and filed and am currently carrying, but with small inconsequential noise, the specific low-grade static of a mind coming online, producing whatever is closest to the surface, whatever requires the least effort to generate —

I think about the vending machine near the east exit. The one that dispenses everything three inches lower than it should. I think about whether the engineers who designed it intended the three inch drop or whether it's a calibration error that has simply never been corrected and I think about how you'd even know the difference from the outside, how you'd distinguish between an intentional three inch drop and an accidental one, whether the result is the same regardless of the intention —

The result is the same regardless of the intention.

I almost think something.

I catch it.

I stand up.

The body has opinions about standing up.

The body has been horizontal for approximately seven hours and it has developed during those seven hours a strong institutional preference for remaining horizontal and it communicates this preference through the specific language of joints and muscles which is a language without words, just sensation, just the accumulated complaint of a skeleton that was not consulted about the decision to become vertical —

I stretch my arms up first.

The shoulders make a sound.

I have thoughts about this sound that are not interesting enough to share. It's just a sound shoulders make. Bodies make sounds. This is an ordinary feature of having a body. I'm not going to —

Actually the sound is slightly concerning because it's been happening for three weeks now and I've been meaning to look up whether it's the kind of sound that means something or the kind of sound that's just — atmospheric, just the body being a body, just the skeleton doing its skeleton things without any particular medical significance —

I haven't looked it up.

I've been meaning to.

I arch my back. The lower spine does something that isn't the shoulder sound — different register, different quality, the sound of something that has been compressed for seven hours and is now being asked to extend and is doing so with reluctant structural commentary —

I think about rice.

Not the fried rice from last night specifically. Just rice in the abstract. The concept of rice. The way rice begins as one thing and ends as another and the in-between is just — heat and water and time, just the application of basic physical principles to a raw material, and what you get out is completely dependent on what you put in and how carefully you manage the conditions —

My mother said be a kid sometimes.

She said you're criticizing your younger self with an adult mind.

She said I saw you. I was watching from the window.

I almost —

I'm stretching my legs now. The hamstrings. I read somewhere — I've read a lot of things at 2am in the east stairwell, I have an eclectic and largely nocturnal reading history — I read somewhere that the hamstrings store tension, that emotional stress accumulates physically in specific muscle groups, that the body keeps a record of things the mind would prefer to file and forget —

My hamstrings have extensive records.

I'm not going to think about what they're recording.

I roll my neck. Left. Right. The neck makes the shoulder sound's less concerning cousin. I've decided this sound is fine. I've decided this without medical consultation and I'm comfortable with that decision because some decisions you just have to make and live in without examining them —

I think about the maid cafe.

The new maid's face. The 0.8 seconds.

I think about the freshman from yesterday with his book and his headphones and the efficient logistics of his lunch and the wound I invented for him from across a cafeteria —

I think about the ceiling tile with the river crack.

A landlocked country nobody writes songs about.

I think about —

My mother's hand on my shoulder.

Once. Just once. Just the specific pressure of —

I'm done stretching.

The bathroom mirror is 47 centimeters wide and 60 centimeters tall.

I know this because I measured it.

I measured it for reasons I'm about to explain and the explaining is going to take a while and I need you to stay with me because the explanation is complete and accurate and I'm going to give you all of it and I need you to have all of it so that you understand fully and completely and without ambiguity exactly what I am doing and why —

I practice my face.

Specifically I practice a neutral face. A resting neutral. A face that does approximately nothing, that presents no readable surface, that gives the observer nothing to respond to and nothing to manage and nothing to decide about — a face that is simply a face, simply a collection of features arranged in their default configuration, not performing anything, not communicating anything, not inviting anything —

I time it.

Six minutes currently. Six minutes of confirmed neutrality before microexpressions start bleeding through — small involuntary movements at the corners of the mouth, the specific tension that accumulates around the eyes when you've been holding something for too long, the almost imperceptible shift in the set of the jaw —

I'm working on extending the six minutes.

This morning I will explain why.

The first reason is confrontation.

A hostile face invites confrontation. An expressive face invites confrontation. Even a sad face invites confrontation — of the soft well-meaning variety, the are you okay variety, the you seem like you're going through something variety, which is its own kind of confrontation, gentler in approach but equally requiring of a response, equally demanding that you produce something from the interior and present it to another person who will then have feelings about what you've produced and those feelings will require management and the management will require — I don't trust myself in confrontation yet. I want to be clear about that. I don't know what I would say. I don't know what would come out if someone pushed, if someone caught me in an unguarded moment with an expressive face and decided that face was an invitation — I have things inside that I have not fully catalogued, things that have been compressed and filed and are being maintained under significant pressure, and I don't know what happens if that pressure finds an outlet suddenly, without warning, without the seven hours of background process running to manage it —

The neutral face closes the invitation.

A blank canvas invites no confrontation. Like the wall. Just white. Just existing. Just doing the minimum.

The second reason is privacy.

Not my privacy. Theirs.

By presenting a completely readable, completely neutral, completely blank face I remove the social obligation from my classmates. I am giving them privacy. I am ensuring that when they see me in a hallway or a classroom or a cafeteria they do not have to decide in real time what to do with their own faces, do not have to manage the 0.4 seconds, do not have to perform a response to whatever my face is doing — because my face is doing nothing, my face is a non-event, my face is the vending machine that works correctly, that requires no special navigation, no workaround, no awkward recalibration —

They don't have to acknowledge me.

The neutral face makes me ignorable.

Ignorable is the least I owe them. Ignorable is genuinely the minimum courtesy available to me given everything and I intend to provide it consistently and reliably and without exception because I have taken enough from these people already and if what I can give back is the specific small mercy of not requiring them to manage their expressions in my presence then I will give that, I will practice it in a 47 by 60 centimeter mirror every morning until it's automatic, until it doesn't require the background process, until it's just what my face does when it's not being asked to do anything —

The third reason is control.

I time the expressions.

I know this is — I'm aware of how this reads, I'm not unaware of how this reads, a person standing in a bathroom mirror timing their own facial expressions is a specific image and that image has implications that I've looked at from multiple angles and I understand what angles are available and I'm choosing to explain the timing rather than address the implications because the timing has a legitimate practical function which is confirmation —

Without timing the neutral face is just a feeling. Just my perception of my own face which is subjective and unreliable and compromised by the same filters that compromise everything else I perceive. With timing it becomes data. With data it becomes something I can track and improve and extend incrementally — five minutes, then six, working toward something consistent and reliable, something I can deploy with confidence because I've confirmed it, because I've stood in this mirror and made it real through measurement rather than just believing in it, which is —

Believing in things without confirmation is how I got here.

I believed I was funny. I believed the jokes were harmless. I believed that what felt like connection was connection and not just performance in both directions and I believed all of this without confirmation, without checking, without standing in any mirror and asking whether what I was seeing was accurate or just what I wanted to see —

I time things now.

This is not a quirk. It's a correction.

Six minutes and fourteen seconds this morning before the left corner of my mouth does something involuntary. Better than yesterday. I reset. Start again. The mirror shows me a face showing nothing. The face looks back. Neither of us gives anything away.

This is the part where you think you understand why I do this.

You think the reason is the three reasons I've just given you. You think the confrontation and the privacy and the control are the reasons and you've processed them and filed them and you're ready to move on —

I need you to have all three reasons. I need you to be holding all three of them. Fully. I need the three reasons to be taking up the available space in your understanding of this particular behavior so that there is no room left for you to go looking for anything else, so that the picture is complete, so that the explanation is finished and sufficient and requires no further investigation —

Six minutes and twenty-two seconds.

Better.

I reset.

The face in the mirror looks back at me with the specific expression of a person who has been standing in a bathroom for thirty minutes timing his own face and has become, in the process, something he cannot look at for too long without the left corner of his mouth doing the involuntary thing —

I look away.

I turn off the bathroom light.

I put my hand on the door.

I think about my mother watching from the window.

I think about nine-year-old me in the backyard dropping juggling balls and picking them up and dropping them and picking them up, patient, just — patient, with no timer, with no mirror, with nothing to confirm except the feeling of getting slightly better at something and deciding that was enough —

I open the door.

"Jesus," I say, to no one. To the hallway. To the white wall at the end of it that is doing the minimum and has always done the minimum and will continue to do the minimum without apology or complication or a mirror to confirm it.

"I'm a fool."

I go to the living room.