by Jessica Pan
Lots of people feel slightly apprehensive before big parties. I knew a girl at college who once, rightly, said to me: “Just do what we all do before a big social event—buck up, spray dry shampoo in your hair, and rapidly down two glasses of warm white wine upon arrival.”
Unfortunately, genetics stand immovably in my way. Because I am half-Chinese, I suffer from “Asian glow,” which bears zero resemblance to the pregnant woman glow, although both involve excessive vomiting. My body cannot process alcohol properly and instead leaves my skin red hot and my eyes bloodshot within an hour of drinking.
This also means I have an incredibly low alcohol tolerance. When I get drunk, I quickly become either the person sobbing quietly into the curtains or the one running laps around the dance floor playing a one-woman game of tag OR the one ripping her tights off and sleeping underneath the dessert table. (I don’t get to pick which.)
And so my one-glass-of-champagne reserves of charisma and social prowess are finite. We had gone to bed at 3 a.m. and reconvened at 9 a.m. for a group breakfast to start the next day of celebrating. There had been no chance to recharge; I had nothing left.
Now, sitting in the beerhouse on day two, channeling what little is left of my energy into pretending to like beer, I want to be there for our newlywed friends, for Sam . . . but I also really want to find a nice Alpine meadow to lie down in for a few hours and nap.
If I’m hand-on-heart honest, the only thing really keeping me going is that I find grown men wearing lederhosen one of the most simultaneously confounding and pleasing things in life, and they are everywhere today. I am exhausted, but I am also enchanted.
Then Anja, the bride, claps her hands together and climbs on top of a table. The guests around me pause, their enormous steins crash back to the tables—it’s impossible to hold them halfway to their mouths for long.
My very favorite part of any wedding is the speeches. Yes, they have the potential to be atrocious, but more often than not I find them uniquely moving. I love it when people cry just talking about how much their partner, their friends, their family mean to them. I love to learn more about the bride and groom and hear jokes and stories about them. But today I’m particularly in awe.
Anja is giving a speech at her own wedding, and it’s something I would never have dared to do.
Sam and I got married in a barn in the Lake District, a mountainous region in the northwest of England. Our invite list was minimal (see: shintrovert), topping out at twenty guests for dinner. I knew I didn’t want a huge wedding, and given that most of my friends and family lived on other continents, I didn’t want to ask them to travel thousands of miles for a pub lunch and a walk in the drizzle. (Also, if I’m completely honest with myself, a small part of me was afraid I’d invite them and they wouldn’t come and then I’d be offended forever. So I had a tiny wedding, thinking I’d outsmarted the whole system, and instead wound up offending whole swaths of people.)
My wedding was a good day; it’s a very happy memory. But, even then, I woke up the next morning feeling—above all else—relief. The pressure of coordinating a room full of drunk friends and family, emotions running high, all while trying to achieve peak hotness, was over. Best day of my life? Perhaps. But, personally, I’d take eating leftovers in my tracksuit with my husband over the rigmarole of marrying him again.
In English weddings, traditionally, only men give toasts: the father of the bride, then the groom, and finally, the best man. Now I can’t say I’m devoted to tradition as a rule—and I’m a feminist, dammit—but this was one rule I was happy to go along with.
While I couldn’t have fathomed at the time how to juggle crippling nerves and public emotion, now, watching Anja speak—as she thanks her best friend and tells a story about her mother—I remember how I had felt at Union Chapel, so alive, so electric, and something begins to stir in me.
✽ ✽ ✽
In the US, tradition dictates that the maid of honor usually gives a speech at the wedding rehearsal dinner. When I was twenty-five, I was the maid of honor at Jori’s wedding back in Texas. There were twelve bridesmaids. Hundreds of guests. The rehearsal dinner was held on her family’s ranch. I had to wear cowboy boots and a suede vest because the dress code was “ranch formal,” and, perversely, I think this actually helped because I felt more like a barnyard entertainer than a vulnerable person crying in public, afraid she was losing her childhood best friend. I stood up, I spoke quietly, I cried loudly, and I sat back down. It was a nerve-wracking moment, but a great memory.
The other time I was the maid of honor was in Chengdu, China, a few years ago. The original maid of honor was due to give birth at any moment and was stuck in Beijing—I’d been assigned as the backup, plus the real maid of honor was also American, Chinese, and named Jessica, so I was a natural replacement.
The wedding was held in a Chinese restaurant with a makeshift stage. Overall, the experience was not dissimilar from my TV reporting experience in that a makeup artist chased me around a room, hugely disappointed in both my eye makeup and how quickly I was sweating it off.
The Irish best man, Seamus, also had stage fright. We kept whipping each other up into a frenzy of hysteria about how we were going to die. How this would end us. Seamus coped by getting horrendously drunk, and next to him, I coped by shoveling food into my mouth, ignoring warnings about the ferociously hot homegrown Chinese red chili peppers. A concerned guest told me that they would wreak havoc on my intestines the next day. As if I was worried about my intestines. As if I was worried about tomorrow. I was addressing hundreds of people in an hour. Screw tomorrow, pass the spicy beef.
Just before my speech, the wedding planner grabbed me to tell me that I was also in charge of the tea ceremony. As maid of honor, I needed to serve tea to the bride’s parents, then to the groom’s parents, onstage in front of everyone. I had to do all of this while kneeling to show respect; if I presented the teacups in the wrong order, the wedding planner implied that there was a fifty-fifty chance my Chinese ancestors would smite me. Then I had to say in Mandarin to each elder, “Please drink the tea.” I was so petrified of screwing it up that when the time rolled around for my speech, I spoke for about twenty-seven seconds.
Did I stress about publicly speaking at both these weddings? So much. But it felt different because I was doing it for my friends. I would never shirk from something my friends had asked of me. Especially not on such an important day. Of course I’d do it for them. For me, though? God no.
At my own wedding, I was relieved to take the back seat. I was already so worried about my British in-laws meeting my parents for the first time, about walking down the aisle in a long, form-fitting dress, about wearing heels, about my mascara running, about stuttering on my vows, about everyone getting along, about the photographer showing up on time. I was so anxious that I didn’t have the capacity to factor in a speech on top of all of that.
But I wish that I’d been as brave as Anja. She may be wearing a dirndl, but she is smiling and happy and sloshing beer from her glass. I am struck by how saying things out loud, declaring them to people, makes them seem more real. How these once-in-a-lifetime occasions come and then they go. How I do not want to regret not doing the thing—whatever the thing may be—anymore.
✽ ✽ ✽
When I get to my hotel room after the wedding, I sleep for eleven hours straight, but not because of the aftereffects of a wild, boozy night. I just needed time for my brain to recover from all the emotion and different stimuli and new people it had encountered that weekend. It wasn’t the wedding’s fault—it was a great wedding, one of Sam’s favorites ever. It was my fault. And it kind of always would be. I’m antisocial anywhere after hour three, which is when I turn into dust. Grumpy dust. And I’m finally accepting that I can’t train myself out of that, no matter how many networking events I go to.
I will never win Most Popular Wedding Guest. I’ll most likely be r
emembered for hanging out near the bathroom messing around with my phone.
When Sam and I are back in London, we have dinner with his friends Mikko and Cassie. A few years ago, we’d also been to their wedding (I’d stared at the lawn furniture instead of the sea). I ask whether they are introverts or extroverts because it’s my new favorite question, especially for couples.
Before they answer, I hazard a guess that Mikko, who is Finnish, is an introvert.
“Way to stereotype me and my countrymen,” he says.
“Right, but are you?” I ask him.
“I could happily be alone on an island for a week,” he nods. “That would be bliss.”
“Whereas I’d kill myself,” Cassie, who is English, interjects. “I wouldn’t last a day.”
“You wouldn’t last five minutes,” Mikko says.
Looking at them, I realize that I have only been to one other wedding where the bride spoke. Theirs. Cassie had stood up and given a brilliant, funny, heartwarming speech—probably the best speech of the night. Cassie must be a natural, I think. She is one of the most extroverted people I have ever met: she loves festivals, and I bet she’s made friends on the Tube.
But that night she confesses that she never gives presentations at work and used to stutter so badly at school that she had never really spoken publicly before her wedding day. This is astounding.
“Were you nervous?” I ask her.
“Well, I was just telling people that I love them. I didn’t say anything groundbreaking or interesting. I just waffled away about all these people whom I love. That’s all it was.”
“Just the thought of showing emotion to a group of people makes my hands start to clam up,” I say. “You didn’t feel that?”
She pauses, considering, and then shakes her head.
“If you’re lucky enough to have people who love you and whom you love, then how wonderful is it that you get to tell them?” she says. “I just really wanted to tell them how much they all meant to me.”
Well, when she put it that way, I felt like a selfish asshole.
Researcher and public speaker Brené Brown says that connection is why we’re here. That humans are neurobiologically built for it—but the only way we’ll ever make connections is to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.
Apparently, we’re not designed to watch TV, sit at our desks, and stare at our phones. We’re wired for connection with others—and the quickest way to connect with another human is by showing vulnerability. But when I imagine doing that in public, well—
Dry mouth. Short breaths. Vomit. Showing vulnerability in front of an audience is scary as hell to me. Though I don’t think I’m alone in this.
In Viv Groskop’s book How to Own the Room, she writes, “Some women don’t need so much help with public speaking as with the self-doubt and self-loathing that hold them back from getting involved in it.”
If I had given a speech at my wedding, it would have been horrible. I would have lost it, taken one look at my mother, and sobbed. Ugly-crying caught on camera for eternity. I would have blubbered. Stuttered. Told a joke that didn’t land. Offended my grandmother. Shown off a less than ideal upper-arm angle. Guffawed in an embarrassing way that would haunt me forever.
It would have been awful.
It might have been amazing.
The chance to publicly tell my parents how exceptionally moved I was about all they had done for me and to thank them for accepting Sam into the family so seamlessly. How grateful I was to my then-eighty-five-year-old grandparents for flying from Los Angeles to London and then enduring a hellish ten-hour drive in a van in the hammering rain to the Lake District. To my brothers for wrangling my grandparents into that van. To my in-laws for being so kind. To my maid of honor, Jori, for walking down the aisle moments after she had accidentally run her face into a door, giving herself an immediate black eye, which also selflessly made her look a tiny bit worse for when she stood next to me. And for so much more, of course.
Every time I think about these things, I feel a twinge of sadness. There’s a not-insignificant part of me that’s sad that chance is gone forever now. I’d told them these things one-on-one, right? Or maybe I hadn’t and they didn’t know.
If I had my time again, I would panic, feel nauseous, and then go into the tiny hotel bathroom and take those deep breaths the way Alice taught me, until I was steady enough on my feet to go out there, tap a glass with a spoon, and take center stage.
I hadn’t known Alice then, but how different I feel now. Now I know how saying words out loud can give weight to a moment and show that I take my words and story seriously. That I could be scared, but I could still do it anyway.
Frankly, it’s wonderful to watch Anja give a speech at her own wedding—not least because the men deserve to hear how pretty they look in their lederhosen.
eight
Free-Falling
or
Improvisation
“Imagine you’re in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” the man says. “One by one, I want each of you to walk into the center of the ‘temple’ and ‘die’ an imaginary death, until you create a pile of bodies. How you die is up to you. And remember: you’re dead, so stay in character after you do this.”
I look around at everyone else. They’re grinning and jumping around, excited for this first exercise. I hate these joyful bastards.
The instructor starts humming the film’s theme tune. He gestures for the rest of the class to join in the humming.
“Dun dun dun duh, dun dun duhhhh . . .”
This might be the end of me. I’m allergic to all of these things: earnest enthusiasm, elaborate performance, and spontaneous action in front of strangers.
I shuffle back so as to avoid going first. The first man enters the “temple.” He elaborately mimes ducking to avoid a low-swinging pendulum, then stumbles, trips, and falls back onto a sword that goes straight through him. A girl follows behind him, miming getting shot with a succession of arrows from an invisible assailant, and collapses near the man.
Another person enters and swiftly dies. And another. Another. It’s getting closer and closer to my turn.
“Dun dun dun DA-, dun da dun dun DA- . . .”
I am in my own personal Temple of Doom. It’s my turn. My feet move fast because I’m nervous, but I’m so flustered that, while dodging the bodies, I end up tripping and falling palms first on the ground. My right hand skids across the floor so fast that I get carpet burn on my palm. I land so squarely on top of a fifty-year-old Canadian man that he and I are now married in the eyes of God.
He kicks me off, clearly failing to commit to his death, and I bite back a yelp.
I lie on the ground, strangers’ feet in my hair, my nose buried in the ground, my hand stinging and starting to bleed. The humming of the theme tune carries on.
No. I can’t do this.
✽ ✽ ✽
“What’s the best way to meet more people?”
I posted this question on Facebook, vowing that I would do whatever people suggested. You know. Crowdsourcing. Hive mind. Tribe. The masses. My community would give me brilliant ideas that would change my life.
Then some asshole in the tribe replied with, “Improv comedy.”
Is there a phrase that carries a greater sense of dread than “improv comedy”? That is guaranteed to make people scream in horror when you mention it at parties? Only “Gwyneth’s jade egg” or “cash only” can compete.
When I ask my go-to extroverts what they think about doing improv, one says, “That is my worst nightmare.” Another one, a stand-up comedian, says, “I would never!” and puts her hand over her chest, like she is a swooning Southern belle I’ve greatly offended. Great, so this was something that makes extroverts uneasy, and I’m barely halfway through my year. And it’s not just that they don’t want to perform it.
They don’t even want to go and watch it.
I think this may be because improv people are theater kids off their leashes. And, boy, are they evangelical. Improv. Pineapple on pizza. Walmart. Those chewy tapioca balls in bubble tea. They divide nations: either you really love it or you really, really hate it.
So what exactly is it? “Improvisation” is live theater where the plot, characters, and dialogue are made up spontaneously by the actors onstage.
It’s basically what children do when left to themselves: they “play.” It’s generally considered adorable when you’re five in your backyard; encouraged at summer camp; tolerated at college; and a terrible career choice that invites pity and judgment if you’re over twenty-five.
To me, improv is free-form dying. Like jumping off a cliff but you can’t look down, because, oh, that’s right, no one told you what’s going to happen next and you don’t want to see the hellpit you’re going to land in. My mind always blanks when I’m put on the spot—in improv, there is nowhere but “the spot.”
This isn’t only about performance. It’s about spontaneity. Making it up as you go along. Surrounded by other people. You can’t plan for what’s going to happen next; you have to react, but you’re not sure how, and you often have no control over whom you’re interacting with and what nonsense they’re going to throw at you.
You know. Like real life. Which is why it’s so incredibly scary to me. No matter how much we plan, life is a set of unpredictable curveballs, one after the other. I’d love to get better at rolling with them.
What’s interesting to me is why do so many other people cower at the idea of doing improv or watching it? “My worst nightmare,” my extroverted friend had told me. Live, made-up theater: this is really people’s worst nightmare? This is what is keeping people up at night?
See, everyone says they hate the idea of participating in improv because you have to make it up as you go, you can’t plan ahead, you can freeze under pressure, or you can be caught looking stupid—and everything that happens is all your fault.