Help Me!

by Marianne Power

  I’d gone back to my mum’s flat outside London to collect some stuff, so I borrowed her battered Peugeot 205 and drove to the local town, Ascot.

  It is famous for the races and not a lot else; I grew up there and worked in the local cafe. My heart always went out to the poor tourists who would come in to ask, ‘Where is Royal Ascot?’

  I’d have to tell them, You’re in Ascot. This is it. The petrol station, cafe and Martin’s newsagents. This is all the glamour you’re going to get.

  So anyway, it’s not exactly a metropolis but it was surprisingly busy for 2nd January. I circled the area three times before I saw a space. It was a bit tight and I got flustered when a white van came up behind me. I went in too steep and hit the pavement.

  My heart started pounding and my sweaty palms slipped on the steering wheel.

  I tried to fix it but I just seemed to get more wedged in. I worried that the white van was going to start tooting. I imagined the two men in it were laughing at me. I felt a stress totally disproportionate to the situation. In a panic I mounted the kerb. The white van went past.

  The road was quiet now. I tried to drive out and get back in a couple of times but it didn’t work. I kept going up on the kerb.

  But strangely this didn’t bother me.

  A park of vague parallelity took place and according to Susan: ‘You’re not a failure if you don’t make it, you’re a success because you try.’

  And I really did feel like a success, kerb or no kerb.

  Susan says that avoiding small things can have a big effect. Putting off driving on motorways, opening bank statements or picking up the phone adds to the belief that the world is scary and that we can’t cope. Every time we avoid doing something it makes us feel weaker, while facing a fear, even if it’s a small one, makes us feel strong, empowered and in control. And that’s how I wanted to feel. Not just with driving but with everything.

  At home my bold step into the world of fear-fighting was not greeted with excitement.

  ‘I just did a parallel park!’ I told Mum, swinging the car keys on my fingers like a man of the road, an easy rider. She looked up from the sink full of dishes.

  ‘Does your book tell you to park?’

  ‘No, it’s just about doing scary things. Confronting your fears. And parking is scary.’

  Mum looked bewildered. She didn’t find parking scary. She could fit a truck on a postage stamp and would make no big deal about it.

  When she was my age she had three children and a house to run, she wasn’t ‘challenging’ herself by parking or jumping into icy ponds.

  She didn’t have time for self-discovery or, as she puts it, ‘I was not brought up to contemplate my toenails.’ Funnily enough, self-help wasn’t big on the farm in rural Ireland, where she grew up, one of seven children.

  When I had told her about my idea at Christmas, she opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Then she opened it. And closed it.

  ‘Most people would say your life is already very good, Marianne.’

  ‘I know it is, but what’s wrong with wanting to be a bit happier?’

  ‘Nobody can be happy all the time. It’s just not the way life is.’

  ‘Well, that’s miserable.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s realistic. Maybe you would feel better if, instead of always looking for more, you were grateful for what you have.’

  The familiar wash of Catholic guilt poured over me.

  So on 5th January when I drove to see an old school-friend – via the M25, M3 and M4 motorways – I kept my act of breathtaking bravery to myself.

  The next afternoon I was on the Tube home, listening to Rihanna on my phone, when I remembered that I should be chatting up men.

  Anyone who lives in London knows that it’s not socially acceptable to look people in the eye on public transport, let alone talk to them. It’s why all over the Underground there are posters advertising dating sites, which pretty much say: ‘Do you fancy that guy/girl opposite you? If so log on to our site so that you can sift through tens of thousands of people in the microscopic hope that you may see him/her again.’

  The option of just smiling and talking wasn’t an option. Until now.

  I did a mental inventory of how I looked. OK jeans on, my good coat (Whistles, £300 down to £150), scruffy Converse and unwashed hair.

  No.

  I couldn’t chat up a stranger with greasy hair.

  Definitely not.

  I’d do it next time. When I had good hair.

  But I knew that that was a cop-out. Susan says that we are only fooling ourselves when we put things off. She calls it the ‘when/then’ game – we tell ourselves we’ll approach the guy we like when we’re slimmer or we’ll apply for the promotion when we have more experience. We think that fear will go if we just wait for the right time but when we get to the right time we find more excuses. Doing something new is always going to be scary. The only way for it to stop being scary is to do it.

  I looked around for a target.

  Directly in front of me was a guy with shaven hair and a baseball jacket. A heavy bass thudded out of his giant headphones and he was nodding in time with the beat. No, not him.

  To my left was a man in a dark navy suit. He was holding a battered old brown leather briefcase. He looked like a barrister or something clever. I wondered if I’d be too stupid for him. I looked down at his hands. He was wearing a wedding ring.

  I started a train of thought about how all the good guys are married and how, at thirty-six, I’d missed the boat . . .

  Focus, Marianne. Focus.

  Standing by the doors was a tall, skinny, pale guy, also in a suit. He was good looking but not too good looking. He had a knackered-and-fed-up-with-life expression on his face. I’m not sure what it says about me but I liked knackered and fed up.

  Normally I couldn’t even smile at a guy I liked, let alone talk to him. Instead I imagined all the reasons he would not be interested in me: too fat, too ginger, too badly dressed. It was a fun game I played.

  But this was not normal me. I was now Fear-Fighting Me. So I moved over to be nearer him. I looked down at his hands. No ring.

  Right. OK. You can do this.

  I opened my mouth to say ‘Hello’ but nothing came out.

  Maybe I couldn’t do this.

  I should say at this point that, despite the fact that the train was packed, it was strangely quiet. Almost silent, in fact. All the commuters were locked in their own post-work misery, reading books or listening to music. If I started a conversation everybody would hear it.

  Pull yourself together, Marianne. Say something.

  ‘Is the train always this crowded?’ I blurted out.

  Mr Knackered-but-Handsome looked up from his phone, confused – as if I’d just woken him. He had watery blue eyes.

  ‘Er, yes,’ he said before looking back down at his phone.

  ‘I don’t usually travel at this time,’ I continued. My heart thud-thud-thudding in my chest.

  He raised his head again with an expression that said: Why are you telling me this? Why are you talking to me? Don’t you know the rules?

  I kept going.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked. I realized as soon as I said it that it was a very stalker-y question.

  I was also aware that we now had an audience. A woman standing next to us, in a pencil skirt and trainers, had taken out one of her white headphones and the man sitting on the seat nearest to us was smirking.

  Mr Knackered-but-Handsome looked scared now. I could see he was torn between not wanting to be rude and worrying that he had a nutter on his hands. Politeness won out. He informed me he lived in Bermondsey.

  ‘Is it nice?’ I asked.

  ‘Er, yeah,’ he said.

  I kept going: ‘Have you lived there long?’

  ‘Yes, WE’VE lived there a couple of years’ – heavy emphasis on the ‘we’. Message received, loud and clear. He had a girlfriend, but just to ram the m
essage home he informed me that ‘WE’VE just bought a house.’

  The guy who was smirking let out a snort. He actually snorted.

  I carried on smiling and chatting, just to let Mr Knackered know that my world had not ended because he had a girlfriend (which it hadn’t) and I could see him relax. We made small talk about property prices and then he got off at Waterloo.

  And that was it!

  I’d done it! I couldn’t believe it but I had! I had seen a handsome man on the train and I had talked to him.

  It wasn’t exactly a successful attempt at chatting up, but I did it! Yes, it was embarrassing but so what? Embarrassment doesn’t kill you, it turns out!

  I felt electricity charge around my body. Or adrenalin. Electricity, adrenalin, whatever! I was lit up.

  Until I locked eyes with Mr Smirker, who was still smirking. Then I felt a hot rush of embarrassment followed by fury. Sod him, with his hipster beard and hipster jeans! He had no idea that I was facing my fears and seizing the day and being the best me I could be! I bet he wouldn’t have the guts to do that!

  So I made a strange decision: I would show him that I was not remotely embarrassed by what had happened by . . .

  ‘What are you reading?’ I asked, sitting down next to him.

  He smirked some more, bemused that he was now the target of my attention.

  ‘It’s The History of the World in 100 Objects,’ he said. ‘It was a Radio 4 series.’

  ‘It’s very big.’ I said.

  ‘It is,’ he agreed.

  There was a pause. I didn’t know what else to say. My nervous energy was waning now and I was beginning to wish that I hadn’t got on this stupid train.

  ‘I bought it for my brother for Christmas but I ended up keeping it,’ he added.

  Yay! He’d filled the silence. And he read clever books!

  ‘It looks like a good book to read on the toilet,’ I said.

  ‘Er, yes, I suppose so.’

  Why did you have to bring the loo into it, Marianne?

  ‘So did you get your brother something else?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, I got him a t-shirt.’

  ‘Cool.’

  I hate how much I say ‘cool’. I’m thirty-six, I should have found a better word by now.

  We carried on chatting. There was no mention of the royal ‘We’. I started to see his smirk as a lovely smile.

  ‘Where are you heading to?’ I asked.

  ‘I have to pick up some stuff from a friend’s house, then I’m going home.’

  ‘Cool. What do you do?’

  ‘I’m an artist’s assistant.’

  ‘What kind of art?’

  ‘Conceptual stuff.’

  I didn’t know what ‘conceptual stuff’ meant but I imagined all the tasteful art work our house would have.

  I wondered what it would be like to kiss someone with such a big beard and whether it mattered that it was a bit ginger . . .

  I once went on a date with a fellow redhead and when he went in to kiss me, I panicked. ‘People will think we’re brother and sister!’ I said. The email I sent the next day, offering to dye my hair brown, did not get a reply.

  ‘Where do you work?’ asked Mr Smirker.

  ‘I work at home. I’m usually still sitting in egg-stained pyjamas at this time,’ I said.

  His face didn’t know how to arrange itself in response to this comment.

  Why do you say these things?

  ‘This is me,’ I said, as we got to Archway.

  ‘Me too,’ he said. Smiling. We walked up the escalators together and then went through the turnstiles and hovered for a second.

  ‘Well, bye, then . . .’ he said.

  ‘Bye . . . it was nice to meet you,’ I replied.

  ‘Yeah, you too.’

  ‘Have a nice night.’

  ‘You too . . .’

  He gave me a final smirk/smile and went on his way.

  For half a second I let myself dwell on the thought that he didn’t like me because he didn’t ask for my number, but then another part of me thought that maybe he was too shy to ask.

  And even if it was a rejection, weirdly, I didn’t care. I was too delighted with my total and utter HEROISM.

  The next morning, high on my triumph, I made plans for the rest of the month.

  Life was already feeling different. Susan says that every time you take action you get in touch with your ‘Powerful self’ and she was right. I felt powerful. Like I could do anything. Then I saw the words ‘stand-up comedy’ on my list and I immediately felt less powerful. I made the executive decision to wait until the end of the month before I tackled that one. Instead I would warm up with a bit of public nudity.

  I googled ‘life modelling’ and sent an email to a local class asking if I could take part. Then I researched public speaking.

  Most people fear public speaking more than they fear being buried alive, according to one of those polls that crop up every year. (Other common fears are men with beards and wooden lollipop sticks, apparently.)

  My only experience of public speaking was at two friends’ weddings. Both induced panic so great that I decided I’d rather pay for a honeymoon than get up behind the pulpit and read another Love Is . . . poem. Even talking in meetings of two or three people brought on a hot flush.

  Rachel suggested I try speaking at Speakers’ Corner, but I pretended I didn’t hear that. Instead I found a local Toastmasters group – an organization that meets every week to help people practise public speaking – and got hold of Nigel, the vice president.

  He told me that it would go against every rule in their book to let a stranger come in and talk straight away.

  ‘There’s protocol,’ he said on the phone.

  ‘Of course there is,’ I said.

  I persisted and he told me that he’d talk to his president to see if an exception could be made. Many high-level phone calls were made and, four minutes later, Nigel called me back. ‘You’re in,’ he said. ‘We meet on Thursday nights, in the church hall opposite the curry house.’

  I got an email telling me that my speech would need to be five to seven minutes long. There would be a traffic-light system timing me (green when I’ve reached my minimum time, amber to tell me I’d reached six minutes and red to warn that I had thirty seconds to wrap up or be disqualified). I would have an ‘Evaluator’ assessing me, as well as a ‘Grammarian’ who would count the number of ‘ums’ I used. I could talk about anything but was not allowed to read from any notes.

  I decided I’d talk about my self-help mission.

  It was now Tuesday morning, which meant I had two days to prepare. By which I mean pretend it wasn’t happening. On Thursday morning I could pretend no more.

  As I practised my speech in my bedroom, I worried I’d get up on the stage and forget everything. Nothing would come out of my mouth and everybody would be staring at me and I would want to die. I kept telling myself that it didn’t matter – that there was absolutely nothing riding on it. It didn’t matter if it was a total disaster: I wouldn’t have to see these people again. Still I was terrified. Why?

  I read articles online. One explained that in our cave woman days we relied on being part of the group for survival and so doing anything that sets us up for potential rejection feels terrifying because how are you going to fight off a sabre-toothed tiger if you are on your own? It was something I’d never thought about. Another article suggested I imagine that I had to either do a quick speech or face a sabre-toothed tiger. They reckoned that when we compare public speaking to vicious mutilation, the talk seems OK.

  So, basically, it all came down to tigers.

  I did my speech for Rachel while she timed me on her phone.

  What I thought was seven minutes turned out to be just over three.

  ‘But it did feel longer,’ admitted Rachel, who was worried I had a cold.

  ‘No, I’m OK,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just that your voice sounds croaky and kind of
monotone. I thought maybe you were coming down with something.’

  ‘I think that’s my voice when I’m scared.’

  ‘Marianne, you’re talking in a church hall to probably twenty people, it’s not exactly the O2.’

  OK. Good. Perspective is good.

  As I walked through the graveyard, I thought of Jerry Seinfeld’s routine about how most people are so scared of public speaking that at a funeral they’d rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Too bloody right.

  The brightly lit hall was full of people chatting by plastic chairs. At the front was a rickety music stand with a blue satin Toastmasters sign hanging from it.

  There were three speeches before mine. First up a fabulously surreal one about a Custard Cream factory at war with the Jammy Dodger manufacturers.

  Then one about why the area needed a new sex shop.

  ‘Imagine how much happier people would be if they had access to whips and nipple tassels!’ said a white-haired man who looked like Captain Birdseye.

  Finally a talk on the benefits of smoking – ‘It keeps people who make those oxygen canisters in work,’ said a young man in a Bob Marley t-shirt. ‘What else would they do? Would you really want their families to starve?’

  They were as funny as anything you’d see on television.

  Then it was me. I made my way to the front, bumping people’s knees and apologizing. My blood fizzed with fear.

  ‘My heart is beating so loud I think you might all be able to hear it,’ I said.

  The audience smiled encouragingly.

  My tongue felt like it had tripled in size.

  ‘I haven’t done this before, so please be kind . . .’

  They kept smiling but this time there was a hint of ‘OK, love, get on with it’.

  The lights felt bright. I blinked a few times.

  Come on, Marianne. You can do it. It’s seven minutes of your life. Go, go, go!

  ‘How many of you read self-help books?’ I asked. It felt like a bold opener, going in for audience participation straight away.