The Story of a Girl (Title rethinking in Progress): PART III

           What is the difference between self-consciousness and self-awareness?  Can we entwine the two strands into a double helical structure that make the positive and negative connotations less discernible?  How can we say that the former can’t induce the latter through a trickling prickle of fear titrated slowly enough that the side effects don’t overwhelm the subject?

            It isn’t that he doubted the presence of self-consciousness but he wondered whether he had just as well attained the state craved by all women where a man totters the edge of awareness.  If he wasn’t in that state he wondered what it was and how he could get there; almost as though he had a driver occupying the back seat of his mind repeatedly asking the question, “are we there yet?”  But how do you know when you've arrived when there are no road signs welcoming you? 

            ‘Now entering awareness.’

            ‘Safe travels.  Hope you enjoyed consciousness.’

            If he had attained this woo woo state, the girl seemed not to notice.  If I may also interject here, it is thought to be true that if one is indeed thinking about awareness the state will elude him; nonetheless, kudos to him who tries:

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Likewise, it is not for the narrator to critique the protagonist.  Although the two are intertwined, they are inseparably parallel: both to be headed in a forward direction, neither to cast his sidewards glance upon the other.

            Although we are unsure as to whether the boy had a positive or negative effect and if that effect swung overwhelmingly, or only moderately, one way or the other, she did respond to his question, "I like art, I like to play soccer.”  It seemed she would continue but possibly upon reflection, considered this enough to divulge to the stranger.  Her voice gradually descended into a silence, like a band that discovers no more creative way to conclude a song than to overzealously repeat the chorus again and again in deluded self-adulation until it slowly fades to an overly anticipated silence.

            As a narrator, I am disturbed by the aggregate popularity of abbreviating sentences.  Whether her particularly shortened sentence came from the erroneous misperception that I -mid sentence- already knew what she meant thereby establishing a connection; or rather, that she had no desire to establish any connection and that an abrupt stop would be the most effective way of conveying this sentiment -nothing on her face reflected a flicker of thought that signaled an upcoming conclusion.  Another example of how our hero maintained his stance despite the gusty winds that tried to knock him off balance.

            But his public speaking class had prepared him for moments just like these and provided him with the necessary toolbox to hammer on, despite the lackluster material he was given; the class he took first semester of sophomore year taught him that he already had all of the Jenga blocks necessary to construct a conversation.  He found art, or at least the intellectual idea of it, fairly interesting and he decided, as the alpha male, that the intercourse would take this conceptual fork.  It coincidentally coincided with his proximity to his head, which left him in a favorable place from which to conduct this academic conversation.