In My Defence, I Have No Defence by Sinèad Stubbins

Author:Sinèad Stubbins [Stubbins, Sinèad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: isbn:9781922419194
ISBN: 9781922419194
Google: uwPczQEACAAJ
Publisher: Affirm Press
Published: 2021-05-25T07:00:00+00:00

** I don’t actually believe that everyone has the ability or inclination to take to Europe, I just sometimes like to pretend I have strong and definitive beliefs like the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey.

Ways I have fantasised exiting a situation

Raising one fist to the sky like Sailor Moon and, mid-conversation, levitating into the air with a bwamp bwamp bwamp until I fly directly into the sun.

When I am embarrassed about not being charming enough, melting into a puddle like Alex Mack and then slithering away for many kilometres until I find a body of water to join and then just live out my remaining days there.

When someone has the kind of opinion that’s like, ‘You know, hypothetically …’ suddenly concentrating all my energy into creating a sinkhole underneath me – not one that will swallow the person who I’m talking to as well, just a one-person sized sinkhole; we can’t get stuck down there together – and then just falling into the cracks of the earth and being incinerated by the earth’s core but in a way that tickles.

Just fading into a wall, but no one notices.

Standing in a circle of people I don’t really know and then very seriously whispering to someone standing opposite me, ‘I have diarrhoea.’

When I have had enough of people for the day, just abruptly stopping mid-sentence and freezing my whole body like I am a mannequin, and just staying like that while the people around me look at each other and say, ‘What?’ and ‘What is happening?’ and my arm is outstretched and frozen, and they poke my face to see if I move and then eventually lose interest and move away to talk to a living mobile human, because conversation shouldn’t be that much work.

Being asked a question I am not prepared to answer or being confronted with a lie that I have told (that I have heard of a specific band, that I am an astronaut etc.) and then folding my body like a crumpled napkin and dropping to the ground as if I have fainted. It will be so tragic that no one will question me about not being an astronaut ever again.

Seeing someone I know on the street and nodding and smiling and then softly saying, ‘Oh!’ and jerking my hip like something has made it quiver and grabbing my phone quickly and saying, ‘Hello?’ so I can save myself and the street person from having to think of things to say to each other. Keeping the phone to my ear for at least another block, making concerned faces and saying ‘yeah?’ every thirty seconds.

Leaving a venue without saying goodbye to anyone.

Realising that the situation I am in is not actually as romantic as I thought it was and just turning into a pot plant.

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