Sunday, 06 February 2005 | Spotlight

He asked for a volunteer to sit in the spotlight on the dangerous side of a video camera, so that he could demonstrate the different effects lighting can have on a person's face. I am not an eager volunteer; I don't even like asking questions in class.

"Hey, blond girl!" A fellow student pointed at me. "Since you're already sitting near the camera, why don't you do it?" (Later he apologized for putting me on the spot, and acknowledged that, in that moment, he realized he probably became my instant enemy.)

Since being perceived as 'difficult' is slightly less appealing to me than being the center of attention in a room full of strangers, I reluctantly conceded, and moved my chair to the middle of the room. Someone killed the overhead lights and someone else shone the spotlight directly at me, blinding me just enough that I had to squint, but so that I could still see the faces of my peers crowding around the camera to study me in the LCD monitor.

I slouched and then sat up, looked to the side and then straight ahead, fidgeting indecisively. "Look at what the light does to this side of her face," the professor said. "Oooh, yeah," the class responded in discovery.

I sat in the chair long enough that I simply began to accept the situation, the way you accept your relationship with your gynecologist, with a sort of helpless resignation. Eventually, I kind of stopped caring altogether. In fact, when I was asked to operate the equipment, I nonchalantly agreed. I'd already been deconstructed underneath floodlights, so I figured it would be difficult to be embarrassed further.

Fortunately some measure of that acceptance carried over through today, when I read a 20-minute story of mine on stage. I was considerably less nervous than I was at last year's reading, and everything seemed to go okay: I read at a reasonable pace (albeit a little too quietly, I'm told), I didn't feel faint, people said they liked my story, and after it was over I didn't immediately feel inclined to hide or apologize or anything.

I should've left it at that, but instead I decided to play back a recording of my performance. I listened to 20 seconds of it before removing my headphones and realizing what a bad idea it had been to record myself. Although technology is often great at preserving memories, sometimes it's also pretty good at messing them up. Of course, listening to myself on tape is kind of like looking at myself in a distorted fun house mirror. I wish there were some way I could hear it as plainly as an outsider.