Since I start my new job, tomorrow, I thought I’d consider possible “getting to know you” topics. Interviewing myself is difficult, I’ve never felt more predictable.
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INTERVIEWER: Feel free to take your coat off, get comfortable.
ELIZABETH: I decline.
INT: Oh? Well, alright.
ELIZ: It’s just that I’m still defrosting. My toes are without feeling. My nose is a little cold, just the tip. (she pinches her nose) Chilled! (she pauses) You’re not beginning the transcription with that. (she looks at herself - the interviewer - sideways, brows furrowed) Oh, of course you are. Go ahead. Make yourself look like an idiot.
INT: Is it fair to say that you are a criminal?
ELIZ: (silence, looking into her own eyes, gears turning over the intention of her question) I’m sorry, I don’t think I follow. Are you speaking figuratively, as in it is in human nature to steal ideas, thoughts, and styles, but imitation is flattery, etcetera? Well, you should know that I have also jaywalked.
INT: No, in that you once shoplifted.
ELIZ: Where’d you read that?
INT: I have my sources.
ELIZ: What, a diary? Some slam book you dug up out of your closet?
INT: It’s true?
ELIZ: I don’t know. Maybe. All I know is that I was 10, very excited about some pizza bagels, and somehow that box did not end up on the receipt. Do you mind if I smoke?
INT: You don’t smoke.
ELIZ: Curses, you’re right. Seemed like the thing people say after a hard question. It’s hard to seem flippant without lighting a cigarette. (she begins to twist her ring around her finger)
INT: First bad word.
ELIZ: I was eight, playing with some figurines, one called another a “son of a bitch.”
INT: Did anyone overhear?
ELIZ: Of course, my mother. (she touches her fingers to her lips, as if smoking a phantom cigarette) She had me look up “bitch” in the dictionary, talk through why the term is insulting.
INT: Are you ashamed?
ELIZ: Of that? I was humiliated at the time, maybe. But if you are asking if I am still trying to atone, then I am afraid that there are far worse things that I’ve done consciously that I will still be fretting over when I’m ninety. (she gestures to brush away invincible crumbs from the table, briefly grazing over the hand of the interviewer, her own hand, she recoils and hopes it was imperceptible)
INT: Such as?
ELIZ: That fuzzy, blue shirt I wore in middle school with the wide-legged JNCO jeans with the blue and yellow stripes going down the sides. I looked like Cookie Monster trying out to be a Power Ranger. It was revolting.
INT: Do you believe in the tooth fairy?
ELIZ: What’s the going rate for a tooth these days?
