Flotsam

You know how losing consciousness in a popular retail clothing establishment just before an unexpected meeting with a high school classmate can make you take a long, hard look at your life?
You don’t?
Well, maybe I’d better start from the beginning….
I have bouts of hypoglycemia at the most inconvenient junctures. [The first time I spent the night with a man, he did not awake to see me draped seductively with a sheet and sleeping, my delicate features suffused with a roseate glow, but instead found me ashen-faced and curled at the foot of the bed gumming at a Glucose Tablet.] My most recent attack was precipitated by my own foolishness, namely eating a bagel for breakfast at 8:30 and then neglecting to have lunch by noon.
I was in the dressing room of a well-known clothing chain, let’s call it Kumquat Dictatorship, trying on dresses for an upcoming wedding. Pulling something unflattering off over my head, I noticed I was shaking and weak-fingered, my normally pallid chest flushed and sweaty. Gracious, I thought, Is it hot in here all of a sudden, or is it just—WHOMP! (sound of head hitting dressing room door as I crumple groundward).
Some moments later, I staggered to my feet, both alarmed and relieved that my temporary loss of consciousness had gone unnoticed by Persimmon Ogliarchy’s dressing room attendants. I mopped the dampness from my now corpse-like face and struggled into my street clothes. Too weak to contemplate the fastening of my bra, I shoved it in my purse. A brief inventory:

Eyes: Glassy
Lips: Dry; Cracked
Hair: Disheveled; Smooshed on one side
Face: Unmadeup; Corpse-like (see above)
Nipples: Evident

I burst out of the dressing room and directly into a former classmate who shall remain unnamed (largely because I have forgotten what her name was). She is one half of a set of twins I went to daycare with for years and years* We were acquaintances throughout junior high and high school as well, though not close ones, due to the rarity with which I appeared on school property. There, outside the dressing room, she is wearing a Nectarine Police-State nametag and offers to take the clothes from my arms. You do not recognize me, I command her silently, You will let me pass.
“Alexa?”
“Oh! Hi!”
Is She Twin X or Twin Y? I remember that one of the twins had a mole on her cheek. There it was! Left cheek, near the lip. Regrettably, I do not remember which twin was be-moled.
“So, how are you, Ms. Peterson,” I say, hoping I sounded coy and not merely ignorant of her first name.
She is fine. She is a lawyer and only working at Grape Autocracy temporarily, as she has just returned from working with a prestigious human rights group in Korea, and is deciding where to go next.
“Do you remember my sister?” she asks.
I assure her I do.
“Well, she’s in the Peace Corps in Madagascar!”
I murmur my appreciation.
“So,” the Mystery Twin asks brightly, “What are you doing back here?” She eyes my nipples and her gaze travels to the still trembling fingers at my clammy throat, “I thought you went away to college in New York!”
I mumble something about Sarah Mawr, the high cost of living in Manhattan, how, actually, I really like it here, now, less competitive, more time for writing, etc. etc. etc.
“Have you written anything I might have read?”

By the time I extricate myself and reach my car I am feeling panicky and unfulfilled. Why am I not in the Peace Corps in Madagascar? Why am I not at least writing, now that I have been freed from the economical constraints of the pursuit of New York real estate? What am I doing, anyway? Whatever will become of me?

The upshot of my hypoglycemia-induced epiphany is that I have decided to recommence the collecting of rejection letters.
I will submit! (sounds like I should be cowering naked at the feet of a whip-wielding dominatrix, doesn’t it?)
I have, in the past, had a habit of sending pieces of my writing to publications I am certain will not accept them. This began after the first time I submitted my work—to my shock, the essay was accepted immediately, but I was so dismayed by the quality, or lack thereof, of said essay that I kept my publication a secret. From then on I only sent things to The New Yorker and similarly unlikely venues–the theory (a bit unsound, obviously) being that at least the humiliating prospect of rejection is tempered by the relief of knowing my writing will never be subjected to the cold, cruel light of print.
But no more.
If I can’t be beatified in the minds of hungry Madagascarian children, at least I can make an effort to write something of which I am not ashamed (i.e. something that Miss Rothschild will not mercilessly ridicule) and send it to an appropriate journal for publication.

Watch This Space for the hijinks that are sure to ensue! By which I mean, of course, many drunken blog entries rife with dire and self-pitying speculation about the viability of my hopes, dreams, etc.
So, nothing new.

*[From the time I was 4 until I was nearly 13, I went to daycare at six in the morning, Monday through Friday—during the school year I walked to my classroom from daycare at the appropriate time and returned to the center in the afternoon, to be collected by my mother at six in the evening. During the summer it was 12 stultifying hours in a row. The daycare center I was enrolled in was called, unimaginatively, but with a terrible accuracy, “Extended Day.” Obviously their marketing department had been affected adversely by Reagan-Era lay-offs.]