Yes, and

Not a romance, but still a love story

When she was twelve years old, Amy’s parents threw her a surprise birthday party — and she’d lived in fear ever since.

When she’d walked through the front door and entered the dark living room, a switch being flipped and light suddenly illuminating the faces of dozens of her classmates and teammates and family members, Amy froze. Not knowing what else to do, she’d simply said “Oh.”

This reaction was, obviously, unsatisfactory. Amy’s mom, who had been very proud of her efforts in orchestrating this surprise, was supremely disappointed and had moped around for weeks after, calling Amy a spoilsport.

Amy had never really known how to communicate her emotions, especially not in real-time. If some people wore their hearts on their sleeves, Amy wore hers on the bottom of her socks, right beneath the Hanes logo. Or perhaps on the laundry instructions tag stitched to the inner hem of her jeans.

Now, she walked through life worrying whether she was accidentally offending someone everywhere she went. She hated receiving gifts or letters or compliments because she didn’t know how to make the right faces or say the right words that would somehow convey the depth of her feelings or gratitude or care. It had probably begun before then, but certainly since that party, the defining emotion of Amy’s life had been guilt. It was the only thing she could be sure she was feeling at any given time.

In the evenings, while her dinner was heating up in the stove, she’d practice her facial expressions in the mirror. She acted out scenes from infomercials and soap operas, copying the exaggerated expressions associated with each emotion and creating a catalogue of them in her mind. She wanted to be ready to use them when needed — an elated smile when a coworker announced a pregnancy, a believable look of concern when a friend told her about something that was troubling them. But when the moments came to put her practice to good use, she was always struck by such a crippling sense of self-consciousness that she was incapable. As such, her expression was likely blank and everyone probably hated her. Or, if they were being generous in their view of her, found her to be very cold and strange.

One day, on the bulletin board in her local coffee shop, Amy saw an ad for an Introduction to Improv class at a nearby comedy club. “WE’LL PRY YOU OUT OF YOUR SHELL,” the flyer promised. “BY THE TIME YOU’VE GRADUATED, SOCIAL ANXIETY WILL FEAR YOU.”

It was surprisingly enticing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been excited about something, and was a bit surprised to register the feeling now. But she knew she wanted to follow it, even if she didn’t understand it. She scanned the QR code on the flyer and reserved a spot in an intro class before she could think better of it.

Which was how Amy found herself, the following Tuesday evening, sweating bullets in a poorly-ventilated and dimly-lit room, surrounded by twelve strangers. Several of them looked like they were equally regretful of their past self’s decision to sign up for this class.

They all sat in a circle, on aluminum chairs with worn padding, the yellow foam insides spilling out. The configuration felt much more sterile and formal than she’d imagined, calling to mind scenes from AA meetings she’d seen on television.

A man of about forty-five walked into the center of the circle. This communicated a level of authority, so Amy assumed he was the instructor. There was also the fact that he was wearing both a tie-dyed shirt and a fedora, which was pretty much exactly what Amy had imagined an improv instructor would wear.

“I’m Jed,” the man said, clapping his hands together. “And I’m going to be your leader on this journey.”

He moved constantly while talking, spinning around slowly to be sure to make direct eye contact with every member of the circle.

“In this room, there is one rule, and only one rule,” Jed said, his tone extremely serious for a man wearing a tie-dyed shirt. “And that is you must not, under any circumstances, deny the improv.” He stopped in front of Amy, his eyes locked on her, and asked “Capeesh?”

Amy felt called out. “Capeesh,” she repeated, timidly, although she had no idea what the hell he was talking about, and, therefore, what she was agreeing to.

“Good,” Jed said, his tone softening and a wide smile spreading across his face. “So, has anyone ever done improv before?”

Only one person raised their hand, a young man on the opposite side of the circle from Amy. Jed pointed at him, indicating he should share.

The young man cleared his throat, looking less sure of himself than he had when he’d first raised his hand. “Well, not exactly improv, maybe,” he said. “But when I was in high school, my friends and I would have competitions to see who could come up with the best variation of two in the pink, one in the stink.”

“That’s abhorrent,” a red-haired woman a few seats down from him said, scrunching up her nose in disgust. “And immature.”

“Yeah, well, so were we,” the man replied, looking a bit embarrassed. “We were 13-year-old boys.”

“What was your best one?” Jed asked, throwing him a bone.

“Two in the Sigmund Freud, one in the sigmoid,” the man offered, his ears burning red.

While Amy agreed with the red-haired woman, she had to admit that was pretty clever. Jed snorted.

“The reality,” Jed said, looking like he thought what he was about to say was also rather clever, “is that you’ve all done improv before. Because life itself is merely one big game of improvisation.”

Amy found that sentiment to be a bit trite, but she figured if she was going to make an honest attempt at taking this seriously, she’d probably need to drop some of the cynicism. She tried to expel it, drawing in a deep breath and imagining it was openmindedness itself filling her lungs and not the stale air of what appeared to be the basement of a former police station that had been converted into a comedy club.

“Regardless of your experience,” Jed continued, with an air of bravado, “you’re all likely here for different reasons. Maybe you recently watched a late-night marathon of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, or went to a comedy show and felt inspired. Maybe you’ve got a big speaking engagement coming up and feel unprepared. Maybe you’re just dealing with some social anxiety and want to feel more well-equipped to roll with the punches. Maybe a friend told you improv changed their life. Or maybe you simply saw a flyer in a coffee shop and your interest was piqued.”

There were nods and murmurs of acknowledgement from around the circle.

Jed closed out his monologue. “I can promise you this: whatever your reasons for being here, in ten weeks time you will feel like a new person. One who is ready to embrace life’s inherent absurdity and uncertainty, whatever it may bring.”

With that, he introduced the group to their first exercise. It was, he explained, a simple mirroring exercise. They’d all pair up — given the odd number of the group, Jed claimed the red-haired woman as his partner — and stand a foot apart. From there, they’d simply mirror each other’s movements.

“Who is the leader?” asked an elderly man wearing a stiff short-sleeved button down tucked into some equally stiff trousers.

“You’re both the leader,” Jed said, with a wink.

“I don’t understand,” the elderly man responded, wearing his confusion on his face.

“You will,” Jed said, with another wink. He was a bit annoying, Amy thought. She suspected the elderly man agreed.

Aside from the mystery of who would be each duo’s leader, this being deemed a “simple” exercise was absolutely insane to Amy. A ruler’s distance apart was nothing. She was expected to stand that close to a stranger, look into their eyes, and do strange little hand motions and facial expressions for God knew how long? She could feel herself panicking, fight or flight kicking in.

Jed paired Amy with the elderly man, and that, at least, was a relief. Amy had always been able to relate much better to people who were not her peers. Babies and old people were her favorite humans to be stuck next to at a dinner party.

From a foot apart, Amy could smell the Werther’s candy on her partner’s breath. His name was Gene, he told her. He’d recently lost his wife to lung cancer and his children had suggested he try something new to keep himself out of the house. “Doing new things is good for your brain,” he told her. “It fights off dementia and all order of other Big Bads, or so they tell me. Though at my age I think that ship has sailed.”

Jed told them to all be quiet, to fight the tendency to fill the awkward silence with words and instead lean into it. “Pay attention to the subtle signals your partner is sending you,” he said. “A dance will form, one that you will sometimes be leading and at others be following. In the moment, you may not know which is which. That’s a good thing; don’t try too hard to make sense of it.”

For the first ten or so minutes, this exercise was the most uncomfortable thing Amy had ever done. It was dead silent in the room, aside from the occasional awkward chuckle or snort and the sound of breathing. Amy found herself maxxing out on eye contact every twenty or so seconds — after that, she had to blink away, to look up or to the side for a moment, wiping the vulnerability slate clean before starting the clock again. She found herself extremely self conscious of her every movement: the way she was pressing her lips together, how often she blinked, whether her nostrils were flared.

But at a certain point, something shifted. Whether it was an acceptance of the situation she was in or simply getting comfortable with the task at hand, she felt some of the self-consciousness fade away. In its absence, she felt herself slowly start to truly take in the fullness of the man in front of her: the sadness in his eyes, the scar above his left eyebrow, the laugh lines that formed parentheses on either side of his mouth. She experienced him as not just a side character in her own story but a real human with a rich inner life, someone with a lifetime full of stories and experiences and joys and heartbreaks. She felt that she wanted to validate him and these experiences, and, in the moment, she believed that she could do so through this exercise, through simply waving her arms up and down in unison — and perhaps solidarity — with his. It felt like with every motion, she was saying I see you; I am here, and I see you, and she felt like he was saying it back to her.

By the time Jed told them they were finished, Amy had tears streaming down her face and was shocked to discover that over thirty minutes had passed.

Class was over for the day, Jed told them. Their homework was to simply reflect on the experience and hold on to what they’d learned until next week. “Pursue that vulnerability,” he told them. “Don’t run away from it, and don’t let it run away from you. And until I see you again, don’t you dare deny the improv.” He winked, then retreated from whence he came, which Amy imagined was some kind of mystical lair of sorts. Somewhere where there was definitely fog. And harp music.

As quickly as the self-consciousness had left her, it returned. The lights had been flipped on, and she was back in her body. She felt embarrassed for having been so overcome, and now felt silly for making something so simple into something so deep. It was only the first class, for Christ’s sake. She’d probably made poor, sweet Gene uncomfortable. He’d probably go home and tell his kids that his attempt at trying something new was a bust; that there’d been a rather unhinged young woman in his class and he didn’t feel safe returning. The guilt, her only lifelong friend, tugged at her.

As he collected his things, his movements slow and stiff, Amy cautiously approached him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, to his back.

Gene turned around, and she saw this his eyes were wet and rimmed in red. Oh god, she thought. You’ve really done it. You can never come back here.

“For what?” he asked, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“For…being so strange,” Amy said, trying to find the real words she was looking for. As per usual, she felt incapable of adequately or accurately expressing herself. “For getting so emotional? I don’t usually do that. I can’t remember the last time I cried. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Nonsense,” Gene said, waving his hand at her. “It seems like you needed to get that out of your system, and so did I.” He tapped his cane on the ground. “Now, feel free to say no, because I’m sure someone your age has far better things to do than hang around with a lonely old man like me: but I’m going to grab a coffee from the shop next door and process whatever the hell just happened, if you’d like to join me.”

A huge part of Amy wanted to say no, wanted to just go home and hole up in her apartment and pretend this entire day had never happened — or at the very least to process it on her own, in her own way.

But here was a human being, reaching out a hand to her. She didn’t know if it was an act of pity or of vulnerability or simply of friendship — but either way, she heard Jed’s command ringing through her ears: Don’t deny the improv.

“I’d like that,” Amy said, smiling softly at Gene. It wasn’t an exaggerated soap opera smile or a satisfied infomercial-user smile. It was a simple smile, an honest one that felt real and true.