Near-Perfect Stoicism (Days 2 & 3)

I forgot that I had physical therapy again today. Usually, there's a day off between appointments, but not today. I went on Monday and had a typically uneventful session with my normal guy, whose name I still don't know. Today, though, he switched with another therapist, so today I had her. Her name escapes me, shockingly.

I had the same basic regiment: 10 minutes on the bike to warm up, then exercises on the parallel bars, and then it's over to the table, where I do more exercises. It doesn't vary much, except the speed, ease, and fluidity with which I complete this routine. Since this was only my third proper session, nothing exciting or earth-shattering happened. Except my utter stoicism after groping my trainer.

Over the last year or so, I've almost perfected a look of complete stoicism. Part of this can be attributed to my mind's preoccupied concentration on menial tasks, but now it's my default expression because I simple cannot be shocked, and it's difficult to surprise me with a joke. Most of the time, I see it coming. This is not to say that I have silenced my internal monologue. Often, my face won't move but my head will tumble, either with laughter, appreciation, or even horror, among other things. Today, I realized that I may have broken down that let bit of self-consciousness that causes a face to contort.

When I was between the parallel bars, I grabbed my trainer's boob. I don't mean that this was an incidental brush or run-in. No, I squeezed. In my defense, I was wholly unconscious of this. What happened was that I was in the middle of the bars doing some balance exercises and my eyes were intently fixed on the door in front of me, per her instruction. She told me to try the exercises with my eyes closed, and with my hands off of the bars that I used for balance. I began to do this when I felt my body start to roll to the right, and I reached for the bar in order to right myself. I always scan a room and look things to grab, and I thought I was reaching for part of the steel construct. The thing was, though, that I didn't grab the bar, but her left breast.

It took a good five seconds before my brain fully processed what had happened. Five seconds, as in "One, Two, Three, Four, Five." All I knew was that that was not the bar. She ignored the whole event, thankfully. Then I began to think. Does this happen routinely? This clearly was not the first time that someone had accidentally grabbed her boob. She's not (how you say) mildly chested. (She's not overweight, either.) Did she view this as a hazard of the job? Like, "Yeah, whatreyougonnado? My boob was grabbed again"? Even if this were so, I couldn't imagine getting used to that. If someone accidentally grabbed my crotch, it could never be a run-of-the-mill interaction.

She didn't mention it, but I knew immediately what I had done. And I knew she knew I knew. It wasn't exactly difficult--steel bars and breast tissue are fairly disparate, texturally. Rather than call attention to the awkwardness, I chose to ignore it and proceed with my exercises. It wasn't like she could tell that I was actually cringing, because my face remained still and steady.

I've never had a face of rubber. In the past, though, such an event would cause me to furrow my eyebrows inquiringly, then hoist them in shock and recognition. Not so, today. I kept my eyes focused on the door and calmly removed my hand and resumed the exercise. The incident was over, even though it pierced my thoughts for the next half-hour, and still, obviously, lingers.

So maybe my impassivity is only external, for now. I don't think this is a bad thing, because once it becomes internal I could become really boring. And posts like this wouldn't exist because they wouldn't occur to me.

R