On embarrassment

Embarrassment is an unreasonably difficult word to spell. For how it feels, the attempt to spell it correctly is an added insult.

I want to be murdered when I am embarrassed. I do not mean to sound hyperbolic but after all, we watch so much murder on the news and in our fictions and in our anxious hearts as we move inside the world. So I want to be murdered simply, efficiently, to spare any more embarrassment. Are we not inured to such violence? It should be the plausible deniability of my existence, to cease to be, after such embarrassment as blundering with a joke that does not land, to make a comment no one agrees with, to misquote someone, to misrepresent a fact with some tacit detail misshapen or formed incorrectly in your mouth. “Is that how it’s pronounced, after all?” And the very worst embarrassment is when I make a statement which does not agree with you. Do you like this as much as I do? 

“No, I hate it.” 

When you do not take any purchase in the rope I have looped around my waist and instead slide it up around my throat and pull, you must pull harder; as hard as possible till I die. I need to die or else I will further embarrass myself by coming right in front of the world. The humiliation is ecstasy.