Secret Shames of Real People

1. *Lydia didn’t leave for a better job as she’d suggested. Her boyfriend, 10 years older than her, made her quit to be with him as often as possible. He made her sell her Jeep, took away her cellphone and carefully monitored her friends. Those friends she had told her to watch out, or else in five years she’d be a stay-home mom with three kids and no life. But she was smitten with the guy. She had a photo of the two of them on her desk at work, he standing behind her, two-feet taller, his large hands over her shoulders. He may have hit her once, a few years back. Or maybe she really did walk into a doorframe, or whatever that excuse usually is. Nobody’s heard from her in awhile.
2. George can’t stay awake at work. His body lolls until his head hangs low, nearly touching his computer’s keyboard. This only happens maybe every other day for a few minutes at a time, then he snaps back up and resumes work like nothing happened. His cubicle is positioned as such that only one person can see him, and she’s being discreet. There’s talk of drugs; he does seem to be in the restroom a lot. Then again he’s young and handsome, muscular. Maybe he only stays out late.
3. Catherine flat out told Bennet that nobody liked him—really, just that: “Nobody likes you.” He was over at her apartment at the time, just sitting on her couch, when she sprung it on him. What his reaction was, I wasn’t told, but knowing him, I can imagine it was one of sheepish resignation. And if that wasn’t enough, she told him that if he really hated his job so much, he should just quit. It’s unclear whether this is a shame of Catherine, Bennet or of them both. But what kind of person tells someone that? And what kind of person wouldn’t know he was despised to that degree?
4. Eliza choked on a piece of chicken at a business luncheon a few years back. She was surrounded suddenly by 300 concerned executives, who had stopped eating to form around her a loose, staring ring. One man stepped forward and performed the Heimlich maneuver, but it didn’t take, and he had to do it all over again before she chucked out the partially chewed meat, 300 concerned executives watching it land on the carpet. She tends to bring this up when someone at a cocktail party spills wine on himself or drags his sleeve over the butter at dinner. “At least you didn’t choke on a piece of chicken in front of 300 strangers,” she’ll begin. So I suppose it’s not much of a secret. But she never told me.

* Names have been changed to ones picked at random from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.