hey everyone im rita. im the assistant coordinator, assistant to rachel who you’'ve all met. i dont know where rachel is but its getting late so i think we should just start. i don’t have anything prepared so lets just start with you on my left and work our way around the room.

hi everyone i’m tammy and get off to weaponry. yes i masturbate with my machine gun. but i also get off to love, you know. i think you know. i’ve been in a few serious relationships, and i know i haven’t been perfect, and i’ve been misleading and dishonest and kind of a jerk. i like the way that sounds though because it makes me seem like the one who was in control. which i don’t remember if that was the case. but i think theres some math there somewhere, i’ve started recently saying to my daughter, “yesterday nothing, today nothing, but tomorrow may be the day your little angel arrives” which i got from a television advertisement selling artificial insemination, but i think its true, i think we do live each day as a separate event that we share with a group of familiar people. but they werent always there which is what we forget, they came one day and they’ll leave just as suddenly. i dont think that any of this is random, i think that even us, the group of us here sitting in this circle, i think its somehow meaningful that we are here together.

okay hi i am martha, i’ve been single for over a year now. i think partly because i have an inability to use spoons. not an inability, its a choice that i don’t use them, but i really dread them and can’t even try to force myself to use one. so this seems pretty insignificant, except that its something i usually have to deal with pretty soon after i meet someone. at a dinner, i mean. or something. i move the spoon away from my table place and suddenly the guy i’m eating with gets disturbed or something. what am i doing, he asks, and dont i plan to use that for the soup thats coming? so we have the spoon conversation, where i explain everything, and guy always gets really agitated because who wants to hear that crazy stuff on a first date? so it never goes anywhere. last night i dreamt i was in a spelling bee and my word was ‘spoon’ and i couldn’t remember how to spell it. in my dream it had always been a troublesome word for me to spell, but it was horrifying because i knew that everyone thought it was such an easy word to spell. a word that everyone knows, and for me not to know it, well, there. oh, and for the record i am a good speller.

i’m lisa kennedy, i’ve been married three times. i decided to join this group after my son quit the basketball team. well he didn’t exactly quit, but it was part of the arrangements that were made with his school, and he didn’t want to be expelled for sexual harassment. he was a great player so it is really a shame but, so here i am. i’m lousy at introductions. maybe this can be kind of a speech therapy for me. sorry rita, i know that is probably belittling to your organization but lets face it we all have our own purposes. i feel like i’m back in high school now, sitting in these desks adds to that, but all you ladies have such great hairstyles and mine, well you can see that i barely pay attention to my appearance anymore. but i really like what martha was just saying about how we all have our faults that people who don’t know us can’t understand. but we make judgements, we all do, so quickly. so, glad to meet you all.

i’m daniel, lisa’s husband. i’m not actually signed up for these meetings so my name isn’t on the contact list, i’m just sitting in with lisa to see what this is all about. i grew up in seattle and moved down here after college to find a job. I met lisa in a dentist’s office, we both reached for the same travel magazine and i looked up at her and i’ll never forget what she said to me.

©Chelsea Martin 2007