=book recently read: Almost No Memory by Lydia Davis=

"I stand up and look in the mirror and think: There she is. She's looking at you." 

—Lydia Davis

A story in the vein of Lydia Davis:

My Problem with People

Introduction of the Problem: I go to a party where I see so-and-so. Before I even arrive, I have plotted my lines of escape. Once there, I do my best to avoid her, to go to a room or to the least desirable a place in the room as far from her as possible. I am like a small aquarium fish with nipped away, ragged fins seeking the hideaway of a bland rock or the most uninteresting shell in the world. In the meantime, she fills the whole tank, going from wall to wall, top to bottom. Fine with me, just leave me alone to hide behind this glossostigma elantinoides. My thinking: certainly she won't bother to look for me here.

Development of the Problem and Some Improvised "Solutions" with Additional Theoretical Considerations: I resist emerging even for the flakes of food that occasionally drift to the bottom. I try to become as invisible as possible but I know that my skeleton still shows through my pallid, x-rayed flesh. I don't want to be caught alone with her in the open water because I know from past experience that she'll chase me down, hector me with questions I'm uncomfortable with, ignore the borders I awkwardly set up, awkwardly because, as a child, I was never allowed to have borders, never permitted my own territory. Not her problem, I know, but somehow people like her sense I'll run when chased and they can't help themselves; it's something about the waving tail that triggers their aggression. I guess. Is this how it works with them? I can only speculate as to her reasons and rationalizations. I don't know for sure to be perfectly honest. How would I? I'm not that type. Maybe this is just how the universe works. How do I know how the universe works? This is my problem with people.  

Outcome: Anyway,I think I have successfully avoided her, exchanging only the most minimal and absolutely necessary of generic pleasantries—hello, goodbye, How are you? Fine, how are you? Fine. Good. Nice Day isn't it? Yes.—exhibiting a skillful, even admirable display of social minimalism that might do a diplomat in the most difficult of postings proud...until two months later when I hear that she's been telling everyone that I was rude and hurtful to her. Her bullying has taken a uniquely passive-aggressive turn; suddenly she is the victim. Everyone is invited to chase after me now. Once again, it is brought painfully, shockingly home to me how socially inept I really am. 

Commentary on Results with Accompanying Despair: What can I do? I have yielded her the entire aquarium but she can't let me rest in the corner, in the poopy pink gravel, with my ounce or two of soiled water, blowing bubbles as quietly as possible. There is an emotional truth and a practical, everyday truth and you can't explain one with the other. Many forms of abuse and injustice hide behind this simple, self-evident fact. 

Summing up and Conclusion: Speaking metaphorically, this is how I feel: 1. like curling up in bed and crying; 2.like beating my fists against the glass, wanting out of this ten-gallon world. In fact, I do neither; in fact, I write this story instead. This is the role of fiction in my life, in the lives of many, as I imagine the lives of many for whom fiction plays a role in sheltering them from a world in which they have no real place. Speaking metaphorically again, this is how I feel: in my abject fear of this woman, I'm convinced that she won't be satisfied until my body is floating faded, wasted, and gnawed among the yellow leaves sucked inevitably towards the filter. That no matter how small and mute and insignificant and close as possible to invisible that I make myself she has decided that there isn't enough room in the tank for me and her.

Final Considerations, Addendum, and Suggestions for Possible Further Research: Right or wrong, accurate, metaphorical, or purely chimerical, I understand that, taken as a whole, all these feelings further represent my problem with people. But, that much acknowledged, if history and literature alone be any judge, I have concluded that it is not beyond the pale of reasonable possibility that my feelings also reflect and represent even through the warped lens of my admitted dysfunctionality a very real and very dangerous problem with people themselves.

Parenthetical Aside: (Actually this story is quite a bit more fanciful and metaphorical than a typical Lydia Davis story. Davis exercises a  rigorous and disciplined minimalism far beyond my confidence to even attempt. I tell too much, explain too much in my anxiety not to be misunderstood, in my panic to please; this, again, is my problem with people and therefore a legitimate part of the story. So it's really inaccurate to say this piece reflects Davis's fiction; more accurate to say that it was inspired by her fiction; even more accurate still to say it is an example of Lydia Davis's fiction as it is refracted—distorted would be getting really precise!—through the prism of my own fiction-making lens.)