Fifteen of us.
Fifteen people who blush, one evening at a time. They meet on a Wednesday. Every one of them grew up with parents who were not there in the way that counts, and every one of them goes red.
The one who tells it
Sam
The Netherlands
Sam is not one of the fifteen. He is the one you meet them through, and the last one to say his own sentence.
He has a good job at a bank and parents who never did anything wrong. Nobody shouted, nobody left, nobody asked him anything either. He learned that you do it right by not standing out, and he got very good at it. It works until somebody says your name out loud in front of a full room and means it kindly.
That was the afternoon Tim took him along on a Wednesday.
Why Your Face Goes Red When Everyone Looks At You · The film made with this person
Tim
35 · Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Sociologist, works at a bank, plays electric guitar.
At ten he was already different from the rest of the class and nobody gave it a name. At twenty he found something that made it quiet, and for a long time that felt like the solution rather than the problem.
The ADHD has still not been diagnosed. The drinking has a name, and he uses it. He is the one who starts the Wednesday, who brings other people along, and who talks about everyone's evening except his own.
He was with Lucy. Two good years, one hard one. They still circle each other, and everybody in the room can see it except the two of them.
Goes red at: His own name in a full room.
Why Blushing Gets Worse When You Try To Stop It · The film made with this person
Lucy
37 · Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Looking for remote work that fits, after three burnouts.
She did what was asked of her all her life, and she did it well, until three times in a row she could not do anything at all.
She is spiritually far along, she is in therapy, and her parents are round every Sunday. She has a good life by every measure anyone else would use. That is exactly the thing she is ashamed of: she cannot point at a reason, so she assumes the reason is her.
The shopping she keeps perfect track of. The looking she does not. When somebody she finds attractive holds her eye, her face is gone before the sentence is finished, and then she is watching herself blush instead of listening.
Goes red at: Somebody who looks at her and keeps looking.
How To Stop Blushing When You Talk To People · The film made with this person
Xiaoyu
31 · Chengdu, China. In the Netherlands since 2015.
Still looking for her place, out loud now.
They called her a spring roll at school, and they have never quite stopped. It started at her parents' shop, where she stood behind the counter every day as a teenager and heard it from people who thought it was friendly.
On her first day at work somebody did her accent back at her, in front of the team, and everybody laughed including her. She was not allowed a relationship until she graduated. When she finally had one she nursed him through a slipped disc, from the pool to walking again, and a month after he could walk he ended it.
She has not found her place yet. The difference this year is that she says so out loud instead of waiting to be asked.
Goes red at: Where are you really from?
What To Say When Someone Points Out Your Blushing · The film made with this person
Matteo
36 · Bologna, Italy. In the Netherlands since 2015.
Loses every word in two languages when praised.
Every week there was reading aloud in class, and every week he stumbled. The teacher thought it built character. Nobody used the word dyslexia until he was much older, and by then the stumbling had moved from his mouth to everything else.
He is good at his job and he knows it, right up to the moment somebody says so. Then both his languages leave at once and he stands there smiling at the floor, and afterwards he replays the four seconds for a week.
He does not know how to handle it, and if he is honest he is not sure who he falls for either. Both of those are on the list of things he does not say out loud yet.
Goes red at: A compliment.
How To Stop Blushing Fast: 3 Things That Work · The film made with this person
Adaeze
41 · Lagos, Nigeria. Grew up in Rotterdam.
Fine in front of a hundred people. Not at the coffee machine.
She can hold a room of a hundred without her heart rate moving, because a presentation has a script and she wrote it. Small talk has no script. Two minutes at the coffee machine and she can feel her face going while she is still deciding what to say.
As the only black manager she gets mistaken for the assistant often enough that she has a line ready, and having a line ready is its own kind of tiring.
The violence she saw as a child in Lagos is not something she brings up. It is in the room anyway, in how fast she reads a face and how long it takes her to unread it.
Goes red at: The small talk, not the presentation.
Why Blushing Makes People Trust You More · The film made with this person
Eva
41 · Surrey, England
Clean, running six days a week, in love with her trainer.
Boarding school from the age of eight, where crying was not allowed and being homesick was something you grew out of by Sunday. She grew out of it. She grew out of most things by making them into a schedule.
The ADHD keeps her going and the running keeps the ADHD somewhere she can see it, six days a week, and everyone who loves her watches the number rather than the pace. She knows she swaps one thing for another. She is clean, and she says the word out loud, which took her years.
She is properly in love with her trainer and completely unable to say so. She can ask a table of twelve what they want to drink. She cannot ask a waiter for the bill without her ears going first.
Goes red at: Asking for the bill, even though she always pays it.
The film with this person is still being made.
Bram
47 · Emmen, the Netherlands
Nobody rings on Sunday. He is first in the room on Wednesday.
The bankruptcy and the divorce landed in the same year, and five years on he is not over her, which he will tell you plainly if you ask and never if you do not.
His back has been written off. So has the work that went with it. There are no parents any more and there were never any brothers or sisters, so on Sunday the phone does not ring, and he has stopped pretending that he has not noticed.
He still cannot look the staff at the supermarket in the eye. Not because of them. Because he knows what he looked like the last few times, and he assumes they remember it as clearly as he does. He is the first one there on a Wednesday, every week, half an hour early.
Goes red at: The supermarket.
The film with this person is still being made.
Priya
26 · Chennai, India
Turns down every solo, because she knows it is there.
Her parents let her sing because you do not stutter when you sing, and it worked. For years the singing was the one place where the words came out whole.
Then came the school choir, her first solo, and halfway through it stopped. The class did it back to her for a week. The stutter is under control now and almost nobody hears it, but she can hear it, and that is enough.
She turns solos down before anyone can offer them. She says she is not really a soloist. What is true is that the moment a room goes quiet for her on purpose, her face arrives before her voice does.
Goes red at: Any solo.
The film with this person is still being made.
Yasmin
24 · Fez, Morocco. Born in Utrecht.
In therapy for something she thought she was over.
At secondary school her name was mispronounced on purpose, week after week, by people who found it funny. During the school choir a teacher cut her solo off halfway through, in front of everyone, and never explained why.
She is in therapy for it. What she did not expect was that at twenty four it would still hurt this much, and that admitting that would be the hardest part.
Being Muslim in a country that calls itself tolerant has cost her more than she says. The thing that turns her face red now is not the hostility. It is somebody getting her name right without being asked twice, and treating the hijab as part of her rather than as a topic.
Goes red at: Somebody who says her name right and lets her be who she is.
Does Everyone Notice When I Blush · The film made with this person
Diego
33 · Guadalajara, Mexico
Working on it. It is a long fight.
It happened in the middle of a wedding dance floor, with everyone he knew around him. He walked outside and did not come back, and for two years he told the story as if it had been food poisoning.
The panic disorder has a name now and a treatment, and he keeps both. What he has not got yet is the ability to answer an ordinary question about himself. How are you doing lands like a spotlight, and by the time he has decided how honest to be, his face has already answered.
He is not far along emotionally and he says so. He is further than last year, and he counts that.
Goes red at: How are you doing?
The film with this person is still being made.
Freja
22 · Aarhus, Denmark
Hates her freckles, and lies in the sun anyway.
She was bullied for years for being the tallest in every photograph and for the freckles across her nose, and she learned to stand with one hip dropped so she would measure the same as everyone else.
Say the word freckles to her now, even kindly, even as a compliment, and they disappear into the blush within about two seconds. She is aware of the irony and it does not help.
She thinks they are hideous. She also lies under the sunbed and goes out without sunscreen, which makes more of them, which she knows. Nobody in the room points that out. That is rather the point of the room.
Goes red at: Somebody mentioning her freckles.
5 Things You Do That Keep You Blushing · The film made with this person
Nina
30 · Zwolle, the Netherlands
Plays wheelchair basketball at national level.
The car accident was at nineteen. What she talks about is not the accident. It is the eleven years since, of conversations held about her while she was sitting in them, of people asking her partner what she would like to drink.
EMDR helped with the crash. It did nothing for the conversations, because there is nothing wrong with her to process there.
So when her face goes now it is not shame, it is heat of a different kind, and she has learned to let it show rather than swallow it. She plays wheelchair basketball at national level, which she mentions early, because it changes how people talk to her and she is tired of waiting for that to happen by itself.
Goes red at: Being spoken about over her head. From anger, not shame.
The film with this person is still being made.
Kofi
45 · Kumasi, Ghana. In the Netherlands since 2004.
Looking for someone to speak Dutch with.
He was called slow for years before anyone thought to test his hearing. Sixty per cent gone on both sides, and by the time it had a name he had already built a whole personality around guessing.
He asks once. If he still has not got it, he nods and hopes it was not a question, and then spends the rest of the conversation working out from people's faces whether he answered something.
His Dutch is not where he wants it. He is looking for someone to practise with, but the moment people hear he is not from here they switch to English, kindly, and the practice never happens. Miep does not switch. That is most of why he comes.
Goes red at: Having to ask what did you say for the second time.
How To Be Less Afraid Of Blushing In Meetings · The film made with this person
Miep
78 · Leiden, the Netherlands
Still blushes at everything. Just does not apologise for it.
Widowed at fifty two. For years afterwards nobody asked her how she was, because she looked like somebody who was managing, and she was very good at looking like that.
The arthritis makes her hands slow and her eyes are going. She wants to do the ceramics course and the step to the first evening of it is enormous, far bigger than anyone half her age would guess. She is going.
She still goes red at everything, and at seventy eight she has stopped saying sorry for it. And if there is an attractive man of eighty in the room, her face does exactly what it did when she was seventeen, which she finds ridiculous and reports cheerfully.
Goes red at: Still everything.
The film with this person is still being made.
Tariq
19 · Aleppo, Syria. In the Netherlands since 2016.
Studied mathematics. Cannot get work because of the language.
He was nine when they left, and then three years of waiting in a reception centre, which is a long time when you are nine and an even longer time to explain afterwards.
A door slamming puts him somewhere else for two seconds, and everyone in the room sees the two seconds. The question where are you from is worse, because it is friendly and it is asked constantly and there is no short answer that is true.
He studied mathematics and is good at it. The work does not come, because the Dutch is not there yet. He has a roof, which he mentions as a real piece of good news, and he is nineteen, which the room keeps reminding him is on his side.
Goes red at: Sudden loud noises. And being asked about home.
Why Do I Blush For No Reason · The film made with this person
Read their evenings.
Fifteen of Us is the novel they come from. The weekly email is free and starts today.