She said she didn’t understand why I don’t write poetry anymore. As if she were the cause. She didn’t believe that I couldn’t reduce what we’d put each other through to a few pretty sentences. And she didn’t seem to get that the poetry I wrote to my girlfriend at fourteen and fifteen and seventeen was the outpouring of myopic infatuation. Over the years, I explained, I’d grown weary of its melodrama. Instead I was seeking farsighted companionship.
She didn’t understand why I didn’t write her letters anymore. Like I did in those first weeks. She said it was because I stopped feeling passionate about her. But, really, how I felt didn’t fit on a page, and every time I tried the directness of a letter the result was fragmentary, like a jigsaw puzzle missing the center pieces.
That’s why I wrote stories and not poems or letters. It was all too complicated to explain. That’s what literature is for, I told her, for when you can’t explain it. But, for her, stories took too long. They lacked the immediacy of a sententious declaration. Once at a restaurant, to appease her, I wrote on a napkin: Why can't I just say I love you?
She shrugged and said, What does I love you even mean?
I understood. Those were words she’d use without a thought, getting off the phone or walking out the door.
You want a fairy tale, I told her. But fairy tales begin unreal, end unreal and have some great problem in between.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Is it possible to be honest?
Since I've entitled this blog Bad Faith, which, for those of you not up on your Sartre, is basically about lying to yourself, I've decided to begin my blog on topic.
More than half a year after separating myself by 3000 miles from a disastrous legal coupling, I’ve waded again into dating. Though before I got into any new entanglements, I laid out some rules for myself—or rather a single overriding mandate: Don’t front. I’ve been trying to make honest, aware decisions: I am transparent in my motives, do not give now any more than I’m willing to give later, do not conceal any information that might lead to accusations of false advertising, and show no greater consideration than I would eight months down the line.
I've been on several dates, but for this post I'm going to address a particular date from two nights ago. Actually, it would be more accurate to say she wasn't a date but a woman with whom I’ve been out and am not dating however much I would like to—a younger woman, born not quite a month before my mother walked me to my first day of kindergarten. Visually she’s stunning, and unfortunately I’m a sucker for that, though she also happens (like me) to be educated and interested in literature, travel and herself. Two nights ago I took her to some live music. For an hour before the show, we talked. Actually, she did most of the talking; I mostly prompted—a better strategy, I thought, than broadcasting my own tenuous virtues. As I suspected, she’s in a complicated situation and not emotionally available. Now. That's what I heard—she's not emotionally available now. Later at a bar, so as not to possibly be accused in the future of misrepresentation, I mentioned my past—though, to be frank, I was also implying a decision she should make about her current situation. To imply myself in it.
Then I said: It’s important to me to be ruthlessly honest.
Elbows propped on the table, dim bar light shadow on the smooth brown cheeks cupped bored in her palms, she raised an eyebrow and said, So, what are you going to confess?
I raised an eyebrow, too, but tried to look puzzled, as though I had no idea what she might be referring to. That was my confession, I said. My past.
I was reminded of a quote from Wittgenstein: Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
Which, despite my fierce resolutions, is my excuse for not saying, Because, like every other man you meet, I’m not blind to your face and body, no matter how I pretend to be. Because I know you’re helplessly glutted by premature declarations and probably bored by what you effortlessly inspire.
Anyone can see you are used to inspiring and you need something else.
More than half a year after separating myself by 3000 miles from a disastrous legal coupling, I’ve waded again into dating. Though before I got into any new entanglements, I laid out some rules for myself—or rather a single overriding mandate: Don’t front. I’ve been trying to make honest, aware decisions: I am transparent in my motives, do not give now any more than I’m willing to give later, do not conceal any information that might lead to accusations of false advertising, and show no greater consideration than I would eight months down the line.
I've been on several dates, but for this post I'm going to address a particular date from two nights ago. Actually, it would be more accurate to say she wasn't a date but a woman with whom I’ve been out and am not dating however much I would like to—a younger woman, born not quite a month before my mother walked me to my first day of kindergarten. Visually she’s stunning, and unfortunately I’m a sucker for that, though she also happens (like me) to be educated and interested in literature, travel and herself. Two nights ago I took her to some live music. For an hour before the show, we talked. Actually, she did most of the talking; I mostly prompted—a better strategy, I thought, than broadcasting my own tenuous virtues. As I suspected, she’s in a complicated situation and not emotionally available. Now. That's what I heard—she's not emotionally available now. Later at a bar, so as not to possibly be accused in the future of misrepresentation, I mentioned my past—though, to be frank, I was also implying a decision she should make about her current situation. To imply myself in it.
Then I said: It’s important to me to be ruthlessly honest.
Elbows propped on the table, dim bar light shadow on the smooth brown cheeks cupped bored in her palms, she raised an eyebrow and said, So, what are you going to confess?
I raised an eyebrow, too, but tried to look puzzled, as though I had no idea what she might be referring to. That was my confession, I said. My past.
I was reminded of a quote from Wittgenstein: Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
Which, despite my fierce resolutions, is my excuse for not saying, Because, like every other man you meet, I’m not blind to your face and body, no matter how I pretend to be. Because I know you’re helplessly glutted by premature declarations and probably bored by what you effortlessly inspire.
Anyone can see you are used to inspiring and you need something else.
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