So as Athena suggested yesterday, Lover's Lanes needs to change. As originally conceived it's a fantastic idea for someone other than me, but I can't pull it off. I'm too introverted, too anxious, too prone to harsh self-criticism. But rather than abandon the project, I'm rewriting the rules. Rather than "ask for love stories," the new rule is "ask for love stories when I'm reasonably comfortable doing so." That might mean twice a week, once a week, or never.
I'm viewing this not as a surrender but as a necessary evolution. Making a cross-country road trip will be challenge enough without also imposing pressure on myself to invent and become a factitious persona. With this concession to reality I'll be able to enjoy myself more and worry less about interviews and itineraries. Maybe someday, when I've grown, I'll be able to take the journey I initially conceived. But that's not going to happen by June.
The change in plans is bittersweet for me. Sweet because the new journey will be more liberating and self-authentic than the one I'd planned; bitter because the new journey will not be breathtakingly original. It'll be "only" an extended road trip, with an option on love stories. Which itself is totally new for me, and I hope to grow through it -- but it's not new for you. You've done it yourself or you know someone who has. As anyone who's sat through a family slide show knows, travel is sorta boring when you're not the one traveling. So I reluctantly conclude that the daily-blogging phase of Lover's Lanes is at an end, at least for now. I'll pop back in as interesting developments (like cars or laptop computers) happen to the project, and when the trip starts I'll post whatever interesting anecdotes or ideas the scenery affords me. More dialogues with goddesses, maybe. And when there's a love story to be had -- well, I'll likely post that too.
Good trails!
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
A different sort of love story
"Do you want to hear a love story, Brian?" asked the aged but attractive woman with gray eyes.
"Sure!"
"When my mom was pregnant with me, my dad learned from an oracle that if Mom had a son, that son would overthrow his kingdom. He didn't want that to happen, so he ate my mom. Seriously, swallowed her whole. Mom was made of tougher stuff, though, and actually lived inside my dad for years. She gave birth to me there and nurtured me as I grew up. It was a little cramped, though, so when I got old enough I made myself a suit of armor and a spear. I used the spear to smash through my dad's skull and emerged into the world fully formed."
"Is this story about your dad and mom's screwed-up relationship?"
"No, it's about my dad's and mine. He ate me when I was in the womb, and I split his skull open. When I came out I thought he'd be angry, but instead he was overjoyed. I think partly he was relieved I wasn't a boy. After that I was his favorite daughter. Do you know he lets me throw his thunderbolts? I'm the only one in the world besides Dad who can send thunder. Sometimes he even lends me his aegis, which is impenetrable to any weapon. I could ask any favor from him and get it. I don't, because I'm more prudent than that, but I could."
"This isn't really the kind of love story I had in mind."
"I'm a virgin goddess -- what do you want from me? My point is that I sprang from my dad's head and as a result he lets me demand anything. Some combination of pride and relief, I guess. That worked out okay in his case because I was well conceived. But you can't cave in to just any demand that anything makes that springs from your head, no matter how much you love it."
"You're talking about Lover's Lanes, aren't you."
"As for example."
"So I should stuff it back in my skull?"
"Hell no, that's the worst thing you could do. But realize that a mortal idea doesn't emerge fully formed like a god does. It needs perfecting, especially if you're going to be living closely with it for a long time. If nothing else, at least check to see if it's a boy or a girl. Don't give your thunder to an idea until you're sure it's not going to overthrow you. That's all I'm saying."
"Thanks."
"Always happy to help. You just have to ask."
"Sure!"
"When my mom was pregnant with me, my dad learned from an oracle that if Mom had a son, that son would overthrow his kingdom. He didn't want that to happen, so he ate my mom. Seriously, swallowed her whole. Mom was made of tougher stuff, though, and actually lived inside my dad for years. She gave birth to me there and nurtured me as I grew up. It was a little cramped, though, so when I got old enough I made myself a suit of armor and a spear. I used the spear to smash through my dad's skull and emerged into the world fully formed."
"Is this story about your dad and mom's screwed-up relationship?"
"No, it's about my dad's and mine. He ate me when I was in the womb, and I split his skull open. When I came out I thought he'd be angry, but instead he was overjoyed. I think partly he was relieved I wasn't a boy. After that I was his favorite daughter. Do you know he lets me throw his thunderbolts? I'm the only one in the world besides Dad who can send thunder. Sometimes he even lends me his aegis, which is impenetrable to any weapon. I could ask any favor from him and get it. I don't, because I'm more prudent than that, but I could."
"This isn't really the kind of love story I had in mind."
"I'm a virgin goddess -- what do you want from me? My point is that I sprang from my dad's head and as a result he lets me demand anything. Some combination of pride and relief, I guess. That worked out okay in his case because I was well conceived. But you can't cave in to just any demand that anything makes that springs from your head, no matter how much you love it."
"You're talking about Lover's Lanes, aren't you."
"As for example."
"So I should stuff it back in my skull?"
"Hell no, that's the worst thing you could do. But realize that a mortal idea doesn't emerge fully formed like a god does. It needs perfecting, especially if you're going to be living closely with it for a long time. If nothing else, at least check to see if it's a boy or a girl. Don't give your thunder to an idea until you're sure it's not going to overthrow you. That's all I'm saying."
"Thanks."
"Always happy to help. You just have to ask."
Friday, April 17, 2009
Move along
It's hard to know what to write about a journey you're worried about not taking. At this point I'm pretty sure I will make a trip and it will be in a car. That takes care of the "Lanes" aspect. The "Lover's" aspect is just... infuriatingly difficult for me. It would be nice if I could take someone else who would keep me company on the drive and ask for interviews on my behalf. Someone, you know, socially adept. "Hey, dude, how's it going? Terrible about the Sox, huh? Hey listen, I'm on a road trip with my friend over there, he's collecting..." But even if that were possible it would be hiding and I know it. Maybe worse than not talking to anyone. Anyway, I don't have much to say today that isn't just griping and fearing, so I won't subject you to any more of it.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Heisenberg for Dummies
I've been continuing my perusal of "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes" (WEF) with great interest. The book's writing style is a little dry and sometimes unhelpfully general, but it's been helping me clarify assumptions about what I'm doing when I write -- as well as when I "conduct my research."
The scare quotes are there because what I'm doing is not really ethnography. I'm not going native; I'm not embedding myself in a foreign culture for long enough to understand the culture from the inside out. I certainly don't agree with Kino that three days is long enough to understand any culture. As a result, when my culture is different from my subject's -- which in one way or another it will be most of the time -- I will lack a certain amount of context. Fortunately, WEF reassures me on every page that the activities and perceptions of an ethnographer are inseparable from the behavior of his subjects anyway, and stresses: don't worry about it, just record it. If you're somewhere in Africa studying an indigenous clan that eats goat colons and they notice the food they're offering you grosses you out, record how you reacted and what they did about it. Their response to you is a source of insight into their culture. (And your reaction is itself a source of insight into you, which is of little concern for an ethnographer but of quite a bit of concern for me, since Lover's Lanes is about me as well as my interlocutors.) This is profoundly relevant to Lover's Lanes; if I commit some kind of faux pas or make an assumption that turns out wrong, it reveals a way my subject's culture is different from mine, which may become a natural angle from which to approach their love story. And if it doesn't, it may at least reveal another way that I'm sheltered, presumptuous, or an asshole, which is painful for me but still makes a good story.
On a related note, WEF makes a big deal about "inscription versus transcription." There is no way, it insists, to transcribe an experience in the field. Even if I copied down all my audio recordings word for word, the record would still lack description of movements and gestures; even if I took a video, the record wouldn't capture my internal state or my subject's. There is no way to show everything. Therefore, the process of writing field notes is a process of inscribing: it's a subjective and skillful act in which I implicitly decide which parts are important, which parts to de-emphasize, and which parts to leave out. I decide how to construct the narrative. (Sometimes a real ethnographer's field notes are not even a narrative, but for my purposes they need to be because I'm telling a story.) This is not really news to me, since I've quite consciously gone through this process twice now, but it's useful to be reminded that there are many ways to spin the same tale. So just as my actions and questions shape my subject's narrative, so my perceptions and choices will shape mine.
The scare quotes are there because what I'm doing is not really ethnography. I'm not going native; I'm not embedding myself in a foreign culture for long enough to understand the culture from the inside out. I certainly don't agree with Kino
On a related note, WEF makes a big deal about "inscription versus transcription." There is no way, it insists, to transcribe an experience in the field. Even if I copied down all my audio recordings word for word, the record would still lack description of movements and gestures; even if I took a video, the record wouldn't capture my internal state or my subject's. There is no way to show everything. Therefore, the process of writing field notes is a process of inscribing: it's a subjective and skillful act in which I implicitly decide which parts are important, which parts to de-emphasize, and which parts to leave out. I decide how to construct the narrative. (Sometimes a real ethnographer's field notes are not even a narrative, but for my purposes they need to be because I'm telling a story.) This is not really news to me, since I've quite consciously gone through this process twice now, but it's useful to be reminded that there are many ways to spin the same tale. So just as my actions and questions shape my subject's narrative, so my perceptions and choices will shape mine.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Didn't I say antihero?
I had the day off from work today, and mostly spent it worrying about when I'd have Internet access again. The Net went down as we were trying to upgrade our wireless network, in accordance with one of Munroe's Laws. I wasn't any help in fixing the problem, so I was told to sod off for a while and do something else. Unfortunately, I am so codependent on the Internet that when it goes away I am paralyzed until it comes back again. I can try to read or write but it doesn't really work. Knowing that I couldn't use the Internet if I wanted to, even if I don't want to, keeps me from focusing on anything else. As I write this the Internet is "up," but moving so slowly I'm pretty sure I can actually see the ones and zeroes, making just about any website that contains, say, a jpeg, unusable. As I write this it's down again. And as I write this, a couple of hours later, it's up and seems to be working okay, but we're still tinkering. Tinkering is dangerous.
I often wonder if there's some grand unifying principle behind all my little neuroses, about people and Internet outages and the future. Uncertainty has a lot to do with it. If I had a working Magic 8 Ball, one that actually told the future, I would abuse the hell out of it. I'd ask questions like "will things be all right if I go out to dinner?" and "if I stay in bed till two will I regret it later?" Eventually it would get so fed up with me it would just answer "better not tell you now" to every question. For the record, I didn't want to upgrade our network. Something like this always happens. I'm so frustration-averse that I would rather have a working network now and forever than a likely-better network after a few hours (or maybe days) of stewing. My frustration intolerance is the biggest threat to Lover's Lanes, and sadly that's all I have to say about the project tonight.
I often wonder if there's some grand unifying principle behind all my little neuroses, about people and Internet outages and the future. Uncertainty has a lot to do with it. If I had a working Magic 8 Ball, one that actually told the future, I would abuse the hell out of it. I'd ask questions like "will things be all right if I go out to dinner?" and "if I stay in bed till two will I regret it later?" Eventually it would get so fed up with me it would just answer "better not tell you now" to every question. For the record, I didn't want to upgrade our network. Something like this always happens. I'm so frustration-averse that I would rather have a working network now and forever than a likely-better network after a few hours (or maybe days) of stewing. My frustration intolerance is the biggest threat to Lover's Lanes, and sadly that's all I have to say about the project tonight.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
I have to have Kentucky
My new reading project is "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes," a neat book about writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Ethnography, as I understand it, has to do with understanding a society in terms of the experiences of the people who live in it. It is a little like anthropology, only with more emphasis on culture; it is a little like sociology, only with more field work; but it's different from either of them in that it's not so much an area of study as a technique of study. You can study a lot of things using ethnography. The key feature is that you go out and talk to the people you're interested in, maybe embed yourself with them a while, and then come back and write about what you learned. In that sense, Lover's Lanes is an ethnographic project -- though its scope, abstract like love and broad like the United States, is less focused than most ethnographies. And if Lover's Lanes is an ethnography then these love stories are field notes. Since Lover's Lanes will not go beyond the field note stage -- a real ethnographer does not merely anthologize his field notes, but writes a book about his theory using his field notes as source material -- it is especially important that I write my field notes well.
I've gleaned most of this from the first five pages of the aforementioned book -- that's all I've read so far -- which makes me optimistic that reading more of it will be useful.
Another thing I've gleaned from the first five pages of "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes" is that there's some difference of opinion about who gets to do field work. Some people think you have to be a natural-born genius to talk to people and get coherent data from them. Other people think "any literate, adventurous person" can go do field work. The authors disagree with both schools of thought, believing that conducting and writing up field work is a skill that can and must be taught, which I presume is why they bothered to write a book about it. What caught my attention about this is that they referred to the second of those theories, the idea that anyone can do field work, as the "sink or swim" approach: you learn the skills you need on the job or you don't. That is very stark, but it precisely describes what I've been planning. I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to learn from scratch a new skill, namely making friends on purpose, in an environment where if I don't learn the skill I'll judge the whole project a failure.
Maybe it takes a natural-born genius to make friends on purpose. I never have. There have been rather few times in my life when I've set out to make friends; I don't even remember those people's names, so you can tell how well that went. It may be related to the way other people seem to be able to choose what they believe or feel, while I experience beliefs and feelings mostly as things that happen to me. In the same way, I haven't picked my friends; my friends have happened to me, thank God, and I treasure you.
So that's one variation on Lover's Lanes I could pursue. Make the trip, but don't try to make friends on purpose. Don't approach a single person for an interview. In the course of the journey there will be conversations. Trust that friends, or at least acquaintances, will happen to me. When they happen, ask them for their stories. That's a nice vision that plays to my strengths. But it relies a lot on luck. Luck is good to have around but you can't count on it. What's the saying? "Believe in God but keep the powder dry," or something like that? Me, I'm still working on figuring out which end you point at the bad guy.
I've gleaned most of this from the first five pages of the aforementioned book -- that's all I've read so far -- which makes me optimistic that reading more of it will be useful.
Another thing I've gleaned from the first five pages of "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes" is that there's some difference of opinion about who gets to do field work. Some people think you have to be a natural-born genius to talk to people and get coherent data from them. Other people think "any literate, adventurous person" can go do field work. The authors disagree with both schools of thought, believing that conducting and writing up field work is a skill that can and must be taught, which I presume is why they bothered to write a book about it. What caught my attention about this is that they referred to the second of those theories, the idea that anyone can do field work, as the "sink or swim" approach: you learn the skills you need on the job or you don't. That is very stark, but it precisely describes what I've been planning. I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to learn from scratch a new skill, namely making friends on purpose, in an environment where if I don't learn the skill I'll judge the whole project a failure.
Maybe it takes a natural-born genius to make friends on purpose. I never have. There have been rather few times in my life when I've set out to make friends; I don't even remember those people's names, so you can tell how well that went. It may be related to the way other people seem to be able to choose what they believe or feel, while I experience beliefs and feelings mostly as things that happen to me. In the same way, I haven't picked my friends; my friends have happened to me, thank God, and I treasure you.
So that's one variation on Lover's Lanes I could pursue. Make the trip, but don't try to make friends on purpose. Don't approach a single person for an interview. In the course of the journey there will be conversations. Trust that friends, or at least acquaintances, will happen to me. When they happen, ask them for their stories. That's a nice vision that plays to my strengths. But it relies a lot on luck. Luck is good to have around but you can't count on it. What's the saying? "Believe in God but keep the powder dry," or something like that? Me, I'm still working on figuring out which end you point at the bad guy.
Monday, April 13, 2009
A bad country for gods
I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods. There's something in there that's relevant to Lover's Lanes, but I'm not sure what yet. I doubt I'll meet any gods on the road, and if I do I'll have to change their names anyway so you'll never know. If I figure out what the relevant part is I'll post it.
I wish I could figure it out, because tonight I'm having trouble thinking of what to put in this space. Since my trip to the New Age place last weekend I've been worried I am just not extroverted enough for this trip -- or perhaps not open enough? not agreeable enough? too neurotic? -- worried, in any case, that I'm temperamentally out of my depth. I'm terrified about how I'll come across to the other person. I guess that's because I'm working without a mask. This isn't tutoring or shopping. I'm doing something I actually want to be doing and making no pretense about it, which means I'm showing a part of myself to strangers that I usually show only to friends, and sometimes maybe not even to them. That's fair, because of course that's what I'm asking my subjects to do for me in telling me their stories. But I guess like all guys I'm worried that if I expose myself I'll be laughed at. Or lectured... or pranked... or ignored. Being politely brushed off like a panhandler -- even that would hurt. I'm not the salesman type who deals with rejection by just trying again with a smile as bright as ever. It's not totally impossible I could adopt that attitude as a mask, but then the journey would be work, like the other things I do with masks on, wouldn't it?...
And yet there's a conflict here in that my wiser self doesn't believe in masks. I don't mean he disapproves of them, I mean he literally doesn't think they exist. He thinks we have a lot of different faces and all of them are real. He agrees that some are less comfortable than the others, but says that usually the discomfort comes from unfamiliarity. He also thinks that when a face is really needed it will be there.
I'm not sure where that leaves me. It's much easier to be wise than to act wise.
I wish I could figure it out, because tonight I'm having trouble thinking of what to put in this space. Since my trip to the New Age place last weekend I've been worried I am just not extroverted enough for this trip -- or perhaps not open enough? not agreeable enough? too neurotic? -- worried, in any case, that I'm temperamentally out of my depth. I'm terrified about how I'll come across to the other person. I guess that's because I'm working without a mask. This isn't tutoring or shopping. I'm doing something I actually want to be doing and making no pretense about it, which means I'm showing a part of myself to strangers that I usually show only to friends, and sometimes maybe not even to them. That's fair, because of course that's what I'm asking my subjects to do for me in telling me their stories. But I guess like all guys I'm worried that if I expose myself I'll be laughed at. Or lectured... or pranked... or ignored. Being politely brushed off like a panhandler -- even that would hurt. I'm not the salesman type who deals with rejection by just trying again with a smile as bright as ever. It's not totally impossible I could adopt that attitude as a mask, but then the journey would be work, like the other things I do with masks on, wouldn't it?...
And yet there's a conflict here in that my wiser self doesn't believe in masks. I don't mean he disapproves of them, I mean he literally doesn't think they exist. He thinks we have a lot of different faces and all of them are real. He agrees that some are less comfortable than the others, but says that usually the discomfort comes from unfamiliarity. He also thinks that when a face is really needed it will be there.
I'm not sure where that leaves me. It's much easier to be wise than to act wise.
Friday, April 10, 2009
The things that divide us
Yesterday I finished telling Erica's story. I think the writing went pretty well, though the end felt a little rushed for some reason. I need to write to Erica and find out what she thought. (I'm pleased to say Alice liked her story.) It's difficult to write stories from other people's lives, because even fifty minutes is not a tenth of the time it would take to really understand everything in full context, and I don't have my interviewee here to correct me as I write -- "oh, it didn't really happen like that, though." As I wrote I thought of many questions that went unasked during my interview with Erica, interesting tensions I could have teased out. I realized that there is no such thing as a biographical vignette. A life is like a wiki, everything linked to everything else, and to understand one thing really you need to understand everything. So in the end any vignette is only a sketch, incomplete, suggesting the reality, hinting at it, maybe caricaturing it, but not really encapsulating it. For that you would need a book. No, a book is not enough. You'd need to live it. And even then.
This is actually a fairly substantial obstacle for me. My two subjects so far have been my age, my race, and approximately my culture, not to mention that they're my friends. If I'm worried that I don't have the proper context for telling their stories right, what the hell am I going to do when I interview a fifty-year-old black Baptist in Memphis or an Orthodox Jewish Holocaust survivor in Brooklyn? I talked a while ago about how love transcends such barriers, but its circumstances don't. The greater the divide between my background and the other person's, the more I will take for granted that I shouldn't, and the more they'll assume I can take for granted that I won't.
What's more, it's hard to approach a person you expect will be dissimilar from you. Tonight I visited a local New Age shop I probably end up in on some afternoon once every couple months to buy incense or admire the pewter figurines. I'm on their mailing list, and tonight they had a party for their owner's birthday, so I stopped by. In the best case, I hoped to do an interview; in the worst, at least I'd get some experience managing crowds. Well, I didn't get my interview. Partly that's because it was noisy, but really it was that the people there were mostly hardcore New Agers and at least fifteen years older than me. I did have a couple conversations, but for one reason or another I didn't feel like asking either of the people I talked to for an interview. I was intimidated and I wasn't really sure I wanted to hear their stories. This is a problem. I have a couple solutions I'm turning over in my head, but I think I'll avail myself of the weekend to think more about them before talking them out here.
This is actually a fairly substantial obstacle for me. My two subjects so far have been my age, my race, and approximately my culture, not to mention that they're my friends. If I'm worried that I don't have the proper context for telling their stories right, what the hell am I going to do when I interview a fifty-year-old black Baptist in Memphis or an Orthodox Jewish Holocaust survivor in Brooklyn? I talked a while ago about how love transcends such barriers, but its circumstances don't. The greater the divide between my background and the other person's, the more I will take for granted that I shouldn't, and the more they'll assume I can take for granted that I won't.
What's more, it's hard to approach a person you expect will be dissimilar from you. Tonight I visited a local New Age shop I probably end up in on some afternoon once every couple months to buy incense or admire the pewter figurines. I'm on their mailing list, and tonight they had a party for their owner's birthday, so I stopped by. In the best case, I hoped to do an interview; in the worst, at least I'd get some experience managing crowds. Well, I didn't get my interview. Partly that's because it was noisy, but really it was that the people there were mostly hardcore New Agers and at least fifteen years older than me. I did have a couple conversations, but for one reason or another I didn't feel like asking either of the people I talked to for an interview. I was intimidated and I wasn't really sure I wanted to hear their stories. This is a problem. I have a couple solutions I'm turning over in my head, but I think I'll avail myself of the weekend to think more about them before talking them out here.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Erica's story, conclusion
"We stayed up talking for two or three hours, just laying there, and we got to talking about how, he's like, 'it's nice that you can just lay here with me and expect that I'm not going to take advantage of you,' probably alluding to how I hated men for a while and they all use you."
"Was that amazing to you, that you could trust him that much?"
"No, it wasn't amazing, it's natural. It was normal to me. Out of anybody I would feel most comfortable doing that with him. Even as just friends, even when we were just friends. And he's like, why do you think that is? And I go: Oh, well, it's 'cuz I love you. And I rolled over."
Less than a year after finally breaking it off forever with Jorge, Erica found herself in bed with Leonard again. Here's how it happened.
The February after Erica's October breakup, Leonard, still Erica's friend, sent her a Valentine's card. ("He said he sent Valentine's cards out to everybody, but he especially picked one for me.") Soon afterward, while visiting from Orlando, he tried to kiss her as they sat on her couch watching TV. Erica reacted with abhorrence; remember, this was when she hated guys. "I saw that as another guy trying to use me," she explains. She browbeat him for it, apologized the next day, and that was the last she saw of Leonard during that visit.
I'm a little surprised when Erica tells me that when she next saw Leonard, in May, she had started dating again. "That was a rebound," she explains. "That was what I needed to get me out of --" "Out of Jorge mode?" I helpfully suggest. "Out of guys-are-jerks mode," she answers. Apparently it worked. On the night that Erica finally saw Leonard again, she greeted him like "a breath of fresh air" and immediately realized that "I think I love him, like for real this time... and that I probably should do something about it." That very night, Erica found in her email inbox what under the circumstances seemed a "miracle:" a breakup note from her then-boyfriend. She was nice, he said, but they didn't click. She wrote back to agree, adding, "...and next time you break up with somebody, I would suggest doing it in person, or at least over the phone." (It later turned out that he felt he had to write down these feelings to make them clear and make sure they got expressed, which Erica says is good as far as it goes, "but then at least read it to me!" The medium of communication matters to Erica; I think of her annoyance at Jorge's texting earlier and the ambiguities that grew out of chain emails with Leonard before that.)
Erica wasted no time in taking advantage of her good luck, cajoling Leonard into a dinner date the very next night. There she dropped the hint: "So I think, like, I'm over Jorge and feeling much better about men again. . . . He's like, oh, that's good. He didn't know exactly where I was going with what I was saying --" "He didn't want to assume too much, I guess," I say, remembering the episode about expectations from earlier. "I guess so, yeah," Erica agrees. Dinner with Leonard gave way to a party at a mutual friend's house, which turned into heavy drinking, which led to Erica throwing up in the toilet as Leonard stood beside her -- "which was amazing to me" -- and at last, their host suggested that Erica, tired and intoxicated, should stay the night. "Also trying to push me and Leonard together," she smiles. They slept in the same bed, which brings us to where we started tonight's installment. No sex, no cuddling, just two longtime friends sharing a night together. Not without some tension, though. Erica said I love you. Leonard said I love you back -- "I don't know if he meant it at that time, but he said it. And I think we went to sleep. We didn't talk about it."
"What needed to be said got said, I guess."
"Yes. Finally. Took all night. Liquid courage."
Leonard kissed her the next morning, under the pretext that he "wanted to test something." He never explained what; probably it doesn't need explaining. He called her the next day, as he was leaving Fort Myers. He said "he's not going to particularly ask me out or anything like that, but just know that he does care about me and blah blah blah, and that," Erica explains, "was him asking me out. That was the beginning of a relationship."
I profess surprise. After all, Leonard had broken the relationship off in the first place because he was moving to Orlando, and he still lived there. I ask when he changed his mind. Erica giggles sincerely, "When he realized that I'm awesome? More awesomer than any other girl?" She continues more seriously: "I think that was one of the requirements when he called me that Sunday and 'asked me out,' we talked about conditions, and --" "Expectations?" I ask, putting words in people's mouths like usual. "Expectations, yeah," Erica nods. "The reason he broke up the first time was that he didn't want to break my heart and have all the complications that a long-distance relationship could have, and that he knows that it's hard more on girls than on guys, and he didn't want to hurt me in that way, but if I could handle it then he would be okay with it too."
"I see, so this time instead of deciding himself to break it off he left it up to you."
"He did!"
And that's how Erica and Leonard started dating again. Both approached the second relationship differently from the first, bringing with them new experiences and perhaps new communication styles. Erica doesn't even remember the conversation that kicked off the first relationship, but the second began with two I love yous and a dialogue about conditions and expectations. There is change here, perhaps growth, and that growth is what makes this part of the story -- even with all the vomiting and negotiations -- more romantic in some ways than the first part. Mr. Darcy's second proposal to Elizabeth was romantic because of how it was different from his first proposal to Elizabeth. Erica's story is broadly similar.
I ask Erica what her expectations of Leonard are going forward. She growls that she expects him "to propose pretty soon," though he wants to wait until they're out of school. (They're each now in their sixth year of college.) She expects to have his kids; he says he wants fifty. And she expects to be able to move around with him. "I like change," she explains. It's a good thing.
"Was that amazing to you, that you could trust him that much?"
"No, it wasn't amazing, it's natural. It was normal to me. Out of anybody I would feel most comfortable doing that with him. Even as just friends, even when we were just friends. And he's like, why do you think that is? And I go: Oh, well, it's 'cuz I love you. And I rolled over."
Less than a year after finally breaking it off forever with Jorge, Erica found herself in bed with Leonard again. Here's how it happened.
The February after Erica's October breakup, Leonard, still Erica's friend, sent her a Valentine's card. ("He said he sent Valentine's cards out to everybody, but he especially picked one for me.") Soon afterward, while visiting from Orlando, he tried to kiss her as they sat on her couch watching TV. Erica reacted with abhorrence; remember, this was when she hated guys. "I saw that as another guy trying to use me," she explains. She browbeat him for it, apologized the next day, and that was the last she saw of Leonard during that visit.
I'm a little surprised when Erica tells me that when she next saw Leonard, in May, she had started dating again. "That was a rebound," she explains. "That was what I needed to get me out of --" "Out of Jorge mode?" I helpfully suggest. "Out of guys-are-jerks mode," she answers. Apparently it worked. On the night that Erica finally saw Leonard again, she greeted him like "a breath of fresh air" and immediately realized that "I think I love him, like for real this time... and that I probably should do something about it." That very night, Erica found in her email inbox what under the circumstances seemed a "miracle:" a breakup note from her then-boyfriend. She was nice, he said, but they didn't click. She wrote back to agree, adding, "...and next time you break up with somebody, I would suggest doing it in person, or at least over the phone." (It later turned out that he felt he had to write down these feelings to make them clear and make sure they got expressed, which Erica says is good as far as it goes, "but then at least read it to me!" The medium of communication matters to Erica; I think of her annoyance at Jorge's texting earlier and the ambiguities that grew out of chain emails with Leonard before that.)
Erica wasted no time in taking advantage of her good luck, cajoling Leonard into a dinner date the very next night. There she dropped the hint: "So I think, like, I'm over Jorge and feeling much better about men again. . . . He's like, oh, that's good. He didn't know exactly where I was going with what I was saying --" "He didn't want to assume too much, I guess," I say, remembering the episode about expectations from earlier. "I guess so, yeah," Erica agrees. Dinner with Leonard gave way to a party at a mutual friend's house, which turned into heavy drinking, which led to Erica throwing up in the toilet as Leonard stood beside her -- "which was amazing to me" -- and at last, their host suggested that Erica, tired and intoxicated, should stay the night. "Also trying to push me and Leonard together," she smiles. They slept in the same bed, which brings us to where we started tonight's installment. No sex, no cuddling, just two longtime friends sharing a night together. Not without some tension, though. Erica said I love you. Leonard said I love you back -- "I don't know if he meant it at that time, but he said it. And I think we went to sleep. We didn't talk about it."
"What needed to be said got said, I guess."
"Yes. Finally. Took all night. Liquid courage."
Leonard kissed her the next morning, under the pretext that he "wanted to test something." He never explained what; probably it doesn't need explaining. He called her the next day, as he was leaving Fort Myers. He said "he's not going to particularly ask me out or anything like that, but just know that he does care about me and blah blah blah, and that," Erica explains, "was him asking me out. That was the beginning of a relationship."
I profess surprise. After all, Leonard had broken the relationship off in the first place because he was moving to Orlando, and he still lived there. I ask when he changed his mind. Erica giggles sincerely, "When he realized that I'm awesome? More awesomer than any other girl?" She continues more seriously: "I think that was one of the requirements when he called me that Sunday and 'asked me out,' we talked about conditions, and --" "Expectations?" I ask, putting words in people's mouths like usual. "Expectations, yeah," Erica nods. "The reason he broke up the first time was that he didn't want to break my heart and have all the complications that a long-distance relationship could have, and that he knows that it's hard more on girls than on guys, and he didn't want to hurt me in that way, but if I could handle it then he would be okay with it too."
"I see, so this time instead of deciding himself to break it off he left it up to you."
"He did!"
And that's how Erica and Leonard started dating again. Both approached the second relationship differently from the first, bringing with them new experiences and perhaps new communication styles. Erica doesn't even remember the conversation that kicked off the first relationship, but the second began with two I love yous and a dialogue about conditions and expectations. There is change here, perhaps growth, and that growth is what makes this part of the story -- even with all the vomiting and negotiations -- more romantic in some ways than the first part. Mr. Darcy's second proposal to Elizabeth was romantic because of how it was different from his first proposal to Elizabeth. Erica's story is broadly similar.
I ask Erica what her expectations of Leonard are going forward. She growls that she expects him "to propose pretty soon," though he wants to wait until they're out of school. (They're each now in their sixth year of college.) She expects to have his kids; he says he wants fifty. And she expects to be able to move around with him. "I like change," she explains. It's a good thing.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Erica's story, part 2
"I think I did say, okay, now we're agreeing we're just using each other. And we did talk about just agreeing on that. But then I would expect more. I would expect... something else."
"So it was hard for you to keep your expectations under control?"
"Yeah. That's always been my problem."
There's a striking symmetry between the tail end of Erica's relationships with Leonard and Jorge: both the guys went off to college in other parts of the state. The difference is that Leonard, bound for Orlando, left his romance in Fort Myers; Jorge, headed for West Palm Beach, took his relationship with him. Erica and Jorge did the long-distance thing for nearly two months, seeing each other every couple weekends. "And because he had no money it was me going over there and sometimes getting him, driving back here [to Fort Myers] for the weekend, and then driving him back. It was kind of dumb," Erica says. I observe that she must have liked him okay to go to all that trouble, and Erica cops to that, but adds, "Not enough, though."
After that acknowledgment one might think Erica would have been eager to break up with Jorge, but in fact it was Jorge who finally cut the thread. It's not working out, he said over the phone. "I said I agree," Erica recalls. "I said I agree that we should totally break up, and I continued to be hung up on that relationship for at least three months afterwards."
One of the challenges of doing an interview is that you never know what it's okay to assume. When Erica says she was hung up on Jorge, I assume she just means she was pining for him. It's not for several minutes that the conversation returns to Jorge and Erica says thoughtfully, "Two times after Jorge and I broke up, I begged for him to come back because I missed sex. Two times he drove over from West Palm Beach just for that." I'm taken by surprise and bust out with "Oh my gosh, really?" -- which if Erica had been a stranger might have been off-putting at just that moment. I wince listening to it on the tape. Fortunately, Erica takes it in stride and continues, saying that her encounters with Jorge "even more so made me hate him, because I would tell him, oh, I love you, blah blah blah, and he would stone-cold not say anything back. Like refuse to." Erica told herself he was just holding back, that really he still loved her, even though they'd already agreed they were only using each other. Sadly, if he did, he never gave any indication of it. This episode makes me feel a little better about my gaffe earlier. Erica and I are partners in being confused about what to expect.
As if on cue, Erica muses about a relevant conversation she had the other day with a girl she says she doesn't know that well -- "an amazing, amazing girl, she's a Christian and everything, she speaks in a country accent, and to me she's a perfect Christian, she should be a saint. . . . She was telling me that it's a really good idea to communicate expectations with whoever you're with. Like in the morning or at night before you start the next day, say 'What are your expectations for tomorrow?'" Erica's face lights up as she talks about this chat; she's hit on something important and she knows it. I observe that this only works if both people are honest about what they expect. Erica nods emphatically. "That was a major thing, too. I don't think Jorge was totally honest. And Leonard was."
But this epiphany about expectations would come later. When I ask Erica what lesson she learned from her time with Jorge, she gives two answers: "How [not] to treat people in a relationship, and that men are jerks."
"So it was hard for you to keep your expectations under control?"
"Yeah. That's always been my problem."
There's a striking symmetry between the tail end of Erica's relationships with Leonard and Jorge: both the guys went off to college in other parts of the state. The difference is that Leonard, bound for Orlando, left his romance in Fort Myers; Jorge, headed for West Palm Beach, took his relationship with him. Erica and Jorge did the long-distance thing for nearly two months, seeing each other every couple weekends. "And because he had no money it was me going over there and sometimes getting him, driving back here [to Fort Myers] for the weekend, and then driving him back. It was kind of dumb," Erica says. I observe that she must have liked him okay to go to all that trouble, and Erica cops to that, but adds, "Not enough, though."
After that acknowledgment one might think Erica would have been eager to break up with Jorge, but in fact it was Jorge who finally cut the thread. It's not working out, he said over the phone. "I said I agree," Erica recalls. "I said I agree that we should totally break up, and I continued to be hung up on that relationship for at least three months afterwards."
One of the challenges of doing an interview is that you never know what it's okay to assume. When Erica says she was hung up on Jorge, I assume she just means she was pining for him. It's not for several minutes that the conversation returns to Jorge and Erica says thoughtfully, "Two times after Jorge and I broke up, I begged for him to come back because I missed sex. Two times he drove over from West Palm Beach just for that." I'm taken by surprise and bust out with "Oh my gosh, really?" -- which if Erica had been a stranger might have been off-putting at just that moment. I wince listening to it on the tape. Fortunately, Erica takes it in stride and continues, saying that her encounters with Jorge "even more so made me hate him, because I would tell him, oh, I love you, blah blah blah, and he would stone-cold not say anything back. Like refuse to." Erica told herself he was just holding back, that really he still loved her, even though they'd already agreed they were only using each other. Sadly, if he did, he never gave any indication of it. This episode makes me feel a little better about my gaffe earlier. Erica and I are partners in being confused about what to expect.
As if on cue, Erica muses about a relevant conversation she had the other day with a girl she says she doesn't know that well -- "an amazing, amazing girl, she's a Christian and everything, she speaks in a country accent, and to me she's a perfect Christian, she should be a saint. . . . She was telling me that it's a really good idea to communicate expectations with whoever you're with. Like in the morning or at night before you start the next day, say 'What are your expectations for tomorrow?'" Erica's face lights up as she talks about this chat; she's hit on something important and she knows it. I observe that this only works if both people are honest about what they expect. Erica nods emphatically. "That was a major thing, too. I don't think Jorge was totally honest. And Leonard was."
But this epiphany about expectations would come later. When I ask Erica what lesson she learned from her time with Jorge, she gives two answers: "How [not] to treat people in a relationship, and that men are jerks."
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Erica's (full) story, part 1
If you're reading this, I assume you've read yesterday's "short version," the fifteen-minute incarnation of Erica's story that is about hesitation. I'm not going to retell the story from the beginning as I delve into the full version. There's too much that's relevant to both versions, and I won't ask you to read the same story twice. I will, however, ask you to reconstrue it. You see, the fifty-minute version of Erica's story is only indirectly about hesitation. When one person hesitates to ask another on a date, it's not just a missed opportunity; it's a failure of communication. And it's a story about communication and its breakdowns that Erica unfolds to me now.
"He needed to think of it as a short-term relationship?"
"Yeah."
"How about you, were you thinking of it as a short-term relationship?"
"I thought I could change his mind!"
Erica's talking to me about her breakup with Leonard. They argued about it more than once. I ask if they yelled, and Erica shakes her head. "Just heated debate. And then it would end up with me being all quiet and sensitive." They'd gone into the romance with different expectations, a word we'll be seeing again. Erica's expectation, even when she understood that Leonard planned to end things, was that she should be able to change his mind.
But Leonard was firm, and Erica left the relationship mad. "I was really angry at him," she says. "Angry that he didn't change his mind. Angry that it [the breakup] happened at all." And that anger helped lead her into her next relationship. She shares this new story with remarkable frankness, as you'll see, in every detail but one: "I don't like to say his name." This second relationship left a bad taste in her mouth. I suggest she could give him a fake name, like I do in these stories. She chooses Jorge. "Totally a made-up name. It's a comical name. He's not even Hispanic."
Jorge shared an apartment with Erica and her friend. He first asked her out by text message, which seemed just about as classless to Erica as it did to me. She texted him back to tell him to wait until she got home, "and he got all whiny and pouty, and didn't want to talk to me, like offended." Whiny is another word we'll be seeing again. But in his defense, she adds, "it's probably because I led him on." I ask her about that, and she expands: "I led him on because I was mad at Leonard and I felt like having fun, I guess. So I did. We would like lay on the couch together and watch TV, stuff like that." In the interest of science, I ask how much of this came from anger at Leonard and how much from attraction to Jorge. Erica considers. "Well, it was fifty-fifty. I'm repulsed by him now, but I was attracted to him."
Attracted to him or not, Erica says she was guilted into being Jorge's girlfriend. Not so much because she'd led him on, but "because he was being ridiculous." He wouldn't listen to her when she said she wasn't over Leonard yet. She says she agreed in order to get him to stop whining. Their relationship lasted for just over three months and was full of arguments. I ask what they argued about. "Anything," says Erica. "He was a baby." What's more, in contrast to Erica's few arguments with Leonard, when she argued with Jorge "we would yell."
Still, if Erica hadn't found Jorge especially compelling at the outset, she grew to feel that way quickly. "I was telling him I loved him and all this stuff 'cuz eventually I did become so attached that I thought I loved him." Erica adds, reflectively, that this is a mistake she's made in all her past relationships. Is that the most important lesson the relationship with Jorge taught her? "There was another," she answers, feeling her way carefully. "He taught me how a relationship should be. How this guy was completely one-sided and selfish, pretty much. And showed me how good my relationship with Leonard had been, because Leonard was so practical." She means that Leonard didn't let silly things upset him, in contrast to Jorge, who snapped at Erica because she grabbed his white undershirt during what she describes as a play fight.
I wouldn't envy a person whose job it was to sit in judgment over this relationship. Maybe Erica sent mixed messages; maybe Jorge took her too much for granted. Maybe Erica didn't make her needs and expectations clear; maybe Jorge was "just plain jerk" (as Erica describes him) for being unreasonable in what he wanted and expected. Fortunately, Erica eventually came across an idea that helped her understand what was going wrong. But it would be a little while, and by that time her relationship with Jorge was over.
"He needed to think of it as a short-term relationship?"
"Yeah."
"How about you, were you thinking of it as a short-term relationship?"
"I thought I could change his mind!"
Erica's talking to me about her breakup with Leonard. They argued about it more than once. I ask if they yelled, and Erica shakes her head. "Just heated debate. And then it would end up with me being all quiet and sensitive." They'd gone into the romance with different expectations, a word we'll be seeing again. Erica's expectation, even when she understood that Leonard planned to end things, was that she should be able to change his mind.
But Leonard was firm, and Erica left the relationship mad. "I was really angry at him," she says. "Angry that he didn't change his mind. Angry that it [the breakup] happened at all." And that anger helped lead her into her next relationship. She shares this new story with remarkable frankness, as you'll see, in every detail but one: "I don't like to say his name." This second relationship left a bad taste in her mouth. I suggest she could give him a fake name, like I do in these stories. She chooses Jorge. "Totally a made-up name. It's a comical name. He's not even Hispanic."
Jorge shared an apartment with Erica and her friend. He first asked her out by text message, which seemed just about as classless to Erica as it did to me. She texted him back to tell him to wait until she got home, "and he got all whiny and pouty, and didn't want to talk to me, like offended." Whiny is another word we'll be seeing again. But in his defense, she adds, "it's probably because I led him on." I ask her about that, and she expands: "I led him on because I was mad at Leonard and I felt like having fun, I guess. So I did. We would like lay on the couch together and watch TV, stuff like that." In the interest of science, I ask how much of this came from anger at Leonard and how much from attraction to Jorge. Erica considers. "Well, it was fifty-fifty. I'm repulsed by him now, but I was attracted to him."
Attracted to him or not, Erica says she was guilted into being Jorge's girlfriend. Not so much because she'd led him on, but "because he was being ridiculous." He wouldn't listen to her when she said she wasn't over Leonard yet. She says she agreed in order to get him to stop whining. Their relationship lasted for just over three months and was full of arguments. I ask what they argued about. "Anything," says Erica. "He was a baby." What's more, in contrast to Erica's few arguments with Leonard, when she argued with Jorge "we would yell."
Still, if Erica hadn't found Jorge especially compelling at the outset, she grew to feel that way quickly. "I was telling him I loved him and all this stuff 'cuz eventually I did become so attached that I thought I loved him." Erica adds, reflectively, that this is a mistake she's made in all her past relationships. Is that the most important lesson the relationship with Jorge taught her? "There was another," she answers, feeling her way carefully. "He taught me how a relationship should be. How this guy was completely one-sided and selfish, pretty much. And showed me how good my relationship with Leonard had been, because Leonard was so practical." She means that Leonard didn't let silly things upset him, in contrast to Jorge, who snapped at Erica because she grabbed his white undershirt during what she describes as a play fight.
I wouldn't envy a person whose job it was to sit in judgment over this relationship. Maybe Erica sent mixed messages; maybe Jorge took her too much for granted. Maybe Erica didn't make her needs and expectations clear; maybe Jorge was "just plain jerk" (as Erica describes him) for being unreasonable in what he wanted and expected. Fortunately, Erica eventually came across an idea that helped her understand what was going wrong. But it would be a little while, and by that time her relationship with Jorge was over.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Erica's story in 15 minutes
I had an interview Sunday evening with another friend of mine, whom I'll call Erica. Like my interview with Alice, this one turned out to be long, about fifty minutes. This time, though, I tried to sculpt the conversation in a way that made sure to outline something interesting within the first fifteen minutes. I'm going to see how well I did by telling Erica's story two different ways. Today I'll pretend that Erica had to leave after fifteen minutes; I'll write her story based on only that part of the interview. Starting tomorrow I'll tell all fifty minutes of her story, reorganizing the first fifteen to fit the broader narrative. First, though, a technical issue. I've heard now from two of my readers that you've had trouble logging in to comment on the blog. I've now switched to a form of commenting that won't require you to log in. The disadvantage of this system is that the comments section might get spammed; if that becomes a problem I'll have to switch back, but for now commenting should be easy. You can also always write to me at the email address on my business card. Now, without further ado, the short version of Erica's story...
"The whole semester I got the feeling, okay, I really like him, is there something I need to do about this or what, and I waited the whole semester . . . and it never went away, so at the end of the semester I finally told him that that's how I had been feeling."
"So you were thinking maybe there's something there, and you want to explore that?"
"Yeah. I guess I put it in his hands, or something like that."
Erica and I are sitting on a bench outside a hair salon. We talk against a backdrop of traffic noise and chattering pedestrians. Everyone in the shopping center is going somewhere except us. Our travel takes place through memory.
Erica first met her boyfriend, Leonard, in middle school but didn't begin dating him until her fourth year of college. "We dated twice," she explains; the fourth year of college was the first time. I wonder out loud when, in that interval of about nine years, Erica and Leonard realized they had feelings for each other. Erica recalls an email she got in high school -- "it was one of those stupid chain forwards. And one of the questions was, Do you like the person who sent this to you? They were so dumb, but I remember writing something like... I plead the Fifth. 'Cuz Leonard sent it to me and I didn't want to say I like him."
What brings me to attention here is that Erica was given an opportunity to say how she felt, but instead said "maybe, maybe not." We could write this off as typical for high schoolers, but of course adults do it too. It's hard to take action. We pass the buck instead. Erica passed the buck back to Leonard. Leonard wrote something similarly vague back to her. And that is how two teenagers knew and liked each other for nine years before they started dating -- by which time they weren't teenagers anymore.
Erica says affectionately that Leonard "was always a wuss. He wasn't man enough to ever do anything about any girls." He didn't do anything when the two exchanged chain emails; he didn't do anything when he found Erica making out with her then-boyfriend at a Christmas party at Leonard's house. Not that the two were in constant contact. "There were some times when a year or maybe even more went by without us talking," says Erica, "but we could always pick up the phone and talk like no time had gone by."
At last something happened that does not always happen in true stories: someone made the first move. It was Erica. To earn their degrees, Erica and Leonard both needed to take statistics, a subject that was Erica's bane. Erica called him to remind him to sign up for classes -- "cuz he'd always wait till the last minute" -- and suggested that they take the course together. During that semester Erica felt her feelings strengthen, and at the end she told Leonard how she felt about him. "And what did he say?" I ask. "I don't even remember exactly how it happened," she answers. "Basically we both decided, okay, we'll start going out."
There was still more buck-passing to come. Leonard was studying to earn an associate's degree so he could transfer to a college three hours away. He didn't plan on pursuing a long-distance relationship, and he dropped hints about it to Erica but nothing more. The relationship was as full of false ends as it had once been of false starts. It took the intervention of Erica's best friend to force Leonard's hand: "She said, if you're planning on breaking up with her you'd better do it soon, because it's not good of you to string her on like that." Soon afterward, Leonard made the last move, where Erica had made the first. The romance had lasted just three months.
The cliche vision of romance is love at first sight, a chance encounter that leads almost instantly to one person leaping into the other's arms and both whispering "forever." But in real life the first kiss, at least in a potentially serious relationship, is so often a pearl years in the making, its story full of hesitations and ambivalences. So is the last kiss. And that's Erica's story.
"The whole semester I got the feeling, okay, I really like him, is there something I need to do about this or what, and I waited the whole semester . . . and it never went away, so at the end of the semester I finally told him that that's how I had been feeling."
"So you were thinking maybe there's something there, and you want to explore that?"
"Yeah. I guess I put it in his hands, or something like that."
Erica and I are sitting on a bench outside a hair salon. We talk against a backdrop of traffic noise and chattering pedestrians. Everyone in the shopping center is going somewhere except us. Our travel takes place through memory.
Erica first met her boyfriend, Leonard, in middle school but didn't begin dating him until her fourth year of college. "We dated twice," she explains; the fourth year of college was the first time. I wonder out loud when, in that interval of about nine years, Erica and Leonard realized they had feelings for each other. Erica recalls an email she got in high school -- "it was one of those stupid chain forwards. And one of the questions was, Do you like the person who sent this to you? They were so dumb, but I remember writing something like... I plead the Fifth. 'Cuz Leonard sent it to me and I didn't want to say I like him."
What brings me to attention here is that Erica was given an opportunity to say how she felt, but instead said "maybe, maybe not." We could write this off as typical for high schoolers, but of course adults do it too. It's hard to take action. We pass the buck instead. Erica passed the buck back to Leonard. Leonard wrote something similarly vague back to her. And that is how two teenagers knew and liked each other for nine years before they started dating -- by which time they weren't teenagers anymore.
Erica says affectionately that Leonard "was always a wuss. He wasn't man enough to ever do anything about any girls." He didn't do anything when the two exchanged chain emails; he didn't do anything when he found Erica making out with her then-boyfriend at a Christmas party at Leonard's house. Not that the two were in constant contact. "There were some times when a year or maybe even more went by without us talking," says Erica, "but we could always pick up the phone and talk like no time had gone by."
At last something happened that does not always happen in true stories: someone made the first move. It was Erica. To earn their degrees, Erica and Leonard both needed to take statistics, a subject that was Erica's bane. Erica called him to remind him to sign up for classes -- "cuz he'd always wait till the last minute" -- and suggested that they take the course together. During that semester Erica felt her feelings strengthen, and at the end she told Leonard how she felt about him. "And what did he say?" I ask. "I don't even remember exactly how it happened," she answers. "Basically we both decided, okay, we'll start going out."
There was still more buck-passing to come. Leonard was studying to earn an associate's degree so he could transfer to a college three hours away. He didn't plan on pursuing a long-distance relationship, and he dropped hints about it to Erica but nothing more. The relationship was as full of false ends as it had once been of false starts. It took the intervention of Erica's best friend to force Leonard's hand: "She said, if you're planning on breaking up with her you'd better do it soon, because it's not good of you to string her on like that." Soon afterward, Leonard made the last move, where Erica had made the first. The romance had lasted just three months.
The cliche vision of romance is love at first sight, a chance encounter that leads almost instantly to one person leaping into the other's arms and both whispering "forever." But in real life the first kiss, at least in a potentially serious relationship, is so often a pearl years in the making, its story full of hesitations and ambivalences. So is the last kiss. And that's Erica's story.
Friday, April 3, 2009
At 11:38 PM, Brian glanced at his bookmarks.
Urgh, I forgot all about blogging today. Too many other things on my mind, I guess. I've been feeling lonelier than usual. Happily, I've got some stuff set up this weekend: a ball game with my dad tomorrow, and with any luck an interview on Sunday. But for today I have twenty minutes to write a blog entry, which means either I take a pass or I write something half-assed about something I happen to be thinking about, like Go or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. And frankly either there's a blog entry in those topics or there isn't, and if there is I'd prefer to wait until I have time to write something full-assed about them like usual. So I'll take the pass.
There is a topic I've been meaning to write about that I can say something about in the remaining thirteen minutes, though, and it's not something I feel is especially expandable. It's my tendency to begin sentences with coordinating conjunctions. The last three sentences of my previous paragraph all began with conjunctions, and I didn't do it on purpose. My AP English teacher always jumped all over me for that. He said it subordinated the sentence to the previous sentence and turned it into a fragment. Syntactically he's probably right if these conjunctions are treated as the same words as the ones that are used with commas to tie sentences together. But that's just how I think. Each thought is tied to the previous one with a statement about how they're related. Do they contradict each other? Does the second expand on the first? Am I drawing a conclusion? There are no better words than the conjunctions for invisibly guiding you as you try to reconstruct my thoughts from these symbols on a computer screen. I could say "however" and "furthermore" and "consequently," and sometimes I do that too. But those are big words that connote big ideas. Some days my ideas are small, and on those days my words should be too.
This, obviously, is one of those days. So that's today's post. And you see, I did end up talking a little about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after all.
There is a topic I've been meaning to write about that I can say something about in the remaining thirteen minutes, though, and it's not something I feel is especially expandable. It's my tendency to begin sentences with coordinating conjunctions. The last three sentences of my previous paragraph all began with conjunctions, and I didn't do it on purpose. My AP English teacher always jumped all over me for that. He said it subordinated the sentence to the previous sentence and turned it into a fragment. Syntactically he's probably right if these conjunctions are treated as the same words as the ones that are used with commas to tie sentences together. But that's just how I think. Each thought is tied to the previous one with a statement about how they're related. Do they contradict each other? Does the second expand on the first? Am I drawing a conclusion? There are no better words than the conjunctions for invisibly guiding you as you try to reconstruct my thoughts from these symbols on a computer screen. I could say "however" and "furthermore" and "consequently," and sometimes I do that too. But those are big words that connote big ideas. Some days my ideas are small, and on those days my words should be too.
This, obviously, is one of those days. So that's today's post. And you see, I did end up talking a little about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after all.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Two kinds of card
These came about a week ago, when I was in the middle of Alice's story. Five hundred of them plus a shiny business card holder for $7.99 plus shipping. Take out the gray interior border and this is exactly what the cards look like. Simple, pretty, informal rather than professional. I think they send the message I want to send, which is a friendly "this is a real thing and here's how to get in touch with me." If I ask someone for a story and they want to know whether I'm for real, I can say "sure, here's my card." Having a card means you're for real. I guess it's reasonable for someone who's been asked a personal question to want something tangible to guarantee that this isn't a scam and that if it is they know who to sue. Part of what I have to do is reassure people and encourage them to visit the blog, and this card accomplishes both those things. No cell phone number, though. I hate telephones, especially cells, and I'm going to be doing enough talking to strangers without also finding them on the other end of the phone line.
For the record, I got the cards from an Internet company called VistaPrint in what I think was a first-time special; if you need a bunch of business cards cheap I recommend them. (Just be willing to wade through a few pages of marketing -- no, I don't want the same image on a coffee mug or postcard -- before they let you actually place your order.)
I also visited Verizon today to find out if their nationwide-Internet deal is any better than AT&T's. Nope. The same bandwidth at the same price with the same minimum two-year commitment if you want the rebate on the same very expensive card. There might as well just be one company offering this service. It may just turn out to be necessary to pay full price for the card, because I'm not sure what percentage of budget inns offer wireless networking.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Disappearing railroad blues
Happy April! I don't have any pranks for you today, though I'm tempted to announce that I'll make my trip using BMW's new Magnetic Tow Technology, advertised today here. If this were real it would be a sweet way to ride.
And speaking of riding, I need to figure out soon whether I'm going to go by car or train. I was leaning towards going by train, but then it occurred to me that because I'd be riding in short hops, each leg would be no more than a day trip. I'd still be overnighting more or less entirely at hotels, so the train fare doesn't replace a hotel stay. No money saved on food, either, because the dining car charges unless you've made an exorbitantly upgraded reservation, which is only worth doing on long rides. I don't have to make car payments, but I do have to pay for rentals if I want to get anywhere within the cities I visit. The train looked appealing when I thought it was going to be more convenient and less expensive; I'm not sure how I feel now that it looks more convenient and more expensive.
The two biggest advantages of trains remain what they were: not having to focus on moving for long stretches at a time, and having a ready-made place to look for interviewees where we're all on equal terms. These should not be essential but are really tempting. I'm unfortunately aware that the higher the bar I set for myself, the greater the probability that I'm going to lose my nerve and abandon the whole project, consigning myself to spending June through August tutoring the odd few students who want tutoring during the summer, like I did last year and the year before that. I'd rather not do that again. But what price am I willing to pay, in dollars and romance, to lower the bar?
And speaking of riding, I need to figure out soon whether I'm going to go by car or train. I was leaning towards going by train, but then it occurred to me that because I'd be riding in short hops, each leg would be no more than a day trip. I'd still be overnighting more or less entirely at hotels, so the train fare doesn't replace a hotel stay. No money saved on food, either, because the dining car charges unless you've made an exorbitantly upgraded reservation, which is only worth doing on long rides. I don't have to make car payments, but I do have to pay for rentals if I want to get anywhere within the cities I visit. The train looked appealing when I thought it was going to be more convenient and less expensive; I'm not sure how I feel now that it looks more convenient and more expensive.
The two biggest advantages of trains remain what they were: not having to focus on moving for long stretches at a time, and having a ready-made place to look for interviewees where we're all on equal terms. These should not be essential but are really tempting. I'm unfortunately aware that the higher the bar I set for myself, the greater the probability that I'm going to lose my nerve and abandon the whole project, consigning myself to spending June through August tutoring the odd few students who want tutoring during the summer, like I did last year and the year before that. I'd rather not do that again. But what price am I willing to pay, in dollars and romance, to lower the bar?
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