The Question
18 February 2007 14:51![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amul(note: I'm taking a bit of artistic license here and merging a few different ones into one big one)
I got asked The Question again this weekend. It's after the play, which was surprisingly better than my already high expectations. We're at a bar, and I'm sandwiched between Lacuna Diving Bunny and this cute girl from my Grant Writing class that may or may not have been giving me flirtatious glances for the last few weeks.
I mention her in passing, a minor adjective in a larger story. One of the few that I've offered up to the table of fellow drinkers. For some reason, I haven't been making my usual bids for the spotlight, haven't been full of bluff and swagger like I usually do. But I'm not quiet, either, just more reserved than any of my Pittsburgh friends would imagine me capable of, and it's just a detail, a minor notation of the company I kept during my humorous anecdote, but it catches the attention of the cute, possibly flirtatious girl, and the next few seconds of that conversation are writ in stone.
She asks, as so many ask, "You're divorced?"
And I say, as I always do, yes.
So, of course, she will ask, "How long were you married for?" and out of deference to Priceless Pearl, I tell her, Oh, I was never technically married. We lived together for nine years, and somehow what we went through was a divorce, but....there were never any actual vows spoken.
Then comes that moment of silence, the measure of which seems to suggest so much about a person, and I often think that it must tell me something about them, must reveal some facet. Not everyone asks The Question, and as the silence grows I wonder again if it means something, if it is worth knowing. Is it a worthy basis for judgment, and if it is, how should I judge?
She asks The Question. Two short words, so simple to ask and so hard to answer.
"What happened?"
I made a vow to myself, when it all finally fell apart, that I would answer that question differently every time I was asked it. Not that I would give "different answers" every time, but that I would try to use this question to approach the subject afresh, that I would avoid rote answers and meaningless comments. It does me no good to let the idea become static in my mind, and it imparts no wisdom to tell them we just grew apart.
So I thought about it, and tried to clear my mind of the answers I've given before. Tried to find some way to make the question new to me.
When I was in college, two friends of mine broke up, and when I asked him why their relationship ended, he said "I wanted kids and she didn't, and it seemed pointless to go on if our life's ambitions were different." A few days later, I ran into her and asked her the same question. She told me she broke up with him because he always borrowed her car without permission, and would never pick her up from work on time. She said she dumped him because he was unreliable.
So how should I answer your question? Should I tell you what I think happened? Should I tell you what I suspect she thinks was my reason for leaving her? Should I pretend to give some unbiased analysis, recite events and dates and act as if they all add up to the end of a love?
She weighed this seriously, examined it as though it sat at the bottom of her bottle, and then she said, "Tell me what you think she would say."
And I wondered, does that tell me something about this woman?
As I gave hermy answer this answer, the bar seemed to peal away from us, and Time scooted aside to give us a little room.
(tangent: Time puts on its soft slippers and knows where all the creaky floorboards are)
She looked at me, in the silent space between us, the quiet eddy of stillness inside the rushing roar of tavern-dom, and took the measure of my eyes, then quietly asked, "And what would you say?"
So I told her something completely different, another answer, no more mine than the last, but I could not finish it in fullness before the world came rushing back in again, the tiny pool of Us dissolving into the tide which sweeps us all away.
Still I wonder. Was any information actually passed between us? Was there truth in that conversation, was it honest? We all change with every breath from our lungs, but do we grow?
Am I more than what I once was, or merely other?
I got asked The Question again this weekend. It's after the play, which was surprisingly better than my already high expectations. We're at a bar, and I'm sandwiched between Lacuna Diving Bunny and this cute girl from my Grant Writing class that may or may not have been giving me flirtatious glances for the last few weeks.
I mention her in passing, a minor adjective in a larger story. One of the few that I've offered up to the table of fellow drinkers. For some reason, I haven't been making my usual bids for the spotlight, haven't been full of bluff and swagger like I usually do. But I'm not quiet, either, just more reserved than any of my Pittsburgh friends would imagine me capable of, and it's just a detail, a minor notation of the company I kept during my humorous anecdote, but it catches the attention of the cute, possibly flirtatious girl, and the next few seconds of that conversation are writ in stone.
She asks, as so many ask, "You're divorced?"
And I say, as I always do, yes.
So, of course, she will ask, "How long were you married for?" and out of deference to Priceless Pearl, I tell her, Oh, I was never technically married. We lived together for nine years, and somehow what we went through was a divorce, but....there were never any actual vows spoken.
Then comes that moment of silence, the measure of which seems to suggest so much about a person, and I often think that it must tell me something about them, must reveal some facet. Not everyone asks The Question, and as the silence grows I wonder again if it means something, if it is worth knowing. Is it a worthy basis for judgment, and if it is, how should I judge?
She asks The Question. Two short words, so simple to ask and so hard to answer.
"What happened?"
I made a vow to myself, when it all finally fell apart, that I would answer that question differently every time I was asked it. Not that I would give "different answers" every time, but that I would try to use this question to approach the subject afresh, that I would avoid rote answers and meaningless comments. It does me no good to let the idea become static in my mind, and it imparts no wisdom to tell them we just grew apart.
So I thought about it, and tried to clear my mind of the answers I've given before. Tried to find some way to make the question new to me.
When I was in college, two friends of mine broke up, and when I asked him why their relationship ended, he said "I wanted kids and she didn't, and it seemed pointless to go on if our life's ambitions were different." A few days later, I ran into her and asked her the same question. She told me she broke up with him because he always borrowed her car without permission, and would never pick her up from work on time. She said she dumped him because he was unreliable.
So how should I answer your question? Should I tell you what I think happened? Should I tell you what I suspect she thinks was my reason for leaving her? Should I pretend to give some unbiased analysis, recite events and dates and act as if they all add up to the end of a love?
She weighed this seriously, examined it as though it sat at the bottom of her bottle, and then she said, "Tell me what you think she would say."
And I wondered, does that tell me something about this woman?
As I gave her
(tangent: Time puts on its soft slippers and knows where all the creaky floorboards are)
She looked at me, in the silent space between us, the quiet eddy of stillness inside the rushing roar of tavern-dom, and took the measure of my eyes, then quietly asked, "And what would you say?"
So I told her something completely different, another answer, no more mine than the last, but I could not finish it in fullness before the world came rushing back in again, the tiny pool of Us dissolving into the tide which sweeps us all away.
Still I wonder. Was any information actually passed between us? Was there truth in that conversation, was it honest? We all change with every breath from our lungs, but do we grow?
Am I more than what I once was, or merely other?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 18 Feb 2007 22:16 (UTC)...did i say that? that sounds SO me...
no subject
Date: 19 Feb 2007 01:32 (UTC)And I said it, about Radiant Idol. I can't find the post, although I'm sure I'll spend the rest of the night looking for it. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 19 Feb 2007 01:36 (UTC)ooh, that's a good one.
no subject
Date: 19 Feb 2007 01:58 (UTC)http://amul.livejournal.com/195610.html