Others and Ourselves

At some remote point in my intellectual development, it occurred to me that when I talked or thought about other persons, I was not actually thinking or talking about them as they are in their own lives, and that a lot was happening in their minds and lives out of my sight. As the word "chair" is a referential set of sounds speaking to our minds, as if the blank slate of consciousness were marked by the white chalk of lettering, so the ideas I had of those others were associative creations, slim views in time, projections and reflections, as much of me if not more than of them.

I did not previously fully grasp what a thoroughly sad, resentful character my friend, Sara, is, until after this visit to her adopted city. I should have seen it from her marriages and her own descriptions of her relationships with men, with her family, and from the occasional meanness and impatience she displayed with me; and her jokes, such as "Bitter, table for one!" should have been enough. But I had somehow put the facts of her behavior aside, my own projection of happiness on a long-time friend.

I lost my illusions of her during the last lunch we had, the day before I flew home. We had had some kind of disagreement two nights before on the subway, before I went off to see some live music, and she went home to dwell in possibilities beyond my view. I had thought little of it, though I got teary eyed at the time. Emotion is no big deal, when friends wrangle, and a night of prolonged drinking and live music, new friends made and further feelings evoked, moves a good deal of water under bridges crossed and burned.

"So you made it home okay?" she asked.
"Sure. I got back to the hotel." It was an awkward probe: A cue for me to go codependent and inquire what was wrong, but I was already aware of her moodiness and obvious resentment that I had not called her the day before. I had spent the day by myself, had gone out again, seen more music and met with more interesting experiences, of which she was not only not a part, but also could not have sanctioned.
"I have to say I am no better at the subway sober than drunk. I did have to change to the local a couple of times to get off at stops I wanted, and walked down the wrong side of the thing yesterday, trying to get around!"
"Still hung over?" she asked after a prolonged silence.
"Yes, this whole trip, I figure I'll be a bit worn or drunk."
"Are you on a mission?"
I looked at her without saying anything, "What are you really wanting know?"
She did not respond, and so I let the silence have its place, while I watched a child try to remove the tile designs from the restaurant floor.
"She thinks they're candy, doesn't she?" I said to her father.
"She's hoping they are," He said happily.

"Why don't you like to admit that this is your first time here?" Sara said after another long pause. We had ordered our food. I had coffee and she had a soda in front of her. Even in ordering, Sara commented on the fact my order was the same as hers, "That'll be easy to tell apart." She was clearly upset and sniping at nothing. Then this question about "admitting" came from out of that place I had not see in her, but was beginning to define during those silences.
"What do you mean exactly?"
"When people ask you, you tell them you haven't been here in thirty-five years or since you were five or six."
"I don't understand what you want to know."
"People don't want long explanations. They just want simple answers. Are you afraid to admit you haven't been here before?"
"The bottom line is I'm telling the truth."
There was a pause because the confidence of my answer was more than her ulterior effort could undermine.
"When I was in France, telling people it was first time in Europe was actually very helpful," I said. I did not want to be confrontational. I wanted to be oblique and remain good natured just then, because I saw clearly she was trying to pick on me, in order to get some kind of emotional upperhand, of which even she herself was only vaguely aware.
"Exactly. It helps everywhere. There was this girl in Texas, who never admitted she was from Texas, because she had been born in Pennsylvania...."
Here at last was a corroborative anecdote, revealing the extent of her feelings about this subject. I listened. There was no need to be either defensive or antagonistic. This whole conversation had nothing to do with me, and only one girl from Texas really mattered in the emotional details.

Out of another longer silence, Sara made a statement about how difficult it is to go to a new place to live.
"You've always lived in California?"
Again, this was a clear, peculiar question to inspire a feeling of inferiority. I was fascinated rather than provoked. I was witnessing projection in the clearest context. Here was a friend of many years who felt I was not appropriately intimidated or uncomfortable in this strange city. It was an odd condescension out of the pit of her own despair.
"Yes, except as a child, of course." I was now sure obliqueness was best. Allow her feelings to ricochet off my hull or stir dust around my tracks. I had moved on, and I just felt sorry for her.

I did not let any of it touch me beyond that, and I maintained an agreeable, oblique manner, answering her questions in a vague, jovial manner, about where I had gone and what I done after she left me two nights before and during the day and night of the following day, when she had refrained from calling me. I knew then she had, in fact, refrained from calling me for a reason. She had not called even to make excuses and recommendations about things to do. For my part, I had been happy not to have contact because I wanted to wander around by myself and look at things with only myself to consider.

I remembered part of our conversation on the subway later, how she had insisted I "just don't get" her. She had afterward presumed to interpret my feelings: "Poor you, no one understands you." I told her, No, that was not true. That feeling was only suitable for disaffected adolescents. Other people don't understand themselves and know what they want.
"If anyone fails to understand me, it is my fault for not making myself understood. I know what I want and I express myself as clearly and sincerely as I can. What other people make of it and me has more to do with them than with me."

I had been very drunk but since I was, as it would seem, on a mission, intoxication was no obstacle to common sense.

When we parted after lunch, we had already established that she would not see me later. She had to work the next day. She had promised to meet someone else downtown. There were several half-iterated excuses, which I did not question. I was eager to be on my own again and had committed to others I had met to see them again that evening. I intentionally said nothing of it to Sara. I hugged her and said, "Say good-bye." Then I walked away in a city I already knew, having lived in its analogues my entire life.

I am at home everywhere. Was it because she is uncomfortable even where she lives that she wished to take my comfort away, to make my easiness a defect, and to negate my childhood even in a simple statement? "You have never been here before." Was her childhood so shameful to her that my early life also threatened her here, in her chosen home? I went off to my evening, alone but not for long, because everywhere I went I was thrown in the way of others, commuters, bartenders, waitresses, musicians, cab drivers, all of them interesting to me, all of them, in turn, interested in me, as much as their mood and the moment allowed, a swirl of sounds and impressions, of conversation and sociability. I saw many persons I had seen the previous night, who were surprised and happy to see me again, and I was as surprised and pleased to see them. I found new acquaintances, including five Finnish piano tuners, who liked live music and lively conversation.

I did not share my friend's problems or my own with any of them, saying only to one delightful bartender, "I am genuinely interested in persons and things," as she served me a drink. "That so? I'm a bit tired tonight, but I'm glad to see you again. This one's on me." I am at home everywhere but most especially in my own skin.