Once, a woman I had been seeing long enough to breach some of our cultural body taboos called me while I was studying. “Hi,” she said. “How are you?”
There were several volleys of the basic small talk exchange formula, then another salvo was voiced, with a change in tone that made my hair stand up, made my solar plexus sink in alarm: “What are you doing?”
By syntax, this should be just normal “fine, thanks, and you?” territory, but something in her tone made me stand up and go to the window of my darkened bedroom, replying “reading,” as I walked. Maybe it was the sound of traffic outside my window, faintly audible in delayed stereo over the phone line.
Straight out of film noir, I stood to the edge of the window, out of the wash of light and line of sight of the street, and kinked sufficient space in one of the plastic venetian slats to peer through.
“I see you,” I told her, “or, rather, your car.”
“Oh,” she giggled. “Really? You do?”
“Yes. On the right side of the street, just beyond the parking lot.”
She giggled a little more, and her voice became more tentative, breathy, “Um, well, I better not distract you from your studying.”
I did not contradict her or point out that I had already been distracted, but said, “You are in the same classes as I; don’t you ever have to study?”
“Not really,” she said. “Oh, I’m not super smart, like you, soaking it all up, but I’ve got lots of other things to worry about, and, having priorities other than grades, don’t need to bother to compete with all those shallow competitive people.”
“I’m not competing with those shallow competitive people for grades. I’m trying to learn, and impress some of the professors, and figure out what the hell to do with my life.”
“I always want to feel good now,” she said, “and you’re one of the things that makes me feel good -- much, much better than reading those books or trying to make money. Instead of all that shallow, self-serving impersonal feeling of everyone out for themselves, sitting in your place, with your music, talking to, and occasionally being crushed by you, is like being in the womb, a water bed, a bubble bath!”
“I’m shallow, self-serving and impersonal,” I protested, but she went on.
“And besides, when you can’t see me because you have to be studying, or hanging out with your friends, or sleeping, whatever it is, when you cannot give me that sanctuary, then I have plenty of time to hit the books. You might say I’m a star student now that we’re involved.”
Then, a mere beat later, she said, “‘K, ‘bye!” and hung up. (She commonly would wrap up conversations with that sudden ejaculation; a signature and sometimes endearing quirk.) Her car remained there for another four minutes, then pulled away.
I wanted to tell that story to have a context-rich opportunity to describe that sinking sensation in the solar plexus -- which I understand to be signified by Richard Adams' "tarn" or by Emily Dickinson's "zero at the bone" -- as may be felt by a person stalked, or prey animal, but fear, in the telling, that I've only illustrated my own incapacity to accept love, compliment, or affection.
Also: boundaries may be important. 'K bye!