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Stereopathic on Hypem
Jul
20
One night, just after we were engaged, we tried to learn the foxtrot from a book we got from the library. She does not read directions particularly well. I still help her with knitting directions. Unfortunately, I don’t read directions particularly well either. It doesn’t help that instructional diagrams are usually drawn by artists who would rather be highly paid, representational painters, and who breathe resentment into their work. All factors conspired against us learning the foxtrot. I was the quadriplegic lifeguard saving the double amputee doing laps in a wave pool.
Alma became fidgety as we tried to learn the step. The foxtrot is perhaps the most basic dance step available to the non-dancer. I did not know anything about dancing, but I did know that the foxtrot was composed of steps that move in a rhythm of “slow, slow, quick, quick”, something I learned from “Happy New Year, Charlie Brown.” Charlie Brown lugs “War and Peace” around and ends up at a dance class. The sequence features the worst song in a Charlie Brown special. My memory of this song gave me, I felt, an edge over Alma. “Slow, slow, quick, quick” was an old friend of mine, a proverb of my youth.
“It’s just ‘slow, slow, quick, quick,’” I said, a redness creeping into my voice. I did not mention that I had learned this from a song in a Charlie Brown special.
“Okay,” she said, sitting on the couch and twisting one leg fully around the other, a sign of stress in our culture.
“Let’s try it again.”
We really had no business trying to learn in Alma’s apartment. We’d moved the couch back, and swung the coffee table around to reveal a patch of red carpet just large enough for us to drown in.
I fitted my hand to her waist and locked my other hand with hers. It was only recently that I’d been able to touch her like this without feeling a strong thrill. In this instant though, I felt the absence of a thrill. In our current phase of argument, I actually felt annoyed that the strictures of dancing required me to touch her in this semi-intimate fashion. The step should have known I was angry.
Trying to describe exactly how the dance was going wrong is probably impossible. Dancing is synchronized motion, and the second of the “quicks” was synchronized in the same way that two people falling down the stairs together may be said to be synchronized. After three attempts and three failures, I decided whose fault it was.
“You are not listening to me,” I said.
“You’re not explaining what the problem is,” she returned with force.
“I can’t explain it because you’re not listening. I’m at a loss for how I can possibly explain this to you.”
If there is any doubt, let the reader understand that it is very likely that I was not explaining the problem correctly. Also, let the reader understand that while there’s an outside chance that my returned complaint might have had some ground, reiterating it the way that I did here is now a widely acknowledged argument cheat in our household. Now, whenever I hear myself using this tactic, I shake my head and Alma’s jaw drops under the weight of incredulity. I still attempt to defer resolution in favor of empty conflict. However, we hadn’t learned to parse the grammar of these arguments yet. Alma’s eyes flashed, and I fell into another trope of this stage of our relationship.
I sat down on the couch, fuming, and became unresponsive. I can’t explain the intention, probably because I had no intention. I think the impulse is to just wait out the anger, but sitting silently in the middle of a conflict and trying to understand why you’re angry has only ever helped me focus on the anger and stress of the situation, with the effect that the anger roils like a hotel hot tub.
I don’t know how long this went on. It becomes a state of meditative reverie, in the way that swallowing hot coals can be meditative. The main thought circling my mind was, “We’re screwed. We’re not even married and we’re fighting about the foxtrot.”
Eventually, Alma got up and began putting the room back together. The coffee table back, the books on the coffee table, the easy chair pulled from her bedroom. The couch remained the only item out of place, shoved against the desk next to the window. I sat there, so absorbed in my thoughts that I wasn’t thinking anymore.
“Can you get up?” Alma asked. She looked at me with an expression that said she didn’t care. The expression did not say “forgiven” or “forgotten.” It said that I was wasting her time and that she did not care that I was upset. I felt myself tempted to say something to re-ignite the argument. Instead, I stood and did not let her move the couch. That expression of apathy, and her refusal to mirror my turmoil, defused my anger. I saw her instantly as an individual outside of myself, with concerns that were not mine and which I did not understand. I found this moving. I took hold of her and we danced the step that most people dance at a wedding, which is no particular step at all. We danced around the coffee table. We moved like sea-lions in an aquarium, more graceful than I would have expected.
- Sven Gull drops science like this on a regular basis over at his blog home atswimsevenswans, and lives with his wife, Alma, outside of Philadelphia, PA where he’s currently searching for funding to create and market an unabridged audiobook version of Finnegan’s Wake.
- Nate Stevenson has Drawn many Songs, which you may view here.
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I like it.
Well done, everybody.