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EXPOSITION

The first part of Romance in My Mind was a basically truthful account of a real life event in which Ray had romantic hopes about Sharon only to discover he’d been dreaming: it was not a person, but a thought of a person, with whom he had had a romance. The Second Part is a wholly made up story in which Ray actually manages to attain the object of his desires. Through the miracle of pure fiction, Ray wins Sharon’s heart. But in this case, it is the author, not the character, who is dreaming. Enjoy. 

TWO LETTERS

That morning, which I guess we’ll call a Tuesday, I found two letters by the mail slot. These must have come the previous night, since the mail always arrives surprisingly late at my parents’ house, yet it was curious I hadn’t seen them before. One was from Sharon, which I guessed would be some very pro forma thank you for having visited her, and the other was from Blake Nielson, which I was little surprised at, as I hadn’t heard from him in a while — and in fact, I felt I had seriously offended him. I set his letter aside and tore into Sharon’s hungrily, though it was just as empty of feeling as I’d supposed, as if it were hollow or blank – a polite, thoughtful note.

MUNIFICENCE WITHOUT A SPIRITUAL IMPRESSION

I knew Blake through my volunteer work at the food pantry. We were both in our early fifties, both bachelors, never married, never had kids, and shared an interest in history and politics. We joked a lot. One day we were in the midst of our “diaper duty” (essentially repackaging diapers to make them more practical for distribution) when, in the context of idly discussing public policy, he said something that really surprised and disturbed me, and actually made me feel physically sick: that this hardworking, community-minded person, whom I liked, had been carrying over 40k in student loans for over thirty years. He wasn’t an extravagant spender, he said, (which was obvious to anyone who knew Blake) but had always felt powerless before this debt. He said this with a striking meekness. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that this was happening to Blake.

Well, I knew from that moment — in some sense — that I (who had been unemployed for two years now and yet was wealthier than I’d ever been, thanks to stock prices) was going to pay off this debt, though it took me about a year of wrestling with my own complex feelings about money to realize it.  I eventually wrote him a nice email, extending the offer and urging him to take me up on it (he had moved by this time to the west coast, which was another reason for me waiting until then) and he promptly responded: “I accept.” 

THE OBJECT OF DESIRE

Now, the way I told it before, what I was feeling so acutely on that couch Thanksgiving night was that “I wasn’t in a couple” and this is a true and even an appropriate way of putting it, for Ray is probably a person who could profit from being in a couple. However, there was also a more pathetic undertone to my complaint, or there is a more pathetic way of stating it, which now that I’ve established that there are some complexities to my character, I feel more free to impart; which is that Sharon, after all, was to me an object of desire, and I couldn’t help but reflect, as I twisted around in my winter coat that night as I did – as Ray and I both did – that it had ever been thus with us and the objects of desire, whatever the objects of desire might have been: that we were not just denied, not just refused, but somehow… somehow not in the same room somehow not in the same conversation with the objects of desire, a great barrier of impossibility having been established between us and our objectives, was it love or business or something subtler. 

In short, success of any kind seemed inaccessible, and why? we were asking ourselves as we twisted around in our coats. It wasn’t because we lacked advantages (though of course there were advantages we lacked; we weren’t smart, funny, gifted, handsome, rich, though we were, from certain perspectives, reasonable simulacra of a few of those qualities) and it wasn’t because the world was unfairly disposed against us (the opposite; though it’s true we would observe the success of near peers and question that premise in a narrow sense). 

One interesting answer to why we never attained what we desired that I kept having was that we didn’t really want the object of our desires; for there was something safe and easy about merely desiring something without having a real chance of attaining it. 

Another interesting idea was that I was incapable of showing, out of a kind of insecurity, that I actually desired the object of desire – didn’t have the strength to show the vulnerability of being in need – a commonplace insecurity about not facing rejection, which, of course, actually, is not that interesting. 

And you’ll notice in my foregoing narrative that I “heavily hinted” to Sharon about the “extent and kind” of my interests,– and perhaps that was appropriate in the case of Sharon, who was not just an object of desire but an old friend too. But at the same time, part of winning the object of your desires has to involve making your desires clear, manifesting them as something serious, while Ray and I were sort of jolly hinters, you might say, never making a meaningful open display: yes, now perhaps we meant it, but we could always take it back, our jolly hinting would suggest. 

Yes it was always ever thus with us and the objects of desire, Ray thought, turning around in that coat, miserable, whether the object was sex or money or something else…. A misery that wasn’t about Sharon but about his life. Is this what I desire, Ray thought, desiring and not having? Did Ray desire misery, thought Ray?

MUSIC

A reason I have given for thinking Sharon and I might be together was that being with her I would recall that long forgotten pleasure of being in a couple. Also, I’ve hinted she’s physically attractive, which is true, (though perhaps we’ve attained an age in which such things are quite changeable and can’t be reliably weighted.) Finally, we were two single people in each other’s social orbit; so maybe it was just reasonable. But a reason I have perhaps underrated so far for this attraction is this reason we’d gotten together in the first place after so many years —

The story: Sharon had come into some money and wanted to spend a portion of it recording an album of her material in a professional studio, just like we had done in the old days (though of course there were cheaper alternatives now, with which she was well familiar). We former bandmates said absolutely we would – those of us who were still on speaking terms, I mean – and we spent three days in NYC playing and listening and relistening to her music and putting it on tape and all that (though of course it wasn’t “tape.”) This was about two years ago…And I will tell you, the music gets into you after such a series of sessions, after whole days of replaying and relistening to songs. You become supersaturated. You love that voice as much as the accompaniment to it you’ve supplied. She must be a beautiful person, you will think, rehearing it. “As beautiful as those intervals are, as pure as that voice is… Yes, our Sharon is so mournful and so sweet.”

God and Country

One thing you probably don’t want to know about at all is whether Ray believes in God or not, and I’ve actually forgotten the entire reason for this section of my story, but I did want to say something about Julietta…. Julietta – smarter than me, more responsible and accomplished than me, kinder than me and more open than me, and deceased now, via assisted dying – she definitely did not believe in God (“I have never known prayer to affect a medical outcome,” I recall her, a medical doctor, having said); while I, the very worst sort, who did not have the courage to say one way or the other what I thought about the existence of God, would think “I kind of did believe.” And what I am thinking of now is how I would be really embarrassed of my “kind of did” in the presence of Julietta’s “definitely did not”, when we talked, because she behaved like a person who, as I thought, really believed God would behave — extremely responsible — while I behaved like a person who just believed in whatever, somewhat responsible but also suggestible, would behave. Contingent. Which of the two of us actually believed in God, I wondered? it’s the person who’s more responsible, I answered, which is comparable to view of Zosima in the Brothers K.. So that is the point of this section and all I wanted to say.

Other-Directed vs. Self-centered (a conversation)

– A person should be self-centered, says the self-centered person, for what is the alternative? Our own self is most of what we know about and most of what we can know about and what we are first and foremost responsible to — responsible to and for! 

– How can you see others so little? replies the other-directed person. Do you imagine we’re all so different from you? How can you not see that we all have shared interests?

– Get a life, says the self-centered person, get your own life. You don’t need to worry about mine, believe me.

— yes but I like you.

— When you don’t have someone besides yourself to care about you collapse!

— MMM

— You want us to take care of you…. Only an other-directed person, as you call yourself, could think “it’s easier to solve other people’s problems” like you did when you helped out Blake. But you don’t care about Blake! That’s why he’s written you this letter! Your “munificence” …!

– I’m a team player, I confess. I also think a lot of problems can be averted by trying to understand another person’s point of view. But I will concede there’s something unhealthy here. I feel… allergic to pursuing my own interest: just as there seems a forcefield around the objects of desire, I will feel paralyzed before pursing my advantage. I grant that. I mean, why can I spend that money on Blake but not on myself? It’s an abdication…! I could travel, get an education, I could even go into rehab with that kind of money… But with Blake I felt very little need for question. I really felt physically ill…

– I can’t help you. I think you’re trying to make responsibility for others replace responsibility for yourself, and that you yourself know that is not how it works. 

FOOTNOTE

This seems as good a place as any to mention the contents of Blake’s letter, which incidentally made me feel extremely terrible. His letter, a physical handwritten letter, said simply that he had come to realize that I didn’t want our friendship to continue, which he respected, but that “he would never forget what I’d done for him” etc…

Terrible, because the spiritual element of my “munifience” had not only collapsed but was somehow even somehow reversed, or made hollow, like I had done a bad thing.  Terrible, because you could give all the money in the world and it wouldn’t equal being a human to a human, which, without getting into the details, I probably hadn’t. Being good is cheap, it turns out, and in fact you can save some money that way. There was no humanity to me, no bottom, that’s why I couldn’t be loved.

WORDl IN ONE

The next six months with Sharon were characterized by incessant squabbling and a rather palpable deterioration in our relationship, so that I was entirely surprised, or rather dismayed, when she wrote (“texted”) me to say that she would be having a layover in Washington for a few hours, while she was on Summer Break, and could we meet. This seemed like a bit of burden at this point in our relationship – what had we now to discuss or meet about?– but after scanning my empty calendar and pondering the meager array of excuses at my disposal, I suppressed my testiness and wrote (“texted”) her back merely  “yup!”

As for the reason for this squabbling, it must be said that our natures somewhat inclined us toward it, if not toward outright hatred; for while she is a person of edges, you might say – of quick, hard, not always fair judgments and expressions – I am a person of sensitivities, my vanity getting bruised extremely easily — though it will get bruised for others’ vanity too I will say; it will get bruised by any unfairness — and when one of her hard points touches even lightly on one of my sore spots, it is likely to result in a squabble. This sort of thing became more frequent after that Thanksgiving, when our relationship lost some of its formality.

Our worst blowout, I recall, involved the popular word game Wordl, in which, if you’re unfamiliar, you have five chances to guess at a word with five letters. It is a horrible waste of time, but Sharon had gotten me into the habit during one of our visits, and a lot of our daily contact involved “writing” each other about how we did on that day’s puzzle or complaining about the word if we thought it was illegitimate, etc. 

Now, part of the charm of this game is that, while it’s next to impossible to guess the word on the first try – there is something like a percent of a percent chance of that happening – it is also pretty hard NOT to guess it in five, so you always “win” but the question is, how many guesses will it take you. I mainly would guess the word in four attempts, less often in three or five, etc…. but then this one morning something that I experienced as extraordinary happened; I became astonished to watch as one tile after another popped up green (if you know what I mean by the tiles “popping up green”); it was like the tiles were doing something impossible… I had guessed Wordl in one.

I wrote Sharon at once: “OMG, gal! I got Wordl in 1!” As I waited for her reply, which I anticipated would be “Amazing!!” with a scattering of emojis, the enormity of what had happened began to sink in. It really did seem like a sign, like a blessing; and I quickly wrote her again “I know it sounds ridiculous, gal, but maybe this is what I’ve needed to turn my life around. It’s a sign that fortune has yet some regard for me. It’s a sign of Zeus!!” I waited for a response, but still did not hear back.

Now usually, Sharon, when I wrote her, would reply to me right away, from the subway on her commute, or if work was busy, around lunch — nothing very involved, mind you, a few words, an emoji. But this time she waited until she’d gotten home that night to answer, which in itself was suspicious, and it was this reply that started our big blowout.

I have to hand it to Sharon. She really is an expert at being able to wound me with the appearance of having said nothing at all. I can’t remember her exact words. It was some “joke” about me having an inflated ego…. She certainly didn’t congratulate me…. It’s as I’ve said: she can hardly say anything without showing an edge, while I can hardly hear anything without revealing a sensitivity. “You don’t understand me at all!” I fired back. “You are so self-centered!”

AT THE AIRPORT

So we didn’t talk for months after this silly argument and then came this strange message from her about having a layover in Washington. I was actually dumbfounded to learn that she would want to see me again and slightly trepidatious. I learned there were some major protests scheduled in the city that weekend, which I thought might be a good excuse not to see her, but when I learned she’d be flying into Dulles, the excuse came to seem intellectually implausible. (Dulles airport being well outside of town where the protests were. She was coming home from Dublin.) I confirmed that I’d be there.

Standing at the gate, I mused to myself that she would be either wearing her jean jacket/ jean skirt combo with a red top that accentuated her slim neck, or the opposite: the turtleneck with the wildly huge collar which seems always poised to devour her face. It was in fact that sweater – so cold on a flight often, I supposed –  which again displayed that enthusiasm for contrasts I’ve mentioned before, featuring purple, pink, and white geometric shapes, vaguely Mondrianish. I remembered this sweater. One night she put it on when we were going out somewhere and she asked if I liked it. When I didn’t say anything at once, she changed it.

We went to one of those places they have at airports and talked. The gist of our conversation was: she thought I was a “good man” and that she was ready for a “good man” in her life “finally”; while I said I was drawn to her “vulnerability”; there was that about her that which made me want to take care of her and that about her which made me want to make her my wife. I affirmed, too, that I was not a good man… We didn’t kiss in any significant way, but we did hold hands, then I saw her off to her flight.

I never did ask what was responsible for her change of heart – and she, probably to spare my feelings, never volunteered it – but I guessed that she had been seeing someone else, which hadn’t worked out. Another possibility was: she’d gotten used to having me around.

Was That Believable or Not?

So, as I’ve said none of that actually happened, and is mere fantasy and wish fulfillment on my part. In real life, probably the reason Ray had no success with Sharon had something to do with the fact that he, other-directed, was focused on Sharon, while Sharon, self-centered, was also focused on Sharon, so the vectors of their interest, going in the same direction, didn’t meet. Sharon would probably do better with someone more like her, more focused on their own interests, and where those interests met, Ray thought.  

Or maybe it was that they were both other-directed but while Ray was self-centered enough to desire someone who was other-directed like himself, she was so other-directed she could only love someone completely unlike herself, someone completely self-centered. 

Or — final possibility — maybe Ray thought he might bowl Sharon over with his “goodness” and munificence, but when it came to real qualities Sharon could love in a person it was something that came cheaper; it was something more like “loving and not giving a damn.” And there was something essentially at odds with Ray”s “munificence” and Sharon’s “not giving a damn.”

As a writer, I tried to smooth over the implausibility of their connection by making it seem a bit routine for people to have a total change of heart, which is not so implausible, I think you’ll agree. Also, by using scare quotes in the final dialogue, I suggested that the characters might not know what they are getting into, or why, themselves — an additional layer of plausibility.

In any case, Reader, we implore you: pursue your own interests, and no other’s — it is a good idea. Love, Ray.