Not Knowing

It wasn’t like I knew any better. How could I? From the time I first knew anything about how the world really worked, it seemed normal, to walk into a roomful of people my age and have three or four girls staring. 

They were so careful about it. But it got so, I would surprise them with a look of my own when they least expected it. Then the floor was their friend, or the person they were talking to got so much more interesting.

But the stranger they were to me, the stranger I was with myself. It was like a knife that cut both ways. I wanted the attention, and I didn’t want it.

It was never to be. Like always. How many times could you see someone and not know the answer to the questions, the same as always, being alone is always the answer. Always.

***

I remember that first time. At St. Laurent Shopping Center. The Mustang was parked at home. Not sixteen years old yet, I could not yet drive it, harsh lighting casting shadows, people walking by, me dreaming of the car I would own, while peddling enormous fundraiser chocolate bars. A woman twice my age stumbles upon me.

“I’m happy to give five dollars to someone as good-looking as you!”

It’s like she found a treasure, my air cadet uniform, shiny with sergeant stripes, that military measure of a man. I couldn’t say anything, blushed, and palmed a bar at her, all I could give.

***

And then I grew up. A part of me did. The part everyone notices, the kid became what it had to become. Kicking and screaming not allowed, would not be seemly, not cool, to never know what everyone knows. That it’s not what seems easy that matters. Not a question of words, more than feelings, more than thoughts. Absurd things.

I have a girlfriend? Colleen, a commitment to the one girl who wouldn’t stop staring. Brash, unafraid, grinning at my endless jokes that tumbled about, the sort that echo and break.

I will never forget that night, so cold, we were walking down that wide wide road, sidewalks not plowed, houses looming over us, the wind whispering snow off rooftops. She wants me to take her hand. But I don’t of course. Too cold and my hand-knit gloves are too thin. The sort aunts do for Christmas from leftover cotton, red orange, and blue. 

So persistent. All the other girls would have given up by now. Colleen has a bet. “At the dance. I know it!” Then she laughs with my best friend who is now her best friend, a conduit, to me. But my circuits run inward not out. Best Friend: “What are you waiting for? An invitation? To be a bore?” My answer, shrugs and cast away glances, promises to do more. 

***

At the school dance, it's all the slow dances that she jumps up for. Then this expectant look, hands on my shoulders, staring. Me, I’m so ecstatic, the Mustang in the school parking lot. Waiting, 2.3-liter acceleration, 88 horsepower, borrowed of course. Colleen in a funk, nattering with my best friend. I’m drawn to the hallway. 

“I’ve written to her! I think of her all the time!” Melvin the nerd boiling up, cheeks so scarlet, angry, hair so neatly combed. “What does she take me for?”

“Thump, Thump, Thump,” goes that live band. “What can I do?” says Melvin, not a great looker. I’m with you on that partner!

***

It’s all in the attitude. If you talk long enough, something will be left. Of me. Somewhere. Echoing through the long reaches of my mind, to finally know what others know in an instant. It’s not what matters that means anything when breathing and walking about are conscious. On stage, never right, arguing and reasoning. For what?

University. Unity with diversity, put together. Just not right for me. Time goes by so quickly, while neither wanting or needing have much to do with reality. Walked into a hallway full of women toweling after a workout. A dozen young women suddenly look up with no other man in sight. Wrong place? No! Just passing through their minds, their eyes follow every move I make.

Infected with the noise of what can’t be, what I can’t accept, I reach the end of myself. She screeches at me, “Don’t leave!” A woman I think I hardly know, she knows me so well. Others turn and stare, chairs rooted, calculators allowed.

I grimace, hand in my exam papers with written apologies to my professor. Failing second-year psychology, so many rat studies, too many to remember. Then I take one last look at her, her eyes pleading, failure no supplemental.

***

Then I ran through the women’s change rooms during summer downtime in the Athletic Facility. So many cubicles, curtains, and mysteries. It’s not a show I could miss, yet a quandary, I don’t know better. The therapist challenges me so many years later.

“Your lying index was off the charts on that test I gave you.”

“I lie a lot?” My dumb question. I restart and reset. “I knew what I was doing.”

The therapist smiles. 

***

There she was. Like an apparition before work, in the lunchroom, gray skirt, worried expression.

I speed up, seated with the coffee. She left with a part of me.

***

Therapists never speak. It’s all symbols and hieroglyphics, unwritten, unknown language, furthest from our reach.

“Relationships are impossible when you don’t know who you are.” More uncomfortable wisdom, from me the blathering idiot. When did I become so wise? Who told me of my demise, before knowing, and learning was complete? I turn inside out and find that it isn’t what matters that matters after all. The beginning is the end, not the living, not the wanting or the turning about. Not the thinking or the reasoning, the arguing or the crying. Simple. Know yourself.

***

So I bought my own Mustang. Shiny red, 225 horsepower, the endless credit line my friend. Just one touch, powerful, idling on wonderful, so many possibilities.

The gray skirt has a name. Leticia. She chooses to sit near me at lunch. Soft shy smile, Marilyn Monroe as a brunette. Sparkly teeth that move with words, but I’m not listening. It’s just the sounds that make the words, each distinct, a cadence, inviting. Lost in thought, urgent to be someone else. Yet rooted, grabbing the chair, gripping that chair with both hands, elbows digging in so hard. She leaves with all the lights, the shadows, and the air I breathe.

***

Each day, Leticia is leaving, out the door, down the road, gone. I have my Mustang.

“Can I drive you home?”

“Certainly!”

We stop at a café. Bright sunshine on the terrace, those wired chairs, squishy and careless. But she is here, smiles brighter than anything I can remember. Coffee and scones. Small talk.

“This scone is so crummy!” she frowns.

I lurch to attention. “I can get you something else!”

“It’s just messy!”

“So, you like it?”

“What does it look like?” She smiles.

We get up to go. She loves baseball. New to the area, and she has a boyfriend already. Of course. A master’s in something.

“Wanna go see a game? In Montreal?” Where else, dummy, I think?

“Sure!”

Later I’m thinking. I hate baseball.

***

She’s working where I work, not just a visitor. Quick revision. How about a movie? Sure, again. So agreeable. Is she made this way or is it something else? Could it be?

A movie we go see. Anything else, please! But she has seen so many others, with that quasi-boyfriend, the master calculator. I fall to second.

“I’m so sorry, we saw that movie. Bad choice!”

“Me too! Why not go to DV eight, right there?”

Elgin Street in summer. Oh my, the crowds! Everyone walked ice cream cones, sweltering through the warm night wind.

We step in, it’s so cold. Chairs, by the swinging kitchen doors. And the washrooms. Nowhere else to sit with music that's blaring.

“Unlucky again?”

“Sure!”

***

I call on her. She’s moving into some apartment on some street where no one goes. I am there sitting on a fat couch in the middle of nowhere. He wants to come over. He’s bought her a bed. Dreams of moving in? Plans in his head!

She talks and talks. “Sorry, Jeff. Today is not your day. I've had a good time, thanks it's been fun. I'm sure you can meet someone else someday!"

Then she hangs up the phone and smiles that eternal smile.

"Where were we?"