I think of a man I know, think of him at the end of his day as I reach the end of mine, aimless, a bit. I wonder how he is.
He’s a window into a world I don’t understand or experience: the world of men.
It’s fascinating to hear a man talk about his wife (if sometimes discomforting) when you are a wife, and sometimes behave the way he says his wife does, if only at home.
I think of him on a darkening holiday eve as I play at architecture, typing construction estimates into a spreadsheet, remember dark evenings many years ago when I also played at architecture, worked with men and wondered at them with less knowledge.
Don’t misunderstand: this is not about sex or romance or similar nonsense. It is about lenses intersecting briefly, as I think of where to buy beer on my way home and remember an afternoon when the man noticed a bar he’d not seen before and said, I think I’ll stop there this afternoon, when the day is over. It’s a Venn diagram of memory: in one set there are layers of fading light, in another, words about demolition and masonry and windows, and above them both, memories of a lost man.
I go back to this again and again, so useless: why do I miss the lost man? I understand why architecture makes me think of him, but why, what do I miss?
In the end, for all I have fought it, love matters.
Touch matters.
DSKM asked me today if I would go for a massage if she paid for one at the physical therapy office. I have had to explain—and this is not easy—that I do not like to be touched.
It is not about sex.
I crave it, crave physical contact and relish it. I love the feel of different materials (wool, silk, cotton) on my skin, love to move, to feel the pleasant pain of physical exertion. But I do not like to be touched; I stiffen and push away like a cat when people approach, react with the same fear and unease the feral cat shows when I hold her. Did I learn this from my mother, not very cuddly with me, who would not hold my son when he was a baby? Did I learn this in the long lonely months, the seasons when I was alone? It is a curious thing, this paradox, this irony.
The man makes me think of it, when he talks about his family.
He clearly loves his children, easily, with pride and buoyant happiness. His wife? It is not for me to say. What passes between any couple is mysterious, the shades and tints and hues of love and caring and habit. I have learned this in my own life, wondered about the shadows between love and inertia, the truth about dependence.
We stay: we stay in marriages for children, stay in jobs for children and marriages, keep the machine moving, oiled, fueled. This is funnier when the mechanics refuse to work on your car, and you begin to wonder if the therapist pushing for resolution sees your life, your marriage, the way your mechanics see your car.
I know why I stay, the good reasons and the bad; they are common reasons, the usual reasons. I flip this around sometimes, wonder what I would do if I was not the woman. Would I stay, would I go? Would I go if I had more friends, more of a sense of support? I lose friends easily, with spectacular talent, but once I had a life and knew people; I think this is part of what I miss when I miss the man who is lost.
Missing. The man I’m thinking of seems to be missing something in his life, and I wonder what would happen if he told his wife some of what he has told me. I wonder this not because I tell my husband all the things I should, but because of all the things I did not tell the man who is lost, and that I wish I had.
Then I wonder how much it matters what we say to our spouses when what does matter, it seems, is love. I thought this tamed and sensible love I have for my husband would do, that the mad passionate love I had for the man who is lost, the love I still feel like a phantom limb, I thought that kind of love was dangerous, flared up and died magnesium-bright and fast.
Perhaps the mistake was in not understanding the need for passion of that intensity to fuel the long marriages we live in now, a tender full of coal to ride these endless rails.
I have wrestled with this as long as I have known my husband. I have known through all of these years that he is not the man I love the most, and not the man whose touch I crave. But I loved him enough to marry him, and the man I’m thinking of loved his wife enough to marry her, to have children.
I choose to stay, he chooses to stay. Who can say what is right?
I once thought staying was right, do no harm, don’t hurt the child, the children.
This still is true. I know, too, that I will not love another man the way I loved and love the man who is lost.
The man I’m thinking of seems to have no such phantom limb. He has pride and honor and self-awareness, and what I hope for him most of all is a peace and a happiness with his life.
The dark corners of our minds must be borne, but they need not rule. There must be a way to peace with honesty. This I would wish for all of us.