Fiction...Page 2

Am more inpatient with phone calls. Don't want any reverie interfered with, any TV show interrupted. I don't like to be jarred out of anything. Each person calling demanding that I fully enter their world the moment I hear their voice. This is compounded when I am not driven to talk, when my own pain or numbness or state of being is not pouring out of me. There is no consciousness that they are doing it. Occasionally yes which is fine. But mostly no, which isn't so fine. There are few perfunctory gestures at best. They ask almost to the person how my mother is doing. They immediately turn the conversation back to themselves. Finding some segue back no matter what I say. No matter the topic.

"My friend just died in a car crash."

"That's terrible"A split second pause."I remember the time when I was about 12 I crashed into a friend in the school yard and badly scraped my knees..."

I don't want to fight for space. If I am compelled I will talk. And if I am insistent most of my friends will give me the attention that I need. But only if I keep ratcheting up my intensity. Otherwise you just feel their impatience to get back to what they want to say, have to say, can't stop not saying. Often I don't necessarily want to talk about anything in particular. Still I don't want the conversation totally controlled by the other person. And often enough I pull the phone away from my ear, utter a couple uhhuhs, and they keep talking without knowing the difference. And then there are the times that someone asks me a question about what I think and then gives me their answer after I say maybe five words. This one makes me absolutely crazy.

Other friends are pretty reciprocal. Which means that I can obsess at times and at other times they can. And of course there are times where there is real back and forth.

I think the frozen obsessive qualities of my friends have debilitated me. I dread hearing their voices except when I am totally ready for them. There is so little movement in their conversations. And I couldn't care less about what they are talking about. Because they don't care about me at those moments. There are others who care.

I know with Arnie I would use him as an indicator on what I should write about. Whenever he would fade out I knew I was onto something. Because I had freed myself from the iron clad grasp he would have on the conversation. My thoughts veered far enough away from his control that I felt that I had a liberated thought. This is funny because Arnie and I thought very much alike. And his focus helped him and in fact often helped me to think things through. But what to him might feel like a mutual conversation was me staying within the parameters set by him even if it would be a place I would naturally be. It is only when I ventured outside them that he tried to exercise his control through what felt like manipulation-- fading out, using rhetorical tricks that are clearly more unconscious than conscious, but very effectively absorbed from watching public figures control the flow, direction, topics and rhythm of conversation. With most other people I am much less caught up when they do this. So the experience is even more unpleasant. But it is never pleasant if this happens on a regular basis.

I often go on strike. I don't speak about what I'm thinking about or my life or really what is happening to me except in broad outlines. I save it for my writing. But the effect is more serious than I realize. It dampens my energy. My personality fades. My thoughts lose their vitality.

I am not sure why I'm not asserting myself more. It could be an expression of contempt. The contempt of the docile who in some way are contemptuous through their surrender. The patient probing listener. But too often it becomes exactly what it looks like. A kind of self-effacement laced with an illusion of superiority. And I can't continue.

This is all very different from exciting conversations where each might go off on their own riff but where you are igniting, inspiring each other. Parallel conversations. Off on your own solo riff but deeply in tune with each other. But most now are endless solos without much music. Just obsessive monologues where someone is just bombarding you with the pain of their lives. Or bragging to you about their importance. Strange line crossed where you become locked in the prison of their consciousness

Generally it is hysteria and probably deep insecurity more than contempt. Maybe even a need to continually establish themselves with you. To show you how smart they are. But in a world where you are marginalized, dismissed and silenced it can feel like contempt or disinterest. And under any circumstances cumulatively it is very diminishing and unpleasant. And when I am in certain moods I dread hearing their voices.

I am also guilty of this but less so now than in the past. I used to be very forceful aggressive argue very powerfully, sure footed and in fact was very insightful and often dead on. I would steamroll or maybe in better times go off on powerful riffs. And see things very "clearly."One friend told me that she didn't want to join a discussion group Arnie and I were trying to set up. She said it wouldn't be a discussion group but rather a subtle, soft indoctrination group instead. That we wanted a group where we wouldn't really be listening to her, listening in the sense that we suspend the attachment to our own ideas and take in existentially what she wanted to say or where what she was saying was springing from. Not necessarily agree with it but not just waiting for the moment to step in and correct her. Or to use what she said as useful correctives to what we were thinking. She was right. Another time my old girlfriend Akemi angrily said to me as I completed a thought for her, "How I get there is as important as you knowing where I am going."

I have a friend who always felt bullied by me in conversation. Trumped by me. That I would outflank him and undercut him in every conversation. He felt hurt and bitter about it. I took a big step back. Unfortunately rather than lead to better communication he filled the aggression void and now generally steamrolls over me in conversation. Aggressive, opinionated, sanctimonious. Sure of every pronouncement. Telling me what I already know as if I didn't know it. His politics are similar to mine. It is particularly unpleasant if I want to look at something when I am assuming agreement and then try to explore a dimension of a problem and don't re-articulate a given. Let's say a reactionary politician says something that I think grew out of a certain type of humiliation and want to explore what they said and why they said it. My friend will then impatiently and dismissively lecture me about how reactionary the politician is and tell me how he isn't interested in examining motivations. All well and good. But if he wants to do something similar he won't hesitate and just assume I have to go along for the ride. Which obviously I would be happier to do if things were more reciprocal.

Locked In

It does surprise me when I am talked over. I have a lot to offer on certain subjects. And it shocks me how little curiosity there is. Mostly this is true in private conversation. Generally though my friends are very attentive and respectful of my written work. And more often than not pay real close attention when I speak in public.

For reasons I don't fully understand, the dynamic between the friends I am complaining about and myself shifts dramatically if there are one or two other people around. In those situations the conversation is usually pretty fantastic. Everyone listening, learning and enjoying each other. Why? I don't know why. But I feel good when it happens.

                     You tell a joke and I laugh
                     You tell a joke and I laugh
                     I tell a joke and you don't laugh
                     You tell a joke and I laugh
                     You tell a joke and I laugh

                     You tell a joke and I laugh
                     You tell a joke and I laugh
                     You tell a joke and I laugh

                     I tell a joke and you don't laugh
                     You tell a joke and I don't laugh
                     You wonder why I didn't laugh

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