The New Sense

Wednesday, May 08, 2002

I'm writing this under the 8th, as it actually happened after midnight on the 7th. I'm tired as hell, but I really want to get this down. Anyway, it's a slow day in the bar.
So I went into the bedroom and got undressed and got in bed with him. I knew he wasn't sleeping, so I took a deep breath and dove right in.
"You're going to have to tell me your secret, or we won't be able to be together any more."
He hesitated for a few seconds, then turned to face me. He smiled. The nicest smile I've had from him for a couple of days. I really do love him. I'm not falling any more; I'm involved.
"You're right," he said, and brushed my hair away from my face. I felt tears well up in my eyes. He kissed me on the forehead. A long kiss, not a dismissive peck. Like he was doing some kind of mind-meld or something. Then he ran his hand down my back and pulled me closer. I closed my eyes. His body felt so good against mine, but I really wanted to talk. I opened my eyes and he was looking at me so softly, so sweetly, really seeing right inside me, that I just gave in and kissed him.
He kissed me back really hard, really passionately, but then held me away from him and looked at me. "You're right," he said again. "I just don't know where to start."
"I've got all night, " I answered.
He smiled again. "Okay, but I'm not promising to tell you everything right now."
I was disappointed. He seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. I couldn't be too pushy.
"Let me talk, then ask whatever you like, then we'll see where we get to," he said.
"Okay." I put my hand on his upper arm and pulled him a bit closer.
I must admit that I felt a kind of excitement in this whole process. I just couldn't wait to find out what the hell it was that made him leave everything behind in Vancouver, what this betrayal was all about, and why he seems so scared about being discovered. It's as though I was reading a great book where you don't want to stop reading and switch off the light even though you have to get up early for work. I think I actually held my breath for the God-knows-how-many seconds it took him to start talking. Here's what he said:
"I am from Vancouver, but B— isn't my real name. I don't want anyone here to know my real name, and that includes you. I don't want you to get into trouble. I have…let's say a very particular way of looking at the world, and that's what got me into trouble. I hitch-hiked here from BC because I didn't want anyone to be able to follow me and because I hate flying. Before I moved in here I was staying with a guy called Jean-François who I once met in Vancouver. I chose him because he hardly knows me and I needed to make a complete break with my life there.
"My parents are doctors. I left them a note telling them not to worry about me, but not to try to find me. They have absolutely no idea why I had to leave. I mentioned betrayal to you. My best friend at high school was a guy called Sean."
He paused for a long time, looking down. Fortunately, as I was getting breathless just listening to him. Finally he looked back up. "I was a bit of a loner, and so was he. I guess it's contradictory, but we liked hanging out together and talking. Okay, no, wait, that sounds stupid. Let's say that neither of us were the kind of boys who turn into guy guys. You know, the kind of guys who go to sports bars. And I know what you're thinking [he was right!] but there was nothing homosexual about it — we would just spend hours talking about, I don't know, esoteric stuff. Meaning-of-life stuff. Nature-of-reality stuff. The stuff 95% of boys don't think about, let alone talk about. We were interested in the same things, it's as simple as that.
"I did end up getting into sport during my teens, as I turned out to be good at football, but Sean was what you would call weedy, and that didn't bother him. He turned into an almost stereotypical science nerd. But we kept hanging out together. I guess I was some kind of crossover kid — at home with the jocks and the nerds, and neither clique minded.
"Sean and I spent a huge amount of time talking about philosophy, about metaphysics. He always seemed fascinated by my view of the world. It turns out that my view is rather different from most people's, but I didn't know that at the time — it was just how I saw the world. It's like people who are colour blind, I guess. It takes a while, and some tests, to diagnose what they have. They don't even know they have a condition that isn't normal. How could they? They can't try out someone else's eyes for an hour or two."
I guess I must have been frowning at this point, because he smiled again and said, "Okay — it's not that easy to grasp, and I'm being cagey on purpose. Remember the conversation we had about sculpture? And the one about the tyranny of sight?"
How could I forget the tyranny of sight?
"Well, that's the crux of the whole thing. For various reasons I believe that human beings are limited by the senses they use — which boils down overwhelmingly to the sense of sight. Sure, we've been very successful using that sense, but we have no idea how liberating and revealing it would be to concentrate on another sense. Most people are fundamentally incapable of switching like that; of thinking in other terms than visual terms."
"What about blind people?"
"That's the obvious objection. That's what Sean said. But even blind people grow up in a visual world in terms of its vocabulary and its philosophy. It's so ingrained in human culture that no-one even recognises how much a visual way of interpreting the world influences that interpretation. Plato, with his shadows in the cave, Descartes with his mirror of nature, these guys couldn't help but use visual metaphors to get their points across. Even the latest books on science use visual metaphors to convey their ideas, like string theory, for example."
"Whoa, whoa…this is way too fast. Plato — okay, practically the only theory I remember about him from Philosophy 101 is the cave."
"Yes, and it was all about the real forms of things in nature, how what we call a book isn't really a book, but the shadow of a book. This is a visual metaphor. Descartes described the mind as though it was watching a screen onto which are projected images of reality — the mirror of nature. Again, a visual metaphor."
"Okay…"
"Even our logic is based upon seeing objects as discrete units."
I have to admit that at this point I was beginning to wonder if it was worth him carrying on. 'He looks cool, but he's just a nerd,' I was thinking to myself. I mean, it's after midnight, we're naked in bed together, he's supposed to be spilling the beans about whatever it is he's running away from, and now he's talking about discrete units and logic. I want to hear about deception and betrayal, love and danger. No-one runs away because of discrete units and logic.
"Uh-huh."
He smiled and I realised I'd been caught pretending to listen, so I smiled back, then buried my head under the quilt.
"It's okay," he said. "There's no need for me to go into any other details right now. Just believe me when I say that Western philosophy is based overwhelmingly on visual metaphors. Those metaphors have provided powerful tools for coping with the world, but they also blind us to other perspectives. See, even I can't help but use visual terms."
"Okay, I accept the tyranny of sight. I studied art history, so I guess that's nothing but various ways of looking at the world."
"Yes. Even in literature the overwhelming method of description is visual. But that's normal. That's a normal way of life for human beings. For some reason though I'm different."
"You mean you literally have some special way of interpreting reality? You have access to a transcendental plane?"
"Look, I know it sounds pretentious."
Yup. Sure does.
"But I don't want to go into the details right now. Please just bear with me."
'Man, what a flake', I thought to myself. 'I knew there would be something. I couldn't just be attracted to a guy who was slightly odd, but not more than that. Not like this. Not a complete fucking nutbar.'
I turned to face the ceiling. On it were flickering shadows of tree branches, making a network, a never-to-be-repeated pattern, changing from one moment to the next. Jesus! I'm starting to think like him! Bloody Plato!
"B—, you don't have access to a transcendental plane. Please don't tell me you do."
I heard him sigh. What the hell is my problem anyway? What makes me attracted to these losers? I guess it's normal for teenagers to have delusions of grandeur, especially boys, but come on! He's twenty and he's still living in the X-Files' world! Is that what this is? Some teen 'I'm the Chosen One' fantasy, played to the extreme? No wonder Spider-Man's such a hit — it's every teenage boy's dream to discover he has special powers. Just like every teenage girl's fantasy is to discover that she's really a princess who was adopted by boring, tacky people. That's just part of growing up; becoming aware of one's limitations. My eyes drifted over to the Wizard of Oz poster and I smiled. Escape. Is that what this is all about? B— escaped BC because he wanted to escape BC. No betrayal, no danger, no mystery.
"I don't then," he said. "Don't worry about it."
I was getting pissed off now. "Oh, I'm not worried about it now — I'm just pissed off that I was worried about you," I snapped. "I thought you really were in trouble."
"I am — just don't worry about the details. Let me carry on with my story."
"Whatever."
Now I think I might have been a bit harsh, but I was more frustrated with myself than him. How could I get so wrapped up (falling in love!!!) with him, when he's just like all the other losers? He waited for a good half a minute. I realised that I was lying with my arms folded, biting my lip. 'Well, he's here now,' I thought to myself. 'Might as well let him have his fun.'
"Unlike you, Sean accepted that I had a special view of the world."
Of course! Perfect teenage co-dependency!
"He helped me discover what it was all about over the course of a few years, and never told anyone about it. The problem started with Stephanie. Sean and I hardly ever discussed girls. It was almost like an unwritten rule."
'Maybe he is gay, after all,' I thought. Then I dismissed it. Even if our lovemaking was more sensual than any other man I've ever been with, it was 100% heterosexual. He carried on, with me still staring up at the shadows on the ceiling.
"One day when we were fourteen I saw him talking to this girl outside school. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I'd already had sex a few times at that point, though I never had a serious girlfriend. Girls seemed to like me, and sometimes one thing would lead to another, as they say. But Sean never ever mentioned girls to me, let alone talked to them outside school. I recognised her vaguely, but she was nothing special. Just a girl with brown hair. Sean was so into her that he didn't even notice me when I walked by. Neither did she. Next time I saw him I asked him about her, and he got all defensive and changed the subject. Gradually, over the next few weeks, I realised that they were seeing each other, but Sean still never mentioned anything to me. In fact, it was as though nothing had happened at all; we hung out and talked about all the usual stuff — the latest developments with the internet, artificial intelligence, crop circles and a hundred other subjects, except anything to do with our boring lives.
I could tell somehow that Stephanie was a big deal for him, but he didn't want to share. Not a scrap of information. Even her name and the fact that she was in the grade below us I found out by pointing her out to someone else when Sean wasn't around. I wasn't bothered by him seeing her, though. Our time together didn't suffer at all. We still hung out at lunchtimes, three or four nights a week and an afternoon at the weekend.
"You have to understand something about Sean. He is very, very possessive. About all kinds of things, which is why I enjoyed being his friend — he made me feel important because I meant such a lot to him. He knew that no-one else knew about my way of seeing the world, so he possessed it; he possessed that ability by proxy. He isn't interested in social standing, like most people. Otherwise he probably would have acted like most people who know a secret — the value of the secret only becomes real when someone else knows that you know it. That's why people divulge secrets to many different individuals, telling each one not to tell anyone. That way, they impress the greatest number of people in their social circle, because they control the flow of information.
"But Sean most definitely is not a social person. For him, the value of knowing my secret didn't reside in the power he had to spill the beans to others, but in the mere fact that he possessed it, and that no-one else did, like someone who buys a stolen masterpiece. They can never brag that they own it or they'll get caught. No, the thrill lies in knowing that they are the only ones who know."
'Boy, oh boy,' I was thinking. 'Enough, already, with the secret thing. I get it.' I decided not to say anything though.
"When I made the football team I think that changed something in our relationship. Sean just didn't like those guys. Neither did I, really, but I was good at football. Really good. And, like it or not, any teenage boy will make the most of being a football star."
Football! A bunch of fat black guys bashing into each other, while a white guy throws the ball to a skinny black guy who gets knocked down by a fat black guy. Then ads for five minutes. Repeat about fifty times over four hours and you have the excitement of football. Danny took me to see the Alouettes once at the Big O. Boring as hell. Not just that, but crap to eat, crap to drink and thousands of half-drunk idiots making…idiots of themselves. B— was sinking fast at this point.
"So suddenly I was very popular with the girls. And with the boys. Except Sean. In our senior year we hardly saw each other. I figured there was nothing especially weird about it though — by seventeen I was nothing like the shy kid I was at fourteen. The few times I did run into him, I would ask him how he was doing, and he would just say, 'fine' or shrug, then walk off. The thing was, we never asked each other how we were doing when we were close because that's not what our friendship was about; it was about escaping from our mundane lives, which is ironic now."
I turned my head to look at him and was surprised to see that his eyes were closed. He talked some more about how his friendship with Sean dwindled, while I watched his lips move. For a few seconds I felt that surge of attraction again. I didn't care what he was saying. That's my problem, see. Am I superficial in some way? Is that why I can't make a relationship last — because I only ever start them for superficial reasons? I told myself to cut him some slack — to listen attentively like a good woman should while he tells his story.
"And one day, it was the day before my eighteenth birthday, I noticed Stephanie. When I say 'noticed', I mean that I must have seen her around school a hundred times since she started going out with Sean. But I never noticed her until that day. I was in a bit of a daze — all teen-philosophical about my last day as a boy. I was sitting on a wall, looking at my hands and wondering who those hands would touch, who they would caress, who they would wave at in the future. I think I became aware of the future that day. Really aware. The Future was suddenly with me, sitting on the wall beside me. I closed my eyes and said 'Hi, Future.' I tried to figure out what it was thinking. Nothing. No clue. Now I actually think it's better that way.
"Suddenly I became aware that someone was standing there in front of me. 'Hi!' I said, and opened my eyes. There was Stephanie, smiling at me. I must have looked funny, I guess. There were a few seconds of silence before she said hi back. I think we both realised that we had a history together without hardly ever having spoken, all because of Sean.
"It was such a strange feeling. She was familiar, but it was like I was seeing her for the first time. Have you ever seen a cousin, or a second cousin or something after not having seen them since they were twelve?"
"No."
"Well, if you had, you'd probably know what I mean. I guess at that moment the Future shoved me off the wall and told me to get on with life. All I could think of was to ask her about Sean. She told me that they had broken up six months ago. Now I was out of things to say. It was a really strange feeling, this familiarity-unfamiliarity thing. The other really strange feeling was that she was the first one to really make that brain chemistry thing happen in me. The thing people call love."
Boy, what a romantic! 'That brain chemistry thing!' I knew what he meant though. That's the thing that gets me into trouble. That's why he's lying in my bed right now. His story was starting to interest me now. Then he opened his eyes and turned to look at me. My brain chemistry altered and I forgot all that crap about having special access to a transcendental channel, or whatever it was he was talking about earlier when I got pissed off with him.
He looked at me with a look so full of…I don't know — just so full. He reached out, under the covers, and slipped his hand between my elbow and my waist. He reached around to the small of my back and pulled me gently towards him. We kissed, kissed and kissed some more. Our arms and legs did whatever they felt like and then he was on top of me and then he was inside me. That brain chemistry thing is stronger than that brain logic thing which made the test appointment the other day. We must have done it for hours. At least I feel like we did today.
There was no more conversation. I guess he went as far as he could. Maybe the weirdness has been thwarted for a while…

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posted by Sara