Click

The part of a relationship -- with a person, a city, a job, whatever -- that no one admits to longing for is the beginning of the end: the moment when the whole contraption shifts & re-forms itself into something that is mildly annoying, at best, & certainly no longer important.  Listen carefully & you can hear the pieces slide into their new places, & the clicking gets faster & more satisfying, like the end of a puzzle.

Of course some relationships never come to this.  I have never stopped loving any dog, for example, or a few human beings, or certain buildings, or the smell of kerosene.  The click comes with the bad ones, the ones that were a mistake to start with & have become parasitic.


Many years ago, when I was still in my teens, I met the Love of My Life ("LML") & dropped out of college to devote myself properly to such magnificence.  I took a minimum-wage job, found us a dilapidated apartment & paid the rent every month.  I bought the food & cooked it (geniuses who are on full scholarship from NASA cannot be expected to cook) & did what cleaning got done, which was not much, as in order to afford the apartment & the food & the occasional treat, I worked six days per week.  The LML, who was also Creative & High-Minded, insisted on classical music only, & trips to watch ballet companies rehearse, & sometimes the opportunity was provided for me to admire the LML's very own Creativity.

Let me just say this about that. Never encourage Creativity out of affection & the misplaced urge to be supportive. Otherwise, you will hear the horrid words: "I want you to be really honest when you read this" (in the worst case, the next sentence is "I'm planning a trilogy") [substitute "see/watch/listen to" as the situation warrants]. You cannot be honest (except for those rare times when the person is talented). And however much you praise the Creative output, & however little that praise is deserved, more will be demanded.  It is very bad for the complexion to keep your face frozen in fascination while desperately trying to avoid screaming "THIS IS UTTER CRAP."

Those evenings when, with a look of smarmy guilt that must have been meant as charming & puppyish, the LML confessed to bouncing a check again, did make me wonder how someone who was smart enough to be chosen by NASA could be so stupid about balancing a checkbook.  But I came up with the cash b/c, after all, you take the good with the bad, tolerance is the greatest virtue, love suffers all, material things are nothing to the High-Minded, & we must sacrifice.  Curiously enough, the sacrificing seemed to be all on one side, but that was just evidence of how amazing the LML must be.  And I got up & went to my shitty job & came home & baked bread & scrubbed out pans.  One weekend, I bargained for a good carpet remnant, had its edges bound, & hauled it home on my shoulder (about a half mile) so as not to burden the LML.

I was very proud of all this devoted service: I was Martha & Mary both, & a bunch of ecstatic martyrs too.

One evening, the LML announced that we were to receive the tremendous favor of a visit from a professor: not just any professor, but the one whose poetry seminars were standing room only & who had a sort of salon for favored students & who lived only for the beauty of the language.  In preparation, I got hold of one of the professor's books -- talk about a slim volume -- & was unimpressed, which proved I was insufficiently High-Minded.

Also in preparation, I bought a chicken (I did not eat meat) to roast, & various other ingredients for the best dishes I knew how to make, & even some decent wine.  (I was underage -- 18 or 19 -- but looked so much older by then that no one ever carded me.)  Another friend who had been staying with us for a bit -- staying, not paying, of course -- kept the LML entertained while I cooked & cooked & cooked.  The friend & the LML were both veterans of the poetry seminars, which must be why such sensitive souls were unable to tidy up or chip in or help with the food.

The professor arrived empty-handed (manners are so bourgeois) & started on the wine. Presently there was quite a lot of conversation in the main room, but it was quiet in the kitchen, where I was slicing up vegetables & the odd finger. The chicken was delicious, judging by how they ate, & so was the salad, & so was whatever else I had made, right through to dessert -- I have managed to forget that particular menu.

Fortunately I had some wine myself to keep me company, because for the hours our party lasted, no one spoke to me except to ask for more cake or wine or gravy, & somehow there was never a place for me to sit down, or a chance for that matter.  Towards the end, I was in the kitchen doing the dishes & drinking & hearing all the pretentious babbling from the other room, & then behind their noise I heard the first click.

A few months later, our upstairs neighbor, lowbrow as could be, took to playing some rock anthem over & over & over.  This made the LML extremely cross: what kind of person plays the same thing six times in a row, & how could anyone listen to it even once?  I wish I had told the neighbor, if not the LML, how much I enjoyed it; it went so well with the clicking.  It sounded like freedom, or at least a life where I need never again deal with Creativity or someone else's bank account (that took a while longer; slow learner, admittedly).

And when the LML managed somehow to lose the NASA job that was supposed to go with the scholarship, & thought it was better that way, since someone so Creative should not be forced into anything structured -- click click click. The LML wasn't willing to take any everyday sort of job, either, & thought that I would enjoy another few years as a clerk in an office supplies store, though perhaps I should get a second job so that we could afford the symphony this year.  "You don't mind it the way I do, & you can always finish your degree later."

That might have been the last straw, except that I'd known I would go since that first click; perhaps it was the last panel of the new structure falling into place.

Falling in love with the LML was quite often painful.  Falling back out was delightful.

(Just in case this sounds like a rant on how men exploit women, I should mention that everyone concerned was female.  That was another good lesson: women can be as exploitative as men, high-minded nerds can be disgustingly incompetent & whiny, & never waste good wine on faculty members, who will drink anything provided they have not had to pay.)