The Sixth Wedding #4
“Did you have a fight?”
“Have you ever gotten to the point in a relationship where you’re not even sure what counts as a fight anymore?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I think Detroit and I have been fighting for a long time now. I’ve gotten so used to it that I don’t even notice.
Then, after the party...he was so triumphant, like a baby king basking in a parade that had been thrown in his honor—confirmation that he is the center of the world, as he’d always assumed.
I was upset, and he was just up . And it would be one thing if he was oblivious, if he was so high that he couldn’t see my low.
But he saw it, alright. Saw it and made fun of me for it.
Told me to lighten up, make out with some of our guests.
But this voice inside me that Detroit always drowns out.
..well, I heard it, and it was saying, I don’t want to do this.
I don’t want to do any of this right now . So for once, I didn’t.”
“That’s good. You should listen to that voice.”
“I knew you’d heard it. When you sang your song...I just had the strangest feeling, that somehow you, this person who doesn’t know me at all, managed to hear that voice inside me and treat it like it’s the best part of me. Which it might be. I don’t know.”
“It’s not as hidden as you think it is. That kindness is a very clear part of who you are.”
Skye looks away. “Stop. Please, stop.”
“Stop?”
“It’s just...some things are clearer, but others are more confusing. I—oh, never mind.”
“What?”
Skye looks at J again. “I felt more when I was kissing you last night than when I was kissing Detroit. Please don’t read too much into that—I’m trying not to. But at the end of the night, you were the person I wanted to be going home with.”
J has not anticipated this proclamation. He respects it and doesn’t want to react in any way that will make Skye feel bad. But he also doesn’t know if there’s a way he can react that will make Skye feel better.
He pauses too long. Skye shrinks back, says, “Please forget I ever said that.”
“No, no,” J says. “It’s very kind of you to say.
And if I’m being honest, I will tell you that for me it was much nicer kissing you than it was kissing Detroit, as well.
But I don’t think it’s really me you wanted to go home with.
I think maybe it was the song. And the way you saw yourself in the song. ”
Skye smiles. “Sure, it was the song. But I think it was at least a little bit you.”
“I’m flattered, really. It’s just—”
“It’s okay. Please, let’s just leave it there. I shouldn’t have said anything, because I don’t want you to think I’m expecting anything in return. I’m not. Honestly. This really isn’t about you and me. It’s about me and Detroit.”
A little relieved, J asks, “What will you do?”
“I think I’ll leave him. Not tomorrow. Not the next day.
But soon. Which is many things: scary, heartbreaking, necessary, probably inevitable.
Most of all, it’s disappointing.” Skye doesn’t try to hide their sadness, in a way J admires.
“I really wanted to live without labels, to have a relationship where things didn’t need to be defined.
Philosophically, I believe in that. But when it comes to my heart?
I’m not sure I can subsist on a casual kind of love.
I don’t need it to be formal, either. But I need to know what it is, and I need to know that it understands who I am and what I need.
I don’t think that’s what Detroit wants.
I think Detroit wants to enjoy himself, and I think he loves me most when I’m enjoyable to him.
I was okay with that, because if that was his definition of affection, that meant he did, in fact, feel affection for me.
I let my own definition get erased. I didn’t even know I was doing it. But now I see I was.”
“I wonder if that’s part of my problem with V,” J says. “Or if she believes that’s part of the problem.”
Skye looks thoughtful for a moment, then asks, “Do you think it’s possible to have a relationship without defining it?”
J wants to dismiss this as a young person’s question; Skye is, indeed, a young person, and the way they’re asking the question, it’s like they actually believe there can be a decisive answer. It’s this decisiveness they desire.
J says, “Maybe it is possible for other people to have a relationship without defining it—who knows? But I don’t think it’s possible for me.
Or, perhaps, for you. I think relationships are about definitions, and about constantly talking over and revising and questioning and navigating those definitions.
They have to be. Because the words that relationships are based on never have inherent definitions.
You and the other person have to define them for yourselves. ”
“How so?”
“What does love mean? What does trust mean? Friendship ? Companionship ? Desire ? These are all too vast for us to pin down in a word or a sentence or a paragraph. They require a constant conversation, and that’s what a relationship is—that constant conversation.
It can be arduous and cruel and confusing.
But when it works, you hear yourself better than you ever have before.
You learn more and more about the complex definitions of all these things, like love and trust, even as you understand you will never be able to articulate them fully. ”
“I think I’m having more of a conversation with you, right now, than I’ve had with Detroit in months. Maybe ever.”
“But isn’t that part of it, too?” J wonders aloud.
“The constant conversation isn’t something you can have with only one other person.
You need to have it with lots of people, to varying degrees.
You need to learn things outside the relationship in order to learn things inside the relationship.
Random encounters like ours are part of the conversation.
Songs can be part of the conversation. Movies.
A line of poetry that says something you’ve always known but never knew how to say. ”
“Even that tree could be part of the conversation.”
“No, I’m not that zen. Fuck that tree. It doesn’t talk. It only gives us some shade so we can have our conversation.”
“Got it. But, yes, here’s to random encounters that lead to conversations that might end up changing your life.”
“I’d drink to that, only I don’t have anything to drink.”
“How ’bout we blink to that?” Skye suggests.
“Blink?”
“Yeah. Let’s make that a thing. I’ll blink to that!”
“Okay. I’ll blink to that.”
They look into each other’s eyes. They blink a few times, at long intervals. There is a concentration to it, a focus that everyday interaction rarely allows anymore. J sees creases and marks on Skye’s face that he hadn’t noticed before, and he is sure Skye sees the same in him.
Blink.
(Breath.)
Blink.
(Breath.)
Blink.
“That was strangely intense,” Skye says.
“It was,” J agrees.
“I liked it.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s much more direct than drinking.”
“I think that’s why I liked it.”
J knows that V would like it, too. Celebrating not by raising a glass but by recognizing the other person for a collection of silent seconds.
“How long are you in the city?” Skye asks.
“Well, I have this other wedding now,” J answers, then explains the history.
“It’s interesting, what you do,” Skye says when he’s done.
“How so?”
“Well, you use your songs to connect to people. And then you have to figure out what to do with those connections.”
“It’s different. The song I wrote for you was about you. The song I wrote for her was about calling someone on a payphone.”
“But that’s the tricky part, isn’t it? Once you connect with a person, you only have so much control over how long it lasts, and in what way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to get all zen on you, but I just think that once you connect with someone, it makes an imprint, and that imprint is always there.
You might not notice it. You might forget about it.
But it’s there. And there’s always a possibility the connection will continue, even if you think it’s over.
Like, you hook up with someone and assume it’s just a one-night thing.
Maybe two years later, you bump into each other and it happens again.
Or you bump into each other and it’s awkward and he doesn’t even acknowledge you when he sees you on the subway platform.
Either way, that imprint surfaces. Same with exes.
Same with people who’ve passed. Any reminder can cause a reconnection.
I like that about being human. I like that we feel our lives have this one storyline, but there are all these tiny subplots—microplots—that we carry, never knowing when they’ll connect, and if they connect, what they’ll spark.
You say your girlfriend thinks that being with you will only take her backwards? ”
“Yes, that’s what she told me.”
“Well, tell her that’s not possible. Time doesn’t work that way. There is no backwards. There’s not even an over.”
“But you’re about to end things with Detroit, aren’t you?”
“I am. And I’m sure that the end will be messy, and hardly an end, only he will be mostly in the past, because I won’t spend any of my present with him.
Not anymore. But that’s not going on with you and her, is it?
You’re still here. She’s still here. You’re in the present, waist-deep in the constant conversation. ”
Yes, J thinks, but what if, after all the talking, their definitions are still unreconciled?
He knows the answer: He will go home alone. He will lose the connection. He will try to make a new start.
He doesn’t want that. He is sure he doesn’t want that.