that hour, heroes with morals and firm ideas about how to live them. Don’t you ever feel nostalgic for a simpler, unsullied world? With her jaw tensed that way, it wasn’t hard to imagine that Helen could spend the whole night awake, grinding the accumulated contempt between her molars until it turned to resentful dust.
“I don’t want to see them again, John. I don’t ever want to see those people again.”
If Helen’s ears had been open and her mind receptive, I would have told her the secret of polite society in Madrid and Barcelona, in Montana and among the Tuareg, who aren’t exactly known for their refinement: let the words slide right over you. Whatever they say, words are not knives, and they can wound you only if you go around with your chest bared, if you lower your guard, if you allow it. You have to disconnect, the way mushrooms spend their entire existence releasing spores, or sea horses devote their lives to swimming vertically. Get four people together in a house, at a restaurant, in a bar, and right away they’ll unleash their verbal poison. They don’t mean to hurt, they don’t even realize they’re doing it—they’re marking their territory, and they can’t help it. I’m sure you and your brother could recommend some author who’s written about this, but you’ll see it happening at any party, in every house, if you know how to look: people situate and redefine their insecurities in full view of everyone. You can’t hold it against them: once they stop measuring themselves against you and their position is clarified—once they confirm they’re sufficiently superior or inferior to you that they don’t have to compete—those same hateful people will do anything; you’ll find them jumping rope, yanking off their own ears, acting the fool to favor you and put themselves in a friendlier light.
Meanwhile, you’ll find dozens of volunteers willing to cut you down until you fit in a little box where they can mentally manipulate you, where your ambition, your initiative, your desires, your youth, the fire that drives you toward pleasure, her golden mane of glossy hair, her accent, her appetite to give her love to people who will let themselves be loved—where everything ends up dissolved in a neutral liquid. Just so they won’t be overshadowed, so they won’t be bothered, so they don’t have to explain (again!) what the hell they do with lives like theirs. They search for some ulterior motive for every glimmer of affection, they don’t rest until they find the immoral root of the most modest achievement; for once I barely even need to exaggerate. Simply, they were not going to tolerate some girl with wide hips (I tended to see them as powerful) who thought that life’s problems could be resolved by making her man happy baking cakes and then climbing into bed to combine naked skin with the tactile pleasures of satin. To them, tolerating that kind of racy innocence would be like letting a stranger spit thickly in their faces, and they weren’t going to let that happen. They did not let that happen.
But Helen didn’t want to listen or to learn. You’re too intelligent and refined to get involved in a social tug of war; you enjoy being mysterious, a fog of words. Helen was too direct and simple to stop them from dragging her through the mud, always with a smile on their lips—her performance didn’t allow for subtleties.
I gave her the short version:
“We’re too alive for them. They hold it against us.”
“And I want to meet your family. I’ve told you that. Les conocerés .”
That phrase (which she uttered parading around the Turret in some kind of poncho) isn’t a grammatical lapse, just what happens when I stop simultaneously translating the oddities of Helen’s Spanish into normal language.
My strategy consisted of letting days pass as if none of it had anything to do with me, like I was listening to rain fall. The contemplative life (which a philistine could
“I don’t want to see them again, John. I don’t ever want to see those people again.”
If Helen’s ears had been open and her mind receptive, I would have told her the secret of polite society in Madrid and Barcelona, in Montana and among the Tuareg, who aren’t exactly known for their refinement: let the words slide right over you. Whatever they say, words are not knives, and they can wound you only if you go around with your chest bared, if you lower your guard, if you allow it. You have to disconnect, the way mushrooms spend their entire existence releasing spores, or sea horses devote their lives to swimming vertically. Get four people together in a house, at a restaurant, in a bar, and right away they’ll unleash their verbal poison. They don’t mean to hurt, they don’t even realize they’re doing it—they’re marking their territory, and they can’t help it. I’m sure you and your brother could recommend some author who’s written about this, but you’ll see it happening at any party, in every house, if you know how to look: people situate and redefine their insecurities in full view of everyone. You can’t hold it against them: once they stop measuring themselves against you and their position is clarified—once they confirm they’re sufficiently superior or inferior to you that they don’t have to compete—those same hateful people will do anything; you’ll find them jumping rope, yanking off their own ears, acting the fool to favor you and put themselves in a friendlier light.
Meanwhile, you’ll find dozens of volunteers willing to cut you down until you fit in a little box where they can mentally manipulate you, where your ambition, your initiative, your desires, your youth, the fire that drives you toward pleasure, her golden mane of glossy hair, her accent, her appetite to give her love to people who will let themselves be loved—where everything ends up dissolved in a neutral liquid. Just so they won’t be overshadowed, so they won’t be bothered, so they don’t have to explain (again!) what the hell they do with lives like theirs. They search for some ulterior motive for every glimmer of affection, they don’t rest until they find the immoral root of the most modest achievement; for once I barely even need to exaggerate. Simply, they were not going to tolerate some girl with wide hips (I tended to see them as powerful) who thought that life’s problems could be resolved by making her man happy baking cakes and then climbing into bed to combine naked skin with the tactile pleasures of satin. To them, tolerating that kind of racy innocence would be like letting a stranger spit thickly in their faces, and they weren’t going to let that happen. They did not let that happen.
But Helen didn’t want to listen or to learn. You’re too intelligent and refined to get involved in a social tug of war; you enjoy being mysterious, a fog of words. Helen was too direct and simple to stop them from dragging her through the mud, always with a smile on their lips—her performance didn’t allow for subtleties.
I gave her the short version:
“We’re too alive for them. They hold it against us.”
“And I want to meet your family. I’ve told you that. Les conocerés .”
That phrase (which she uttered parading around the Turret in some kind of poncho) isn’t a grammatical lapse, just what happens when I stop simultaneously translating the oddities of Helen’s Spanish into normal language.
My strategy consisted of letting days pass as if none of it had anything to do with me, like I was listening to rain fall. The contemplative life (which a philistine could
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