Part 5: The Answer
Words are very important to me. I earnestly believe in their power to inform, entertain and enlighten. A kind word can brighten our moods, and an unkind one can hurt us more than we’d like to admit. They provide insight into our psyche in ways that we don’t fully appreciate, or at least I think so. There are so many words, so many synonyms, so many varying shades of meaning, that I think it means something when a person describes an uncomfortable bed as “firm” instead of “hard.” I mentioned earlier that I don’ think the word “sexy” can be used platonically, and that’s because of what the word sexy means, not the intentions behind it. I choose my words carefully. I practice my sentences in my mind before I say them, and after I say them I repeat them in my mind again to look for ways to improve them. That kind of thing is fun to me. I assume that people say exactly what they mean, whether they meant to or not. Words are too powerful to throw around without thought or consideration.
At the same time, I’m not a word snob. I do appreciate sophistication in language, but if there’s a simple way to say something, I think that’s the best way. I don’t care if someone responds to the question, “How are you today?” with “I’m good” instead of the grammatically correct “I’m well.” I don’t think it’s important at all to know what the past participle is to be a good writer. The important stuff isn’t in the details, it’s in the meaning. The rules of language only matter insofar as they make meaning possible. Language evolves and changes; the verb “Google” didn’t even exist fifteen years ago, and now it’s an important part of our everyday lives. Language is going through another major evolution now, as internet and texting shorthand move out into the general way that we speak and write. Some people are appalled by LOL and WTF becoming “real” words, and I don’t understand why. We don’t say thou or thine anymore. Language changes.
When someone speaks, then, I pay attention. I don’t often remember what a person was wearing or what they were doing, but I always remember what they say. People say that actions speak louder than words, but I disagree. Words are action in themselves. When one’s actions don’t match their words, it is not true that their actions have trumped their words, but that one action has trumped another. We often reveal our desires through our words, but meet our obligations through our actions.
That’s the other power of words. They allow us to fantasize about our world. We know that we’re not actually going to quit our job, or punch the person in the drive-thru, or buy that expensive item. By saying it, we can experience the liberation of quitting a job without suffering the consequences. For that one moment, we get what we want. That moment is important, because the rest of the time, we almost never get what we want.
***
Before I knew it, it was December. Athena and I had been talking non-stop for four months, but the time was coming for us to take a break from each other. Her family was coming for a visit in mid-December and would be staying for about a month. That included her sister and her family, her grandparents, and Michael, the guy from Greece. She’d be too busy being the good host to hang out, and I figured it would be a good time for me to patch things up with my ex-wife, who I still wasn’t talking to beyond what was absolutely necessary. As much as I enjoyed talking to Athena, I knew a month wasn’t that long. She’d already invited me to attend a friend’s wedding with her next April, and we were making tentative plans to go an anime convention the next summer. I was comfortable with the fact that we were friends, but there was something that was bugging me. I liked her a lot, but I never made a move because I didn’t want to force anything. So why hadn’t she ever made a move on me? The only way to find out was to ask.
For the record, I think that men and women can be friends, but that no matter what, sex always creeps in. Not necessarily the act, but at least the thought, and good friendships aren’t ones that avoid that pitfall all together, but ones that navigate around it effectively. Some people can have sex and remain friends, and some people can’t, but either way it has to be dealt with. Deep down, I know I’m one of those people who can’t have sex and remain friends. My emotions get too caught up in the act, and I’d want more than just friendship afterwards. That was another reason I never made a move. When it became clear that a relationship wasn’t in the cards, I decided that I didn’t want to jerk my own feelings around (no pun intended) for what would have been an awesome but temporary experience. Had Athena made the same calculation?
“Let me ask you a question. You’ve been in my apartment many times for many hours, and there’s never any sexual tension. Why is that?”
“There’s always sexual tension,” she said. That was a real surprise to me, because I honestly didn’t feel any. In the beginning it was definitely there, but I’d put the idea out of my head, so I’d stopped noticing it. “I’ve thought about having sex with you, but I don’t want to ruin our friendship.” I was actually glad to hear that, because it meant that I’d made the right decision in not forcing the issue. Whatever her reason was, she’d decided that she didn’t want to go down that road, and I was very happy that I hadn’t tried to make her.
Yet that wasn’t exactly the truth. Athena had told me before about how her ex-boyfriend had given her a lot of grief for remaining friends with other guys she’d dated. And in reality, Athena and I were essentially dating minus any physical intimacy. I suspected that there was less concern about the effect on the relationship between us, and more about how her next boyfriend would respond to me if he knew that we’d slept together. Which was a legitimate concern, but why was that something to be worried about now? Yeah, Michael was coming to America, but that was only for a month. Was that who she was worried about?
That conversation happened two days before Athena’s family arrived. I wasn’t going to see her for a month, but I wasn’t worried. Once the holidays were over, things would pick up where we left off.
I haven’t seen her since.
***
You may or may not know this, but I live in Hartford, Connecticut. It’s a small city, with less than 120,000 people (in fact, despite being the capital of my state, it’s only the third largest city). Our residents often bemoan the fact that we’re caught essentially halfway between New York City and Boston. It’s great to be able to visit both cities, but they claim it makes it difficult to grow Hartford with those two behemoths sucking all of the oxygen out of the Northeast. It’s true that we’ll never be able to offer the kinds of experiences that NYC and Boston can, but the reasons that contribute to Hartford’s stagnation have little to do with those cities. Our downtown has restaurants and bars, and nothing else. No grocery stores, no bookstores, no affordable clothing stores, no hipster destinations, no concert venue, nothing. Nothing that would actually encourage people to stick around after work and hang out in the city, so they all flee back to the suburbs. As such, the city essentially shuts down at 9:00 PM. If you’re not clubbing or drinking, there’s nothing to do. Developers continue to build luxury housing in downtown, but who wants to live there?
When something new or interesting does open, I try to do my best to support it. Things won’t change in my city unless we can keep those few fledgling businesses open. Last year, a store called the House of Fragrance opened. They sell bath accessories, scented soaps, perfume, you know, girl stuff. It’s not the kind of store I usually shop in, but it’s one of the most unique locations in my city, and fortunately for them, I happened to know not one, but two women who loved stuff like that.
I bought two scented soap gift boxes, one as a peace offering to my ex-wife, and one for Athena. I don’t usually buy Christmas presents, and I don’t usually receive them. I tend to think that gift-giving is an unnecessary expense, since I’d rather spend time with someone I appreciate, and that’s free. Still, no one became popular by being cheap, and every once in a while it’s nice to buy something for your friends. I exchanged gifts with my ex-wife on Christmas Eve; she got me an Axe gift set (Axe isn’t really my thing, but the deodorant wasn’t bad). I figured I’d wait until Athena contacted me, since she was busy with her family. So I waited. Christmas Day came, and she sent me a message wishing me and my son a Merry Christmas, but she said she was too busy to get away to pick up her gift. No problem. Her birthday was in mid-January, so I would just save it until then.
I was getting ready to go to work on the morning of January 2nd, and before I left the house I went through my usual routine. I checked my email and my Facebook, and saw an announcement scroll by in the ticker: “Athena ****** is engaged to Michael ***********.”
You could say that my ex-wife and I had a shotgun wedding, although that term is less than accurate. No one actually forced us to get married, but our decision was heavily influenced by the fact that my ex-wife was pregnant. It was important for both of us that our son was born to married parents. So eight months after we met, we were engaged, and we were married a month later. Was it a mistake? Yeah. But it was OUR mistake. No one forced us into it. No one even said, “You should get married.” We came to that conclusion on our own, with the best intentions. Most importantly though, we loved each other. At the moment I said my vows, I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life, and she with me. It didn’t work out that way, but there was nothing cynical, opportunistic or coerced about our initial decision.
When I read that update on my Facebook, I literally felt sick to my stomach, because I knew that wasn’t the case for her. We’d talked too often about the pressures her parents constantly put on her. I’d seen her cry about it too many times. In those four months, and she’d talked about her ex-boyfriend more times than she’d talked about Michael. When she talked about her ex, I could hear the passion in her voice, the pain she felt at the way it had turned out. She’d loved him, and she often expressed regret that it hadn’t worked. When she talked about Michael, she sounded clinical, the way someone sounds when they describe someone who isn’t bad necessarily, but doesn’t illicit any strong feelings either way. This was wrong. It looked almost like an arranged marriage.
How had a one-month visit turned into an engagement? How had three weeks together become a marriage proposal? Once the initial shock wore off, I realized it had happened quite easily. Athena’s parents ruled her life. She lived with them, and she worked with them. She’d told me that she spoke Greek so often that she sometimes forgot English words. Add to that her grandparents, her
married sister, a nice Greek boy and the holiday season, and you have a pressure cooker of expectations. After all, it wasn’t as if Athena was inviting Michael to stay with her, it was her parents who were inviting him to stay with her. It was their house.
The whole thing bothered me, to put it mildly. Most obviously, I still had feelings for Athena, and I knew she had them for me. My ex-wife had actually put it best to me in a conversation in December. “You don’t spend the kind of time she spends with you unless you like the person,” she’d said. I knew that, but hearing someone else say it confirmed that I wasn’t imagining things. But let’s face the facts: I am not Greek and I have a son. There’s no way Athena’s parents would have gone for that. And ultimately, they were the ones who were making the decision. I’ve said earlier that I hate to lose. In this case, I lost because the deck was stacked before I sat at the table. Athena had made a choice, because you know what? You DON’T talk to someone everyday if you don’t have feelings for them. It didn’t matter though, because Athena’s parents had basically already decided who she was going to marry.
And that actually bothered me more. If Athena and I had gotten together, maybe we would have worked out, maybe not, who knows. But I’m an American, and she’s an American, and one of the most fundamental aspects of our understanding of the world is choice. We choose our leaders, we choose the schools we attend, we choose the people we love. It’s unfathomable to me that someone else can decide who you will spend the rest of your life with. This isn’t a rant against arranged marriage; if you think that your parents will do a good job picking your spouse, then go for it. But you should be able to say, “I want you to pick my spouse;” there should be some kind of cultural or social backdrop to it. Neither of these were the case for Athena. It was simply the exertion of power over her. The marriage itself may not have been arranged in the way that word is typically understood, but coercion and the restriction of privileges accomplish the same end of controlling someone else’s life choices. Ostensibly, Athena works with her parents, but in reality she works for them. Being a co-owner of their business is just a way to lock her into the job with name equity. Choosing her husband is another bar in that jail cell.
Lastly, it offended me as a parent. It’s my job to raise my son, to teach him right from wrong, to make him into a decent person, and to prepare him to live in the world on his own someday. For now, that means strictly controlling his life: telling him what he can and can’t eat, what he can and can’t watch, when to go to bed, who to play with, everything. I control him because he cannot make the correct decisions for himself, and I try to do the right thing by him so that when the time comes, he will be able to make correct decisions for himself. And that time will come. Someday, he will be responsible for his own actions and decisions. He won’t always make the right choices, but as long as he considers the correct option before he ignores it, then I’ll consider the job I’ve done raising him to be a success. Children are people too, and my son has likes and tendencies that have nothing to do with how I raise him. I can only teach him and hope that he makes good decisions.
When he’s old enough though, his life becomes his own. My son may become an engineer someday, or he may become a serial killer. That will be his choice though, not mine. I will offer guidance and support, but once he’s 18, he will be free to do whatever he wishes. Letting go of your child is hard, but it’s something that you must do if you truly value them, because they deserve the right to live their own life. It angers me to think that Athena’s parents disagree with this philosophy. It may be because they’re Greek, or because they’re older, or whatever. Athena is an American raised in the late 20th/early 21st century, like me. We have certain ideas. I know that Americans tend to think that we’re right about everything, but if you live here, then what’s wrong with thinking and behaving like an American?
For Athena’s part, I find this all personally baffling. There is no way I’d let my parents make any long-term decisions about my life at my age. I don’t respect my parents at all. I like my father, but I can’t help but to look at him as more of a friend than a parent. And I don’t even like my mother. These people have absolutely zero authority over me, and little influence. I can’t understand why Athena gives a damn about what her parents think, but she very clearly does.
Would I say all of this to Athena? There are some things that, no matter how strongly you feel them, you still shouldn’t say. “Your marriage is doomed” may or may not be one of them. It’s one of those things that either sounds jealous and spiteful, or the person you say it to won't listen anyway. I know that if someone had told me that my marriage was destined to fail, I would have shrugged them off, even though they were right. No one did though, and that was what made me decide to tell Athena what I thought. I wouldn’t have listened to anyone who tried to warn me, but in retrospect, I sure as hell would have appreciated it.
I sent Athena a bunch of text messages (for lack of a better way to communicate) explaining my basic argument: that she was only doing this to please her parents and get away from them, that they were trapping her in what they thought would be the best life for her instead of what she wanted, that she was being coerced into it, and that no marriage conceived under such circumstances would survive. I told her that she was hurtling towards an eventual divorce, and that divorce sucks more than she could imagine.
She replied to thank me for my concern, and told me that while I was right to an extent, that she would learn from the mistakes that she’d seen others make and work to make her marriage work. She said that she wanted to talk about this more, but that texting wasn’t the proper way to do so, and that we’d talk about it the next time she saw me. Around the time of her engagement, her family’s business tripled its production, and she’s been working twelve hour days, six days a week since.
For the first time, I was at a loss for words. She openly acknowledged that my conclusions were correct, yet she was still going through with the marriage. Why? I couldn’t understand it. I never really got a chance to ask, either. January became February, then March, then April, and we didn’t talk. In April, I saw another update in my Facebook feed: “Athena ****** is married to Michael ***********.” I just shook my head.
***
My ex-wife had a friend named Raymond. They’d known each other for years, and while Raymond had feelings for her, my ex-wife always rejected them and they stayed friends. When our son was born, she asked if Raymond could come over to meet him. I said sure. From the moment he walked into the house until he left, I could tell he still had feelings for her. He acted like I wasn’t even in the room, bringing up the “good old days” before my ex-wife got married. It never bothered me that my ex-wife had male friends, just like it didn’t bother her that I had female friends. What bothered me was how obvious Raymond made his intentions, even with me being right there. It was a disrespectful thing to do, and I’ve disliked him ever since. It should come as no surprise that after she divorced me, Raymond tried to get together with my ex-wife again, and she shot him down again.
I had this experience in mind when I decided to finally mail Athena’s Christmas present to her. It was April, and between working like a slave and being married, she hadn’t found the time to come and pick it up, so I figured I’d make it a little easier for her. I added a letter to the gift, telling her congratulations on her marriage and apologizing for the tone I’d taken during our last conversation. I also told her that I was going to back off. She was a married woman now, and since I still had feelings for her, it would be inappropriate for me to call or text her. I dropped the box off at the post office, and sighed. That was that.
Or so I thought. As a testament to the insane hours she worked, she didn’t even have a chance to pick up her gift from the post office until June. That’s when I got the message that started this little tale:
hey Jamil, I want to thank you for the gift and the note
hope all is well, miss you how's Gab?
I told her I missed her too, a lot. We chatted for about a minute or so, and then she had to go. I don’t really get it. My decision to not contact her was made out of respect. I don’t respect her marriage, but I do still respect her, and she takes her marriage seriously even if I don’t. So I understand writing to me to say thank you, but I don’t understand telling me you miss me. Maybe I’m just overthinking again. There’s no secret message or hidden agenda behind the words “miss you.” I guess I take those words as an invitation to reconnect, but she’s still married. As long as that’s the case, then I’m not in any rush to blow up her cell phone or Facebook page.
***
I’ve written quite a bit here, but I still haven’t actually dealt with the title of this piece. Do I love her? I’m always reluctant to use that word. I think that when we overuse words, we drain them of their potency and force, and “love” is one of the most overused words in the English language (so is “beautiful,” and if you look, I haven’t used that word a single time until now. It’s so overused as to basically be meaningless). Love can be used in the platonic sense, but if I were to use the word now, it wouldn’t be in that way. So do I? Well, last Thursday I was messing around on the computer, and my Facebook Messenger pops up. It’s Athena. She was traveling on the road, and decided to see what I was up to. We talked for about an hour, the way we used to last year, making dumb jokes and the like. I didn’t realize how much I missed talking to her until I was doing it again, and I felt genuinely happy to be doing it.
Maybe I loved her? Maybe I still do.
