WHAT DID THEY TALK ABOUT
Erin never expressed any of this to Zach. She never turned to him in the middle of one of his jazz rages, and said, “Excuse me, but I have no idea who I am.” She did not tell the brontosaurus slugging back his shot and a beer on the barstool beside her, “I am standing on the edge of an abyss that goes to the center of the earth.” Troubled introspection didn’t seem to be in the rulebook of their particular game.
This actually was a bit of a relief.
She could have turned to her old boyfriend Charles in the middle of a crowded sidewalk and confessed, out of nowhere, “I am completely having an existential crisis right now”, and he would not have blinked an eye. He would have sat her down on a bench and grilled her, pushing her to go deeper, asked her questions, listening carefully. He would have quoted The Little Prince, maybe, or Pablo Neruda.
Compare to the Erin/Big Z dynamic:
The two of them wrapped up in a fleece blanket. Naked. Eating Pringles. Watching “Nature Planet”. “Nature Planet” was always on at 3 or 4 a.m., which was Zach and Erin’s prime-time.
For the most part, even with Erin’s ever-vigilant subtext antennae, there weren’t too many swirling archaeological layers of worry and tortured insecurity between she and Z. What was going on was what was actually going on. Erin wasn’t huddled up in the fleece, thinking frantically, “I wonder how long this will last. Does he like having sex with me? I wonder how he really feels about me.” And she knew in her heart that Zach wasn’t sitting beside her, stomach in knots, thinking, “Do I please her? Did she like that?” Or “Shit, this is getting too serious … how can I let her down without hurting her feelings?”
No.
The surface of the pond was smooth, the water clear, you could see the sand at the bottom.
They did not speak, they did not analyze their relationship. They never said the words “I felt …”
They had sex, and then they sat wrapped up together in a blanket, eating potato chips, and watching a show about sharks.
Zach turned to her after half an hour of silence and stated, “I don’t like these barbecue-flavored Pringles.”
Ten more minutes of silence passed. Eating. Watching the sharks slice through the blue deep.
Then, from Zach: “It’s like: why screw with something that is already perfect? The original Pringles are perfect. You don’t need to expand into sour cream and onion, or ranch, or barbecue. Stick with what you know.”
Erin nodded silently and reached for one more of the scorned chips. Naked. Her glasses reflecting the flickering TV light in the dark room.
Fifteen more minutes of silence.
Then Erin said, chomping on a Pringle, eyes glued to the TV, “Would you be scared to go down in a shark cage?”
Zach replied, “I will never wear a scuba suit.”
This seemed like an adequate answer. Erin nodded understandingly.
Twenty minutes later, they turned the TV off, curled up together under the covers like puppies in a basket, and slept for ten hours.
And that was it.
Who needs to know where someone grew up or what college he went to when the conversations you share have such vibrancy and intimacy as that?
