As I mentioned, I went out for drinks and conversation (a marathon-long conversation) this week with an old flame, whom I will refer to as M. We met up at an Irish pub in Manhattan, near where he was teaching a class. I haven’t seen him in a year, and it has been a very busy year for both of us, so we had much to discuss.
He and I were never an introspective couple. By that I mean, we never sat around with one another saying, “So … remember when we first met?” or “Here’s what I remember from that night we had at blah-blah-blah…” “Oh really? Well, how I remember it all happening was like this … ”
My friend Ann Marie calls it “the re-hashing gene”. The need to re-live things, to share memories … even a mere five minutes after an event. He and I, as a pair, did not have the re-hashing gene. We had a very in-the-moment kind of pairing.
But anyway: the “re-hashing gene” suddenly reared its beautiful head between us this week.
The inception of he and I together was so long ago, 12 years ago or something like that, but we began to talk about it, sharing memories, funny stories … “Oh, so what I remember from that time is …” It was fascinating, to re-hash events that happened so long ago, to pull them back up to the forefront and see them in front of us, with vividness … We realized how out-of-sync we actually were back then, in our perceptions of what was going on, and we also realized what a miracle it is that we actually are still friends (and occasional makeout partners – G-rated version) today, judging from our radically different interpretations. We were so young when we first met.
We discussed the “first summer”. An insane and chaotic time when he and I met, and got to know each other, and began hanging out. The stories are incredibly amusing, and fascinate me to this day. We were clearly lunatics. Making up our own rules.
Here’s something I remember, and one of the things I shared with him (he had no memory of this whatsoever):
He and I met one summer. We liked each other. We exchanged phone numbers. We went out one night and played pool or something like that. I can’t even remember. But I do remember that it was riotously fun. We laughed a lot. We rolled around in my bed afterwards. And then … tragically … he did not call me the next day. Or the following day. I can’t remember how long it was but it felt like half a millennium to me. It was awful. I was rehearsing a show, and this was pre-cell phone days, so on my breaks I would walk down the street to the nearest pay phone and call home to check my messages. A terrible ritual. As the days wore on (even if it was only five days!), it slowly began to dawn on me, horribly: Oh no. Oh no. He’s not calling!
It sucked. So eventually I called him and left a message, trying to make a joke out of it, but feeling like the ultimate loser: “Uh … hi … I wonder if I did something wrong … or if something has happened … because you’re not calling me, and I thought we had fun.” Oh, it was a low moment. It makes me cringe to even think of it. LOSER!
So he receives this message, and calls me back, leaving a message on my answering machine. A message that caused ice water to flood my veins.
Here is all that was said:
“Sheila … it’s M.” Long terrible pause. Then came: “Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk.” –Click!–
He TSK-ed me. HE TSK-ED ME.
I told him that he had done this, and he was absolutely horrified. He had no memory of it. The two of us were crying with laughter, but he also was mortified. “What an ASSHOLE. I CAN’T BELIEVE I did that! I tsk-ed you???”
“Yes. You did. And my veins filled up with ice water.”
“I can’t believe you weren’t like, ‘Y’know what? Fuck off, asswipe!’ ”
We were roaring with laughter.
I said, “No no no, here’s how I interpreted that … I interpreted that as you saying to me … ‘No, this will never work if we start to obsess about who calls who when … we have to stay in the moment’ … so I felt like you were trying to say to me, ‘Woah … just chill out … everything will be fine … everything IS fine … just don’t start obsessing.’ ”
This stunned M. He said, “Meanwhile, it probably, on my part, was just a cocky stupid hungover thing to do … It meant NOTHING.”
Hahahaha
We laughed so hard at how my interpretation of that terrible “tsk-ing” moment actually ended up being the reason that we have ended up being friends to this day. Meaning: Because I DIDN’T say to him, “Screw you, asswipe”, and instead read all kinds of benevolent meanings into his terrible message, we made it through … I actually did chill out, and we had a great time together. For decades, remember. This thing never stopped.
He could not get over his own behavior. “I canNOT believe I did that to you. I also canNOT believe you didn’t read me the riot act. What a JERK. I would never do that now. I tsk-ed you?? I have no memory of that. What an ASS. And there you are on the other end, thinking .. ‘Okay, so what that means is … that I need to stop reading Kierkegaard and start reading The Tractatus.”
(This comment is so damn funny to me.)
He said, “That is such a GIVING interpretation, Sheila. I am the biggest jerkoff on the planet.”
For the rest of the night, whenever he would say anything even mildly vulnerable, I would give him a look and say, “Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk.” And he would fall off his stool laughing.
