Bowling Team
Most of the time I like to talk to you because you’re willing to do most of the talking. I can stand in the doorway and beat a hasty retreat if I get over my head. I can never seem to get the conversation to end. You always have just “one more” thing to add: “I went bowling this past weekend. Bowled a 147.” (You’ve never bowled a frame in your life. But if you read this, I’d like you to have to wonder if this is about you. But you’re not going to read this.) I stand and block the doorway and ignore my responsibilities to hear tell about each and every frame you bowled and what your buddy, Mohammed, said when it looked like you were going to bowl a turkey but it turned out to be just a spare. I hate my responsibilities more than I find your stories boring so I stay and listen and I laugh when your body language tells me that it’s expected. I want you to like me and I think that you do.
Most of the time I like to talk to you until you start talking about a certain politician and how that politician was unfairly treated. “He was the perfect kind of politician,” you say, and I nod because that’s the only muscle in my body I know how to use. “You know, you elect politicians based off of maybe one issue, and for me, you know, it’s gun rights or, you know, gun reform. Gun control. And then the rest of the time you just have to assume that they know more than you do and you just sort of have to, you know, trust them. And he’s the best one. He’s the best kind of those kinds of people. So what if he kissed her!”
I’m too good at nodding - which means that a lot of people like me - but I’m no good at listening. People think that I am listening intently to their boring as fuck story about them visiting their friend Steve in Poughkeepsie, New York, but in actuality I just nod when their body language tells me that my nodded is what is both expected and encouraged. Laugh and nod. Laugh and nod. Nod nod nod. (I retain so little of what anybody tells me that it’s actually some kind miracle that I remember anything at all. But I remember what you said. I remember more of it than I wish I did.) And I know where this conversation is going and so I try and remember more of my responsibilities. Perhaps I try and make up an extra responsibility that I was not given, but in this instance would gladly take on. Something that will take me away from the door of your office but I can’t and anyway you are off and you are running and there is no slowing you down.
“He’s a good person. I know he’s a good person. Met him once. Shook his hand in Columbia in ’83. Most of what has been said about him has, you know, been roundly rejected by actual fact and anyway he never got his day in court. He was forced to resign when he wasn’t actually guilty. That’s terrible. We have a court system for a reason and you should be innocent until proven guilty.”
I nod. Here is what I don’t say: If he thought he was so innocent then why did he resign? Nobody held his veiny, old man hand and told him to leave. If we believe in free will then we can’t really get mad at the people who “made a stink” and “forced” him to resign. He resigned on his own.
I don’t say any of this because I run from conflict. I get the fuck away as fast as I fucking can!
“It just makes me sick,” you say and I try again to coax the urge to say something, anything, out of hiding, and it feels like when I am with my girlfriend and she is tired and just wants to go to sleep. “Also it was a different time back then. I mean, clearly he wouldn’t do something like that now but that was then. You know? Different standard. And are we supposed to throw out everything that he’s done since? Get rid of it all? I mean, he’s helped so many people, you know! Does that all go out the window?! It’s ridiculous! God damn travesty is what it is.” I nod and keep nodding because I am starting to suspect that I might not be the person I think I am.
I flash back to eighth grade and a school-sanctioned, silent protest that I was a willing, if not giddy participant in. My science teacher, Shannon (real name), asked the entire class, “So you’re really going to do this?” and we either nodded in the affirmative or stayed silent in the affirmative. Clearly Shannon did not understand what we were doing. We were goddamn warriors of justice, were standing up for what was right and just and free and god damn it, we might have been thirteen years old, but we had a voice! Hear us roar! There were a few people in my class (that I still judge now) who did not take that day long vow of silence. I knew at the time that they were heartless Republicans whose families probably voted for George W. Bush (twice) and supported the Iraq war and had stock piles of guns next to their stock piles of religious memorabilia next to their stock piles of gay conversion therapy pamphlets. They were eighth grade baby killers, or at the very least, the eighth-grade offspring of baby killers. Monsters with iPod Minis. Monsters who liked Green Day. Monsters who went by the names of Kayla, Brandon, Timmy, Camille (not their real names) but monsters all the same.
You snap me out of my trance and I remember that I was trying to leave: “How was your trip?” you ask.
“What trip?”
“You said that you were going somewhere.”
“I did? Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” There is a silence in the room after that. I want to break it but know I am not strong enough. I had told you I was going on a trip but it was because I needed something to say and the truth would have taken far too long to actually explain. I wasn’t embarrassed about the truth and it wasn’t as if I had promised anyone that I would keep it a secret (that I can remember) but it also didn’t feel like the kind of thing that I necessarily needed to share. I could have told you what was actually happening, and you would have understood because I believe that you are good person who is open minded and honest. You would have nodded along and smiled at the crazy ridiculousness of life, and then when I was finished talking, you would have your own story that would be far too long and contain far too much insignificant detail. And it would be about a similar thing happening in your life. I have no reason for keeping the truth from you other than I have kept it from you for this long and I don’t want you to wonder if maybe we aren’t as close as you think we were. Clearly we aren’t, but I want you to think that we are because I want you to like me because I need friends even if they think that I’m someone else.
“I visited my friend Steve in Poughkeepsie two weekends ago. Maybe that was it.”
“Yeah, maybe,” you say.
I leave your office and walk down the linoleum hallway that reminds me of my elementary school’s linoleum hallways and then out into the bright sunlight of a crisp autumn afternoon and I tell myself that I am not coming back - never coming back! - and that I will never see you again. I will become a legend and then slowly fade from away. I wonder what you would do if I never came back. I wonder if you would try to contact Steve in Poughkeepsie and how many Steves, Stevens and Stephens you would contact on Facebook or LinkedIn before you would give up. Pick your daughter up from school. Drop her off at soccer practice. Pick her up. Take her home. I wonder how much of your bowling game you made up because, for the past five years you’ve told me that you were a bowler. Jake, I know you’ve never bowled a frame in your life!
