Severe and Potentially Mean

I wanted to know how he sees himself, what kind of a person he imagines himself to be. We had been talking for over an hour; I couldn’t figure out how to ask the question so that it made sense to him, apparently.

“How would you describe yourself if you were a character in a novel?” This was a last-ditch effort – it seemed perfect to me, unmistakable.

“What kind of novel?”

“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

“I mean, who am I in the novel? What am I doing?” He looked at me, concerned. Truly, he wanted to be helpful, but context matters to him; unlike me, he clearly has not spent his life narrating his every movement in his head, writing the story of it for his own amusement.

Suddenly, he brightened. “Do I get a light saber?”

“Do you want a light saber?”

“Hell yes.”

“Fine, you have a light saber. Ding!” I bopped him on the shoulder with the fork I was holding. “You’re the main character. There’s a review in the New York Times. Now how do you describe yourself?”

“Uh.” Perhaps he simply could not imagine a light saber-wielding character in a novel reviewed in the New York Times. Perhaps he was distracted by imagining scenes in which he was terribly busy lopping heads off. In any case, he couldn’t or wouldn’t articulate a description of himself.

(He’s the sort of man who, when offered accessory possibilities limited only by his imagination, doesn’t want a 10-inch penis or a billion dollars – he wants a light saber. In short, he’s a geek.)

I am the kind of person who has a narrator living in her head - a semi-detached observer who watches as my life unfolds, whose interest picks up when things become unpleasant, who rubs her grubby little imaginary hands together and purrs, "Oh, this will make a good story." I have only rarely been sufficiently overcome by emotion or circumstances to forget that she is watching, taking notes.

Apart from that - as revealing as it may or may not be - I have been forced to stop making declarative statements about what sort of person I am. I've lost track of myself, of what I'm like. What I really want him to tell me is who I am.

I am no longer the character I wrote for myself, that much is clear. I am not a person who requires a great deal of time alone. I am not a person who is made uncomfortable by talk of emotions. I am not a person who does not burst into tears for vague, non-specific, poorly-articulated, girly reasons. I am not a person who finds yoga unbearably flaky. I am not a person who gets into relationships with perfectly wonderful men only to experience panic of the chew-off-my-own-arm variety at the first sign of real intimacy. I don't even smoke anymore.

Even if I could figure out a way to ask him without feeling ridiculously self-centered and insecure, he is not a reliable source of information about what I'm like. "Part of the gestalt that is M.Monkey," according to a letter he wrote me, is a list of things which includes "long red hair" and "an altogether pleasing array of curves." My hair is brown. I brought him a box top from the dye I use; it clearly says Medium Brown. Also, I have gotten pudgy since I quit smoking. Pleasing array of curves, my ass. Love apparently diminishes his critical faculties.

Having come up with a description of him that pleased me, I could describe myself in the context of him: I am the kind of woman who falls in love with the kind of guy who has always wanted a light saber. If I’d known that years ago, my life might have turned out very differently.

Based on the evidence of decades, I thought I was simply not interested in long term relationships. I thought – absurd, really – that the only way I could be happy was to live alone. I finally told him that we could try, okay, but that it would probably be over in a week or two.

Hours after I had given up on trying to get him to tell me about how he sees himself, he told me that he knows that there's a disconnect between the way that people perceive him and the way that he sees himself. "I've asked friends to tell me what I seem like to strangers and -- well, they won't tell me, so I don't think it's good."

"May I ask who you were going to use the light saber on?"

"Bad guys!" He said this with the enthusiasm of a 6-year-old. The thought of nameless, faceless bad guys made him happy. "I would use it on my enemies."

"Do you have any enemies?"

"Um. No." He looked dejected. It is perhaps illustrative of the diminution of my critical faculties that I could not, at that moment, imagine what sort of horrible person -- or alien -- would not find him simply adorable. Enemies would drop their weapons and want to buy him ice cream.

"When I met you," I told him, although he hadn't asked, "I thought you were arrogant and detached. Isn't that funny?"

Again, he's enthusiastic. "See, I thought the same thing about you! I mean, that you were severe and... potentially mean." He is visibly pleased at being able to deliver such a succinct and accurate description.

“Severe and potentially mean.” Inadvertently, I had gotten him to answer the question that I couldn’t figure out how to ask. I know that he’s smart and perceptive, that he makes a hobby of studying people. I know that he spent several months observing me at close range before I noticed anything about him besides the fact that he’s late to work damn near every day. “And you found that attractive?"

"Well, of course, I suspected that wasn't what you're really like."