“I wouldn’t know” she quipped.
“Oh well, of course, you wouldn’t know any of the European stuff…!”
Quickly the topic turned to her knowledge of European film which was indeed based in different genres than the one Michel had in mind in making his colorful multicultural comparative analysis. She liked the movies of the French new-‐wave, the Godard and Truffaut films of the sixties, the intensity of them, but also the psychological thrillers of Deville, though she clearly had a bias for the more sentimental vein and some of the work of Rohmer still made her knees clearly wobbly (pun intended). She was fascinated by the emotional highs that could be achieved with simple situations if the protagonists were up to the task. She liked the story as pretext for emotion rather than the very American story as a pretext for action. Not that she rejected the physical performance of the American actor, but she felt that the early champions of the genre, Brando, Newman and of course Dean, had exhausted much of the reservoir of freshness that stood at the base of the style. This piqued Michel’s interest greatly.
“It is revealing of your taste in men” he explained.
“No it’s not, my taste in men is you!”
“Very kind of you, but I think saying that eludes a level of subtlety”
“Your way of saying I am wrong?”
“Absolutely. You see, there are several levels at which we operate when it comes to taste. There is what you think you like, the abstract vision of perfection that comes to mind unhindered, and this, to me is not very interesting. Then there is the bottom layer, which is what you end up with, and this has more to do with accidents and mistakes than choices. I’m sure that you like your husband and that you are quite devoted to him, but I would bet anything that he is not your type.”
This line of talk made her a tad uncomfortable, of course, yet another case where Michel’s openness and honesty came at a price. Michel was spot on, not because he knew so much about her that he could guess every detail, but simply because he had an understanding of the human condition that went a bit beyond the ordinary. It was not a judgment that he was casting on her, but an observation of the state of things most people find themselves in.
“It’s just that usually, when a guy asks a girl if she wants to have sex, it is not because he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, it is because he wants to have sex. And if she is crazy enough to say yes, then he is in a bind: there’s one that said yes! Maybe he should quit while he is ahead! Why the girl says yes, I’m not sure I understand, but for the guy, it tends to be straightforward.”
“The girl says yes because she wants to have sex too.” “Ah, I suppose that’s true, but it is a little hard to fathom. I suppose that the issue here is the definition of sex. I suppose that the girl wants to have sex with the guy, whereas the guy wants to have sex.”
“The girl wants to have sex with The Guy, and all you have to do is convince her that maybe you are The Guy and that there’s only one way to find out…” “But in the end, do you choose? No, you try. And then things happen…” “Yes, things happen…”
“So what’s your type?”
“Not too tall, black curly hair, glasses…”
“Well, that’s not me and I’m sure that’s not your husband either.”
“True…” came her reply after an uncomfortable silence.
“I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry. I guess the point I wanted to make was that the myth of the male is different in France from what it is here. Here the Hollywood obsession is about defining who you are. I’m cool, I could have been a contender, I’m the best… Maybe in France it’s more about what you do. Who you are is less of an issue. The French version would have Marlon say ‘I could have contended’. Strength comes from choice more than constitution. To think otherwise seems almost like a refusal to grow up by still clinging to the myths of childhood that you can be anything you want to be. It’s a lie, but a lie we want to believe. To me, the pursuit of happiness is not about trying to be something that you are not. You are what you are, and that does not guarantee happiness. The pursuit of pleasure is a valid path to happiness, in my mind, but it is not a means of becoming something else, quite on the contrary: it is an affirmation of who I am. “
“But what if you are not content with who you are?” “Then that is a shame, but probably not something that will go away. Mind you, that is not your case. You are not happy with where you are at, which is not the same. I think that you are quite happy with whom you are but that you are not getting out of life all that you want. The same is true of me and that is why we found each other.”
“It’s that simple?”
“No, maybe not.”
“It sounds as though you are trying to distance yourself.”
“From what?”
“From me?” she said hesitantly.
Michel assured her that this was not the case, but they left things at a standstill at the end of the conversation. Their reactions following the call assumed what had now already emerged as a pattern between them. Having stumbled upon a rock on the road, his reaction was to pick it up, look at it and try to remove it from their way. She on the other hand was left with little more than doubt and confusion. They were both left to try to understand what Michel had said, but she was under the assumption that he knew the implications of his own words, and he did not realize that. Indeed, Catherine was a bit baffled by the exchange: what point was Michel trying to make in saying that they were not each other’s type? This felt like a prelude to a dump to her and an ominous warning. Furthermore, what could it mean for him to assert that she had not chosen her husband? Did Michel think she was a floozy who went with the first man who wanted to bed her? While she could make an effort to convince herself that this was not the case, the question still posed itself starkly. This ran into a theme that had over the years come to occupy a more prominent position in her meandering thoughts than she was comfortable with: can you really know someone? Though in all fairness she made no formal gender distinctions when confronted with this quandary, it was a thought that she applied only to men, specifically to the men in her life. The first instance of this had truly come to the fore many years before, after the birth of her first child. Of course, begetting is life-‐ changing in many ways, and in fact must alter one’s weltanschauung, but she had then been seized with deep moments if uncertainty when confronted with her husband’s behaviors and reactions to some events surrounding their daughter’s budding life. It was then that for the first time she had lost sleep over the question, lying in bed next to a man she had married and wracked with fear and doubt wondering if she really knew him. Over the years, this had subsided into a lingering but distant question as she had regained faith in the stability of her husband’s motivations in life and assurance of his love both for her and their children. She ha
d easily dismissed the intensity of the early feelings as a mere side-‐effect of the birth of her daughter and of the tremendous psychological changes (growth) that had occurred at that time, and had never really come to grips with the thought. Now she was suddenly confronted with its resurgence. The next day, she was quite shocked to not find an email from Michel in her inbox, so much so that she found herself quite angry and had to pause and ask herself why. She found that she had been fully expecting a long humble and perhaps even contrite apology from him for the affront she had received. With this realization, her anger subsided as she examined why she had felt their exchange was an affront to her. Nothing he had said had been false or even meant to hurt. As always, it was his darned honesty that had gotten in the way of a perfectly good conversation. It was in a rather unnerving state of confusion that she went to have high tea with an old friend.
She and Liz had gone to high-‐school together, though at the time neither would have called the other a friend: their relationship then had been based more on tension, jealousy and resentment than amity. It was technology that had brought them back together after many years of estrangement, one of those sites where old schoolmates can find each other. What had started as timid contact, made by both to look like a fortuitous happenstance, had slowly turned into a vibrant friendship as they found how similar their outlook on their past shared experience were, and for about three years now they made it a point to have lunch together at least once a month. Liz immediately felt how troubled Catherine was but gave her the room to bring it up at her own pace, as she eventually did. Liz was stuck in a childless and less than passionate marriage with a man she did not dislike enough to leave, and while it could not be said that she had vicarious penchants, the stories Catherine spun were exhilarating to her, and she had grown rather fond of Michel which could explain why she felt the need to rush to his defense. She listened attentively as Catherine recounted what she remembered of her last phone call with Michel, how he had said that they were not each other’s type, the distinction he was trying to make between what one is and what one does. And then she charged.
“Forest Gump said the same thing, you know.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Remember? ‘Stupid is as Stupid does’? That’s what this is! Look, your Michel doesn’t want to be thought of as an adulterer. To him, there’s a difference between stealing and being a thief. And if you ask me, I would tend to agree. I mean, look at you! This is your second affair, but do you think of yourself as an adulteress? Is this who you are? No! You’re happily married and you’re having an affair but that doesn’t mean that you are a slut or deserve a scarlet A on your chest.”
“Maybe it does…” “Well that’s your Catholic guilt talking. For you guys, it’s OK to sin as long as you get punished for it. But for him, there is no free pass. That’s all he is saying. He knows what he’s doing and he accepts his responsibility, but it doesn’t define him, that’s all. But I guess it does mean that he thinks it’s not wrong.”
“There, you’re right. He is way too self-‐assured to think anything he is doing is wrong.”
“And you constantly doubt the value of everything that you do!” “OK, you have a point. I don’t know what it is that bothers me. It’s just that we’ll be talking and I’m having a good time and all that, and then he’ll say something that just throws me off completely. It’s like, here I am in my little daydream, and we’re escaping to far-‐away places and having sex on the beach, and visiting beautiful cities I’ve never seen, and then suddenly he says something that really drags me back down and then I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”
“Like that he’s not your type?”
“Yes, exactly! Now what is that supposed to mean? That we shouldn’t be together?”
“Oh, don’t be silly! It means exactly the opposite, as far as I’m concerned. You want to know the truth? My husband is my type, and guess what, it’s a nightmare that I can’t get out of. And you know what more? Maybe there’s a lesson here for me. Maybe your lover is trying to tell we to stop looking around for something that doesn’t mean anything, “my type of guy”, and that maybe the answer to my persistent questions are right under my nose. I mean don’t you think that at my age I should be able to go a little bit beyond physical attraction when looking for a mate?”
“Well, Liz, I can’t disagree there… that last guy you ‘dated’ was a disaster.” “Thanks for reminding me! God what a creep! Football, beer and sex, in that order. My husband goes away for a month and all I can get is white trash. And you get a pleasure seeking Frenchman, suave beyond belief who won’t lie to you or himself to save his life… Geez Louise! You know what? You’re afraid of yourself, that’s what this is. If I were you, I’d be on a plane to L.A. right now!”
“You’ve always been reckless. That would just ruin it.”
“So you admit that this is important to you?”
“Of course it is. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t torture me like this.”
“Torture?”
“Well, maybe not torture. I’m just not sure where this is going.”
“You don’t need to know where this is going. You don’t need to be in control. Maybe that’s what the problem is: you don’t feel in control and that’s what frightens you.” “You think I’m a control freak?” “Well, a little bit. You meet someone, you want to get to know them, and that’s what the two of you have been doing. But then you start to worry about how much you can know someone. That’s you trying to put the breaks on things because you think you are losing control.”
“Well, maybe I am losing control. I’ve told him things that I’ve never told anyone else before. He knows some of the most intimate things about me.”
“And you know things about him.”
“That’s true. He’s told me more about himself than I can believe, sometimes, to the point where I now understand things about my husband that I never suspected.” “So you see? It’s a two way street. But in the end, he’s a man. You can’t idealize him too much, even though I realize that you’ve never met. He’s got warts, like they all do. You can’t want him to be perfect.”
“Yes I can!” exclaimed Catherine, and they both laughed without restraint. “But then he really would be too good to be true” Liz opined.
“He already is too good to be true. And I guess what I’m really afraid of is that it’s not true.”
“Well, I don’t think you can invent a guy like Michel on the fly. Well, you can, but a guy can’t.”
“You’re right” Catherine beamed, “if anyone invented Michel, I did!” Catherine eventually came to grips with the contradiction with which she had been painting Michel into a corner. She was using his very honesty to doubt his sincerity. She knew Michel and knew him well. She was not afraid of not knowing him but of knowing him too much,
of finding out what she disliked about him, about his warts as Liz had put it. She had been so delighted when he had promised her that he would always be able to surprise her, and here she was, afraid of surprises. As the day wore on, she came to a better understanding of what Michel had said, realizing that what had brought them together was not outward appearances, nor preconceived ideas of physical or inner beauty. Such things can be obstacles to the pursuit of happiness, obstacles to being open to the possibilities of life. That they were not each other’s type simply meant that their relationship was based on something other than the superficial notions that so often encumber our minds. Their relationship was based on pleasure, its experience, its pursuit, and its understanding.
When Catherine next returned to her email, a short message from Michel awaited her:
“Dear Catherine, I have upset you and had not meant to. I apologize. This has caused me great pain of my own and raises many doubts in my mind as to what we are doing, or rather what I am doing to you. It seems that I failed you in more than one way of late. I cannot willingly be the cause of such anguish. I would like to believe that I have given you pleasure in sufficient measure to compensate for the suffering I have caused. I wish I could have called you today. Yours,
Michel” She thought long and hard about how to answer, feeling that they had come to a turn in the road which gave her an opportunity to reevaluate their affair. But her conversation with Liz had reaffirmed in Catherine the reasons for which she had engaged with Michel in the first place, and while she now better understood the necessary precariousness of their situation, she knew that she wanted no change, at least for now.
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