"So," he said, finally, "you're gonna go back to him, uh, Jonathan, huh?"
"Yeah," I said. "Well, I think so. One way, I guess, or another."
He was quiet.
"I don't know," I said.
"I have to see," I told him then, as it seemed I'd been telling everybody I'd spoken to for the last two weeks. "I'll know when ...I know"
"Research," I finished, weakly.
"Look," he stammered a bit on it, "I know we don't really know each other or anything, but, uh, if it doesn't work out with him... well, here, take my address in Paris. But I'm going back to where I really work in a few weeks. Well, to where I go to school. You could come back with me though-I mean, if you wanted to."
"Back where?" I asked.
"Urbana, Illinois," he said, getting defensive when he saw the expression on my face. "They do really important research on cognition there. I mean, I got offered almost as much money by..."
He stopped himself, embarrassed that he'd felt the need to boast. "And, mostly really, I wanted to do this particular kind of research, and it included the year at the Institut in Paris, and it's not so bad to be away from the East Coast for a while-I mean, I grew up in New York...." (he shrugged, realizing that I'd probably already figured that out).
I nodded. Urbana's not the greatest place, but at least it's far enough from New York so that he could beg off from coming home for Thanksgiving dinner. I mean, Christmaswell, Hanukkah, I supposed, in his case-is okay, but Thanksgiving ...I don't know, you just want to give it a rest for a few years. Even if your parents are really quite okay, like mine are.
Which was why, in my case, Urbana wasn't so good. "Well, see, I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana," I said.
So there'd be Thanksgiving. And Midwestern wintersI remembered how much I hated that first one, back home after the year in Montpellier. And it wasn't just the weather, it was the wholesomeness, the lack of edge. I'd come back to high school in Indiana and sworn to myself that this was not my life, even as I took my place with the rest of the faculty kids, hurrying off to swim teams and drama camp and flute competitions, Mom and Dad thoughtfully signing you up for summer college extension courses so that you could get a leg up in calculus or Italian. But I'd get out, I promised myselfif not back to France, than at least to California. Well, and I did, too, didn't I? Well beyond California, I thought, remembering my whitewashed room in the cliff rising from the sea. Far enough that maybe I could even stand a Thanksgiving dinner or two enfamille.
"What would I do there, in Urbana?" I asked.
"Use my library card," he said, matter-of-factly. "Read, while you figure out how you get back into books and the stuff you're really interested in. Apply to schools, I guess."
He made it sound simple. Maybe it was, I thought. The stuff I was really interested in-hmm.
Read all the books. Write the big dissertation about sex and women and romance and pornography. I'd have to make it all sound a little more academic than it really was, of course. Tell my stories by retelling all those other profoundly erotic stories that somehow have passed into "literature." Disguise it all as disinterested scholarly discourse. Of course, I surprised myself by thinking, the vogue for that sort of thing might have passed by the time I finished the book (and I wondered where I'd kept that canny, careerist part of myself hidden these past years). Still, it would be fun to try to pull it all together. I even let myself fantasize a jacket blurb from Arthur Geist. And then get into line with all the other silly, book-crazed fools to apply for the elusive job.
And Daniel? Well, it was clear that we could talk to each other. And I knew that we shared some important spaces in the sexual imagination. He would be stunningly inexperienced, compared to the types I'd been hanging around with these past few years, but somehow I was confident that he'd turn out to be original, adventurous, on a day-to-day basis. And perhaps a little more than that, on the rare weekend when one of us didn't have a big paper due. Nerds' night out. And then I became amazed that I was having these thoughts at all. After all, I was going to see Jonathan. In less than an hour.
"Well," I said, "thanks for the offer." The train was nearing Avignon.
"I mean, this is all a little theoretical, isn't it?" I continued. "Talking about being together, I mean."
He was looking out the window, scowling at the gathering outskirts of the city. "Well," he muttered, "I guess so. I mean, `theory' doesn't really cover it all that well, though I guess you're used to using it the way they do in English departments."
"Oh, right," I said angrily, "yeah, like you pocket protector types never use any buzzwords or jargon or anything. Great move, Daniel, correcting my language-that'll get me into bed for sure."
(And I wish I could say he never did any of that dumb humanities baiting again, but he still sometimes does it, when some of his friends from the lab start up. I think he does it less than he used to, though.)
"Sorry," he said, smiling a little as he opened his jacket to show me his perfectly normal, unprotected shirt pocket.
"But you're not going to bed with me anyway," he pointed out. "At least not today, and maybe not ever. And you can see how I'd be pretty depressed about that. I mean, I love to talk to you-to hear the lights and darks of your voice and to watch you bend your face out of shape when you talk about literature. But you know, tonight, this afternoon, when I turn around and take the return train to Paris, I'm going to wonder-I'm wondering right now-whether, long-term, what I should have done instead was take you up on your offer of fucking in the WC.
"I guess," he added sadly, "I'm really the first amateur you've run into in a long time."
Which was what, deep down, probably decided things for me, though I didn't know it at that moment. I mean, at that moment, I must have been thinking about half a dozen things. It's possible to do that, you know. When computers do it, it's called massively parallel processing, and it's what Daniel says is going to enable them to do real cognition one of these days. (Well, he says that on days when his work is going well, anyway.) Right now, of course, computers can't do mindtrips nearly as complicated as the ones people do, like when they meet somebody they like on the TGV from Paris to Avignon.
Anyway, at that moment, obviously, a lot of me was wondering what was going to happen with Jonathan. As well as wondering exactly how bent out of shape my face actually gets when I talk about literature. I was probably also still mulling over parts of Clarissa. And of Justine. I was deep into massively parallel mode-wondering and thinking all that stuff to myself at the same time. But I didn't say any of that stuff, because I said something else-which I was also thinking at that moment.
And what I said was, "You know, that's one of my favorite words in English. `Amateur,' I mean."
I repeated it softly, giving it a French pronunciation, my tongue hitting the top of my front teeth and wanting to be in that little space between his.
"Amateur," I said again. I wasn't kidding either. It was one of my favorite words. Perhaps it was even a safe word. Or perhaps a dangerous one-because I wasn't sure exactly where it led.
"I mean, you know, people think it means beginner or something," I said. "And it does. But beginner, in the sense of being excited about something new. About having the guts to keep at it, because you love it, not because it's your profession or you have a license or something. It means enthusiastpassionate enthusiast. It means... well, think about it, its root. Amateur. Because, well, what it really means is lover."
Amateur.
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