"Meet me in 5." I was driving and called a friend last minute, wanted to catch up and grab a cup of coffee. I was never good with planning but I was very good at being spontaneous.
I drove to Philz in North Berkeley, gourmet ghetto area on Shattuck, diagonally across from Chez Panisse.
My friend got a call from his teenage daughter, who’s in Maui vacationing. He's fantastic with her and I envied his relationship with his daughter.
"Are all good fathers not so great husbands?" I asked as I sipped my large philharmonic, medium sweet, with cream. The place was crowded, every seat was taken with laptops and iPads, so we found a bench by the bus station, a block away. I had a view of Gregoire, my favorite French take out restaurant in Berkeley. Best lamb chops.
"I suppose there are different rules for husbands and fathers."
"You are not a great husband." I remarked.
"How so?" He responded, but didn't expect me to answer.
"Well, you know… multiple affairs. That would be a pretty common definition of a 'not great husband.'" But what do I know? I'm not a guy." I was only an observer. I was always curious about a man's mind: Men who were fathers, husbands, held prominent positions at work, but had an artistic or intellectual side; men who had multiple roles to play in life intrigued me. I studied them carefully, at arm-length. I suppose I was trying to understand them now where I failed before.
A blind woman came by. She asked if we'd seen any bus passed by.
It was the second time people asked us of that question. You sat too long at a bus station’s bench, you became the time keeper of the bus. Bus 18 just came and went. I told her so. The next bus won’t be there until half an hour later. She was going to be late for work.
"We will give you a ride." He told her. Then he turned to me, and said, “Let’s give her a ride.”
"OK." I was not usually like that.
But I felt good. Doing good deeds for perfect strangers in need felt good.
I didn't want any negative shit. I was done feeling sorry and withdrawal from the world. I was done from all of that negative energy stuff.
"Why so many American women are so angry all the time?" He asked.
He excluded me from that population.. It was not the first time people excluded me from the generic definition of an “American woman.” I had not thought of myself either a Chinese or American. I was simply, me. An odd person, with peculiar interests and was extremely open about certain aspect of my life, yet knew how to keep private things private.
A while back, someone said to me - "You appear to be dissatisfied." That comment troubled and frightened me. I felt something, and that something was raw and powerful and it threw off the balance I had with the universe. I have since dialed back; I knew it was not the right emotion to experience, at least not in that environment, in that context, with that individual.
I vowed not to complain, not to be negative, not to change anything or anyone and not to have any expectations for anything or anyone. I would not burden others with my own dissatisfaction. I turned off my emotions because it once hurt like motherfucker. The saddest part was that I was the only person in pain. The world went on as if nothing happened; the person I was suffering for had ab-fucking-solutely no clue. In fact I suspected if he knew it, he’d enjoy it, he wanted to see me suffer, he probably derived immense pleasure from knowing that I longed for him, loved him, and would have done everything for him, and yet he felt nothing of that sort for me. So I fell cliché in love. I thought that all I ever wanted was for him to hold me and say to me, “everything is going to be OK. I love you too and I will take care of you.”
As it turned out, he didn’t say any of it, nor did he have to, and everything did turn out to be okay as it always did, and in the process, like any respectful woman, my heart hardened, I became rightfully cynical, sarcastic and I declared that I was suffering from temporary insanity. Nothing a little drug and time won’t cure.
This experience, along with many others, became a story that started like this: “Once upon a time…” Yes, of course love stories were fairy tales and belonged to fairy land.
And as you would expect, we went on, he and I. The one whom I thought I loved, we went on for a long while, we met up, we fucked, he told me that I was his. I continued to love him in the way I knew how. I said nothing, did nothing, and if I caught myself feeling something more than the primal feeling, I stopped myself. I imagined a future with him in it. I imagined this would be the last time I’d feel passionate about someone, and I imagined one day he’d love me back. And that imagination stayed alive after he was long gone.
We dropped the old blind lady off at her meeting place. She was grateful. She liked sitting in a convertible. It was a nice ride. She said. It was a warm day.
I then dropped my friend off and said goodbye. He had stuff going on in the evening. He was a wonderful father. I liked that. He's a horrible husband. I didn’t mind that, because he's not mine. He's a good person, conflicted but a good person. He had no expectations of me. And I was grateful for that. As long as he didn’t ask me how I felt about anything.
I liked to stay theoretical with people these days. I was very good at offering advice, and unwanted opinion to others, so long I was not asked of “how do you feel about it?”
"Any movie you want to watch?" My friend asked of me just before he had to go.
The last movie I watched was an art house foreign movie.
I liked foreign movies, art house movies, or anything science fiction.
I watched movie only with him. In the dark, his hand would hold mine, tight, as if I belonged to no one to him. I would put my head on his shoulder, and I never let go of my hand from his tight grip. He reminded me that was how we started, he had asked me out to watch a movie and it became a tradition. Something I’d do with him only. I was stubborn like that.
Movie watching could be an intimate experience. I did not do movies with just any friend. Sitting in the dark with someone who’s not your partner next to you seemed bizarre and unnatural to me. I liked the outdoors, daylight stuff with my friends.
Like drinking coffee and giving a perfect stranger, an older blind lady a lift.
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