David Wallace - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Q.

‘Because he brought his work home. The face he wore in the men’s room. He couldn’t take it off. His skull conformed to fit it. This expression or rather lack of expression. Attendant and no more. Alert but absent. His face. Beyond reserved. As if forever conserving himself for some ordeal to come.’

Q….

‘I wear nothing white. Not one white thing, I can tell you that much. I eliminate in silence or not at all. I tip. I never forget that someone is there.

‘Yes and do I admire the fortitude of this humblest of working men? The stoicism? The Old World grit? To stand there all those years, never one sick day, serving? Or do I despise him, you’re wondering, feel disgust, contempt for any man who’d stand effaced in that miasma and dispense towels for coins?’

Q.

‘…’

Q.

‘What were the two choices again?’

B.I. #2 10-94

CAPITOLA CA

‘Sweetie, we need to talk. We’ve needed to for a while. I have I mean, I feel like. Can you sit?’

Q.

‘Well, I’d rather almost anything, but I care about you, and I’d rather anything than you getting hurt. That concerns me a lot, believe me.’

Q.

‘Because I care. Because I love you. Enough to really be honest.’

Q.

‘That sometimes I worry you’re going to get hurt. And that you don’t deserve it. To get hurt I mean.’

Q, Q.

‘Because, to be honest, my record is not good. Almost every intimate relationship I get into with women seems to end up with them getting hurt, somehow. To be honest, sometimes I worry I might be one of those guys who uses people, women. I worry about it somet — no, damn it, I’m going to be honest with you because I care about you and you deserve it. Sweetie, my relationship record indicates a guy who’s bad news. And more and more now lately I’ve been afraid that you’re going to get hurt, that I might hurt you the way I seem to have hurt others who—’

Q.

‘That I have a history, a pattern so to speak, of, for instance, coming on very fast and hard in the beginning of a relationship and pursuing very hard and very intensely and wooing very intensely and being head over heels in love right from the very start, of saying I Love You very early on in the relationship, of starting to talk future-tense right from the outset, of having nothing be too much to say or do to show how much I care, which all of course has the effect, naturally, of seeming to make them truly believe I really am in love — which I am — which then, I think, seems to make them feel loved enough and so to speak safe enough to start letting them say I Love You back and acknowledging that they’re in love with me, too. And it’s not — let me stress this because it’s the God’s honest truth — it’s not that I don’t mean it when I say it.’

Q.

‘Well, it’s not as if how many of them I’ve said it to isn’t an understandable question or concern but if it’s all right it’s just that it’s not what I’m trying to talk to you about, so if it’s all right I want to hold off on things like numbers or names and try to just be totally honest with you about what my concerns are, because I care. I care about you a lot, sweetie. A whole lot. I know it’s insecure, but it’s very important to me that you believe this and hang on to it all through our talk here, that what I’m saying or what I’m afraid I might do to in any way end up hurting you doesn’t in any way lessen or mean that I don’t care or that I have not meant it absolutely every time I’ve told you I love you. Every time. I hope you believe that. You deserve to. Plus it’s true.’

Q….

‘But what it is is that it seems as if for a while everything I say and do has the effect of pulling them into thinking of it as a very — a very serious relationship and almost you could say somehow like lulling them into thinking in terms of the future.’

Q.

‘Because then the as it were pattern seems to be that once I’ve got you, so to speak, and you’re as much into the relationship as I’ve been, then it’s as if I’m almost constitutionally unable somehow to push all the way through and follow through and make a… what’s the right word—’

Q.

‘Yes, all right, that’s the word, even though I have to tell you the way you say it fills me with dread that you’re already feeling hurt and not taking what I’m trying to say in the spirit which I’m trying to talk to you about this, which is that I honestly do care enough about you to share some honest concerns that have been troubling me about even the possibility of you getting hurt, which believe me is the absolute last thing I want.’

Q.

‘That, from examining the record and trying to make some kind of sense of it, it seems as if something in me goes into a sort of overdrive in the early intense part and gets me right up to the point of yes of commitment, and then but then can’t quite seem to push all the way through and actually make the commitment to do a truly serious, future-tense, committed thing with them. As Mr. Chitwin would put it I am just not a closer . Does any of this make any sense? I don’t feel as though I’m saying it very well. Where the real hurt seems to come in is because this inability seems to kick in only after doing and saying and behaving in all sorts of ways that on some level I surely must know are leading them to think that I want a truly committed future-tense thing as much as they do. So, to be honest, this is my record with this sort of thing, and as far as I can tell it seems to indicate a guy who’s bad news for women, which concerns me. A lot. That I seem to maybe seem like a woman’s completely ideal guy up to a certain point in the relationship where now they’ve dropped all their resistance and defenses and are committedly in love, which of course seems to be what I had wanted right from the beginning and had worked so hard and wooed them so intensely to get them to do and just as I know all too well I’ve done with you, to get serious and think in terms of the future and the word commitment and then — and sweetie trust me this is hard to explain because I far from fully understand it myself — but then at just this point, historically, as best as I can figure out it’s as if something in me as it were kind of reverses thrust and now puts all its overdrive into somehow pulling back.’

Q.

‘All I can really figure out is that I seem to sort of freak out and feel I have to reverse thrust and get out of it, except usually I’m not totally sure, I can’t tell if I really want out of it or whether I’m simply freaking out somehow, and even though I’m freaking out and want out I still don’t want to lose them, it seems, so I tend to give a lot of mixed signals and say and do a lot of things that seem to confuse them and yank them around and cause them pain, which believe me I always end up feeling horrible about, even while I’m doing it. Which I’ll tell you the truth is what I’m freaking out about with you and me, because yanking you around or causing you pain is the absolute last thing in—’

Q, Q.

‘The God’s honest truth is I don’t know. I do not know. I haven’t been able to figure it out. I think all I’m trying to do here in our sitting down and talking about it is really care about you and be honest about myself and my relationship record and do it in the middle of something instead of the end. Because my record is that historically it seems to be only at the end of a relationship that I seem to be willing to open up about some of my fears about myself and my record of causing women who love me pain. Which, of course, causes them pain, the sudden honesty does, and serves to get me out of the relationship, which then afterward I worry might have been my subconscious agenda all along in terms of bringing it up and finally getting honest with them, maybe. I’m not sure.’