Twentieth date

I think this must be a record -- four months between dates is a long time. But we have had a lot going on, D and I. She moved some eight or nine hundred miles from where she had been living (depending on whether you fly or drive), to take a new teaching job in a place I'll call Weather City. A couple months into the job she figured out that the administration was even crazier than at her last place; also they seem to have bitten off more than they could pay for in hiring her, and so were trying to encourage her to quit. I know, it sounds nuts -- but that what she tells me and I don't know any more about it. A couple of weeks ago she finally quit, and has been looking for a new line of work. (She may have found one too, but that's a different post.)

For my part, I had a couple trips out of town in August (when she was trying to start up at the new job) but then nothing for a while. And the trips in August were timed in such a way it would have been awkward to steal some free time between them anyway. So what with one thing and another we hadn't seen each other since the end of June. Add to that that I had more or less unilaterally cut back how often we wrote or talked, and the result is we were beginning to drift out of touch. And then I had a week in one of our European offices, at the end of October. D couldn't join me in Europe -- she was still extricating herself from her job at that point -- but I routed my return flight through Weather City and stopped off for about 18 hours. It wasn't a lot, but it was a visit.

D was practically giddy when we met at the airport; I may not have been quite as goofy, but of course I was glad to see her. We kissed and kissed ... then periodically stopped and kissed again as we made our way out of the airport. (At one point someone else on the same airport shuttle cracked, "Get a room" ... which of course we were already planning anyway. We just laughed. I'm pretty sure it was meant good-naturedly, if only because there are some things that people get more tolerant of when they see grey hair.) On our way to D's new apartment she told me she had woken early that morning from a nightmare: "I dreamt we had some big argument and you wouldn't sleep with me! And you were trying to sleep on the sofa in my living room and complained how uncomfortable it was ...." Gosh, sweetheart. Have you been anxious lately?

We got to her apartment -- simple, elegant, almost spare except for all the books. (I know, like that's a big surprise.) She showed me around and I'm sure I spent at least five or ten minutes putting down my bags and appreciating how she had decorated before we settled onto the bed, began kissing again, and then fucked like maniacs. Sometimes, four months can seem like a long, long time. But it was blissfully calm, afterwards, just holding each other ... staring at each other as the sun went down and the room darkened.

What about dinner? She had planned a recipie she wanted to show off to me, so we got dressed and she began puttering about in the kitchen. First order of business was that she opened a bottle of wine.

"Umm, D?" I demurred. "I'm not sure if I should be drinking. I'm afraid I'll snore again like the last time; and I really felt awful about that. I really don't want to do it again." In the back of my head I reminded myself also that I had lost almost twenty pounds in the four months between then and now, which might also help. But yes, I was still worried.

D dismissed the worry abruptly. "Don't be silly Hosea. I'm not going to fret over whether you snore or not. Do you think I'm crazy? I've got a man in my bed tonight -- the last thing I would do is jeopardize that! Drink the damned wine; it'll be fine."

Dinner was delicious, although D insisted that the organic chicken she had bought tasted fundamentally different from factory-farmed chicken and it tasted the same to me. After dinner we sat in her living room talking for a bit, and then started kissing, ... and then somehow I found myself suckling her nipples as she was pulling her pants out of the way and my fingers were nestling into her crotch. Amazing how the conversation wanders ...! Somewhere along the line I realized that she had never bothered to close any of her windows, and I wondered if I should be a bit more self-conscious. I didn't see lights in any of the adjoining apartments, and in any event anyone who lived there would be a total stranger to me. But the only person with any call to pause at this was D, and her mind was absolutely elsewhere. So I dismissed the thought and went with the moment ....

After a while we found our way to bed -- and I'm sure there was a third time somewhere before dawn, though I can't quite place it now. In the middle of the night I woke up with a mysterious headache -- "mysterious" because I almost never get them. Was it the wine? The jet lag? Not enough coffee the day before? I'm really not sure. After some rummaging, D found a couple of baby aspirin in her bathroom and I settled back to sleep. We both realized with a bit of a smile that it would have been a lot easier to find medications back home, where Wife stockpiles so many of them.

In the morning, as we were breakfasting, I mentioned the windows to D. She shrugged and said, "Well, maybe we gave the neighbors a show last night. OK, well I guess I've always been a bit of an exhibitionist." Then she told me amusing stories about those neighbors she has met as we got ourselves back to the airport.

In the end we got there in plenty of time but I spent too long gazing fondly into her eyes and had to run for my plane. But it was worth it. When I finally got home, Son 2 was bouncing off the walls with excitement to see me, and Wife complained in a sullen monotone about everything that had gone wrong since I left ... which seemed to be a long list. Yup, I guess I was back home.

Good news, bad news

Last night at home was almost like a “good-news, bad-news” joke. The good news was that everybody raved about dinner (Cajun shrimp). The bad news is that Wife told me she had met with Pop again. You remember Pop, right? She assured me they did not come to the house but met at a fast-food restaurant somewhere.

… Oh, and then she drove him home.

And she claims that her motive is that she still wants to get her money back from him. But I have to wonder … is she just constitutionally incapable of drawing anything to a close and then sticking to it? How can this be?

Never mind, it’s only a rhetorical question and I long since realized I should just sigh and roll my eyes at this kind of behavior. But it baffles me.

You don't count

It's strange, but I find that whenever I try to explain some kind of philosophical principle to Wife – I mean something I live by, something ethical, and I also mean something I think she doesn’t live by or I wouldn’t bother to explain it – whenever I try to explain this kind of thing I always overstate it so egregiously that I make it comical or absurd. Of course I don’t act like I find it comical – if she and I are arguing about fundamental ethical principles I am typically very much in earnest – but I always make the kind of overstatement where if I were asked about it later, once my blood had cooled down, I would say “Oh no, of course not; what I meant was something a lot milder, a lot less extreme, namely that ….” But my philosophical statements to Wife are always sledge-hammers, never tuning forks. I don’t know if it is because I get carried away by the heat of the moment, or because I figure I have to make big statements because she will niggle small ones to death, or because … well, I don’t really know. It is very strange.

Does anybody else in the world argue with a spouse over philosophical principles? Naah, I didn’t think so.

So it was dinner time last night, and I made a tofu-and-chickpea curry along with boiling rice and steaming some broccoli: hardly exciting, but I just got back from a trip abroad and so was planning the week’s recipies in the last half an hour of the workday. I served Wife only a tiny bit of everything, because she hasn’t been eating much lately; but I gave Son 2 and myself each somewhat larger (more “normal-sized”) servings. We ate and talked about the day. Son 2 cleared his plate and asked if he could have some dessert. By that time Wife had eaten her broccoli and pushed the other food around her plate, and she told him yes if she could have some too. She got up to put her curry back in the pan.

I was irritated on multiple levels, most saliently two: as a cook, that she was foregoing my curry for ice cream; and as a parent, that she was behaving in exactly the way parents traditionally forbid their children to behave. So I asked, altogether too peevishly, “Should I just stop cooking for you altogether? If you are just going to put the food back anyway so you can have ice cream, why don’t I simply buy and cook less food in the first place?”

She answered that she liked some of the meals I make more than others, and that it would be logistically inconvenient or impossible for her to make her own meals in the same kitchen so that she could eat at the same time with us, and more in this line, and I kept insisting that all this was completely beside the point. Son 2 actually tried to join the conversation briefly to say that he thought Wife got the point quite clearly, and I had to tell him that no she didn’t and could he please stay out of it. But I also found that I was totally incapable of continuing the discussion out there in the kitchen. The inhibition against arguing in front of Son 2 was so great that my mouth wouldn’t work. I asked Wife to come back in the bedroom where we could close the door.

Once there, I tried to explain myself … and here is where my statements started to morph into absurdity. I began solidly enough: “The point is that this is not a restaurant. In a restaurant you get to ask for exactly what you want, and their job is to serve you; then if you don’t like what you get you can send it back and make a scene with the waiter. But in a family the point is to eat together. This means …” and here I started to overstate the point past what I really meant, “… that the question what you like is completely irrelevant. It totally doesn’t matter what you like. If you make something I don’t like, I smile and I am nice about it and I eat it without complaining, because it really doesn’t matter whether I like it or not! And I expect the same thing of you! Regardless what I make, I expect you to smile and to eat it and not to complain!”

She asked, “But when you cook for a family, isn’t the point to fix what people like?”

I replied, “No, the point is to fix what will nourish everyone. If I were just going to fix what you like, it would be all ice cream and doughnuts.”

“I like other things too!” she protested. “And besides, I don’t complain about everything I don’t like. There are a lot of things you make that I don’t like, and I eat up most of them without complaining at all.”

I answered, “In the first place I don’t think you have any idea how often you complain, because I think most of the time you just complain on autopilot and don’t even hear it. So you probably honestly believe that you complain a lot less than you really do. But in the second place, surely you understand that there are more ways to complain besides just using words. I count rolling your eyes, sighing, inflecting your voice in a sarcastic way … all of that. And yes, you do it a lot.”

“Well, I have to wonder if you deliberately fix meals you know I will hate?”

“Of course not. In fact, I avoid a lot of meals that I would enjoy because I’m trying to steer around what you like and don’t like. If I were cooking just for myself, I’d make a lot more things with cooked greens (which I like) and mushrooms (which I love); but I know you won’t eat them.”

“Cooked greens are disgusting.”

“That’s a matter of opinion, and I disagree with you. But the point is that I don’t make them anyway.”

“I’m sure there are a lot of recipes in the world that don’t include chard!” [I am reasonably sure that what she meant here was, “Why do you insist on cooking so many vegetarian meals?”]

“Not as many as you might think. I can’t cook the way I did ten years ago, back when we only had a few different things – pork chops, spaghetti, broiled chicken, all on a rotation year in and year out – because I’m 50 years old and no 50-year-old man can afford that kind of cholesterol in his diet.” [Health isn’t the only reason behind the large number of vegetarian meals I make, but I figured it was a reason that she could hear and understand.]

“I didn’t know your cholesterol was too high. What is it?”

I wasn’t about to give her a number, so all I said was, “Well, it sure will be too high if I start cooking like that again. I’m 50, and I can’t eat that way any more.”

“No, I suppose not ….”

“And anyway, this is avoiding the main issue, because the main issue is a lot bigger than food. It is just this: I go through life assuming that whatever I want doesn’t matter – food or anything else – and I have made major life decisions on that basis. And I think you don’t believe that at all. And I just don’t get that.”

Of course, I don’t really believe this, certainly not in that form! If I had to defend a proposition like that philosophically I could never do it. At the very least, there is a distinction between tastes or minor preferences, which can change like a will o’ the wisp, and fundamental values. A better way to say it would be that some preferences are more important to me than others, so I am willing to dispense with the low-priority ones without missing them. I don’t know why I was overstating it so to her. But I did.

“Ummm, … no, I don’t.”

“Well, didn’t your parents ever teach you that what you want doesn’t matter, and that it is up to you to adapt yourself to other people and the rest of the world? Because that’s the truth and it is what grown-ups are expected to do. And if your parents never taught you as much, then I don’t know what to say. I just think that was very irresponsible on their part.”

What did I just say??? Did I really want her to think that other people’s parents spend their time indoctrinating their children with the idea that their likes and dislikes truly don’t matter? I don’t believe that. Why did I say it? What I really wanted to convey was the value of a kind of reticence that holds back from asserting itself too forcefully, as part of a mutual give-and-take that holds any group together – a give-and-take springing from mutual respect and consideration. I would never really want to make it all or nothing. What could I possibly have been thinking??

“No, they didn’t teach me that at all.”

“Then they failed in an important duty, because learning that is part of the difference between adults and three-year-olds. Little kids think that what they want is important and they insist on it. They throw tantrums if they don’t get it. But when you grow up you should learn that what you want really doesn’t matter, so that you are more relaxed about it and don’t insist all the time.”

“But when you cook vegetarian meals, isn’t that because you like them?”

“Sure, but that’s not the point. If I’m doing the cooking, sure I’ll cook something I like; when you cook, so do you. The point is that when you cook, I smile graciously no matter what you put on the table. I don’t have to like it. Because fundamentally what I like or don’t like doesn’t matter.”

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to live like that.”

“Happier. If you really think that what you want matters, you’re going to get really cranky trying to get it and you are going to expect that it will make you happy. And as a simple matter of fact, it won’t. The people I know who have gotten the things they thought they wanted are never made happy by any of it. But if you realize that what you want doesn’t really matter, that it’s just bubbles floating this way and that because tastes are so changeable, then you don’t get upset when you don’t get it because you can let go of all that. And you can be happier.”

Do I really think this? I guess I didn’t pull it completely out of my ass … I mean, in a certain very warped way it reflects the Buddhist teaching that craving leads to suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but it’s reassuring to me to think there might be some respectable opinion out there that I was distorting. Maybe it wasn’t completely crazy. But it seems to me I was saying it crazily.

“Anyway,” I went on, “that’s why parents should teach their children that what they want doesn’t count. So they will have easier and happier lives.”

Whoa. Again, do I really believe that? I’m sure my parents never taught me anything like that, or at any rate not in so many words. They taught me I had to be polite to others, of course; and somewhere aong the line I learned to feel shame if I appeared too grasping or self-centered. But that’s not what I just said, is it? I just said that parents should inculcate the message “You don’t count,” which seems extreme. Have I ever taught the boys that? Surely not!

We went on for a while, back and forth this way and that, but towards the end I posed the following question to her: “If I had done just what I liked every minute for the last twenty years, would we even be sitting here having this conversation?”

At first she jumped to her default answer, “I have no idea.” But then she thought a minute and added, “You probably would have left me long ago.”

The conversation kind of sputtered to a stop, the ideas getting smaller from there rather than bigger. And then soon she was exhausted and fell catatonically into bed.

But I was thinking some more about what I had said, and I began to wonder something. Yes, of course the things I said to her were grotesque and outlandish. “You don’t count”??? What kind of philosophy is that for guiding your life? Of course I got carried away. And of course if I were to try to defend any of this rationally, I would first scale it way, way back and nuance it a whole lot before I would even make the attempt. But all the same … how do I say these things when I talk to myself, when I try to assess my own behavior or my own choices? Am I really so sure that I am careful to nuance the message the way I would have to before I could possibly try to defend it as true? Or do I say it to myself in just the same way, using just the same broad brushstrokes?

When I first began to mull last night, the question I posed myself was more limited: The times in the past that I chose to overlook how incompatible Wife and I have always been in the basic ethical principles we use to guide our lives – all those times I hung in there – was I making the intellectual mistake of treating fundamental principles the way I treat ephemeral tastes? In other words, since I knew that I should eat up when at somebody else’s table (regardless of what I thought of the food), did I make the mistake of treating my ethical principles with the same disregard, telling myself that it didn’t matter so long as I reaffirmed the communal bonds (meaning in this case the bonds of marriage) which are more important than personal preferences? Is that why I hung in there so long?

This morning, I realized that the question can safely be stated more broadly: All those times that I hung in there, was I making the more fundamental mistake of telling myself flatly that I don’t count? Could it be that the reason I state ethical principles in such a cartoonish and uncompromising way when I am arguing with Wife is that that is the way I really believe them myself?

I wish I could answer some of these questions with “No,” but I haven’t convinced myself yet that I can. It may require more thought.


Postscript: By the time we were done in the bedroom, Son 2 had put himself to bed. This morning he barely spoke to me. It is times like this that I start to despair of any decent relationship with him in the future. But then I remind myself that all the same, I have to do whatever I have to do. If it doesn’t turn out the way I like, … well, what I like or dislike doesn’t really count ….

Would you rent a car for this man? part 5

More drama Wednesday night, but it doesn't matter. (In fact I tried to post it by texting from my phone, but the messages seem to have gone off into space somewhere. Maybe they'll show up here all in a jumble two weeks from now.) Thursday, Wife saw Counselor, who naturally had a much sounder suggestion. He advised she should just walk away. Consider the $200 and the jewelry as irretrievably lost and abandon all contact with Pop. Block his calls from your phone, don't text him ... as far as he is concerned you should just drop off the face of the earth. Sure, it means losing the money and the stuff, but it also means you don't risk him doing you damage. Call it a fair trade.

OK, fine. But of course it's not that easy. Next, Wife spent the afternoon with her friend Leia, who insisted "No, you have to get the police to stop him so he doesn't prey on others." By the time she got home she was all confused. I asked what was she going to do, and she said "Well I guess tomorrow I'll go to the police," but without much conviction in her voice.

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

"Really? Because I think I know what you want to do pretty well at this point."

"Maybe you know me better than I know myself."

"Well think about it. We've been talking about the police for a couple of days now, and every time you have said you'll contact them later. If you wanted to call them, you'd have done it by now. So you don't want to call the police. Fair enough, but that means taking Counselor's advice and having no contact with him. In fact, you'd have to do that part either way, because part of calling the police is putting out a restraining order. And once that is in place you can't contact him either."

I spent a while trying to convince her that contacting him again was a bad idea, because she really wanted her stuff back. But she seemed to acquiesce. Then after dinner she said she was antsy and wanted to go for a walk.

Now, Wife never "goes for a walk." Even when she gets on a rant about how she needs more exercise and "tomorrow" she's going to start walking regularly, she never does it. If she has to get somewhere that is too close to drive, she'll put it off rather than walk over there. So I arched an eyebrow inquiringly. She then said, "Or maybe I'll just go to bed," and slunk back into the bedroom.

I gave her about five minutes and then came back. Not surprisingly, she was keying in some text message on her phone.

"Who are you texting?"

"My friend Kevin." [Another guy she met on OKCupid.]

"Let me see."

"No! You can't read my private text messages!"

"I don't want to read your messages, and I couldn't care less what you are saying. Show me the header where it says the name of whoever you are texting to."

"No! Get away! This is private!"

"Show me the name."

And after I stood there stock still for a minute or so, she relented and showed me the name. Of course it was Pop.

"Delete the message."

With much grumbling, she did.

Then I exploded, "What were you thinking? The whole idea is that you drop off the face of the earth to him! You can't do that if you keep contacting him!"

"I was going to tell him that his absolute last chance to give me my stuff back was to meet me tomorrow at 10:00 at the Starbucks near ---. And then if he didn't, it's 'tin-star time.' "

As an aside, how many "last chances" has she given him so far? Never mind. What I said was, "Are you out of your mind? Why would you tell him that?"

"I really want my stuff back."

"But he'll never give it back. Understand that your stuff is lost permanently. And you can't afford to contact him, because every time you communicate with him in any way you lose and he wins. And on top of all that, you don't threaten him. What kind of person do you think he is?"

"I think he is a criminal."

"Right! And that means the last thing you do is threaten him with the police. Especially if you are really going to them, you can't tip your hand. And don't you see that threatening him would endanger you far more?"

"No ... that's why I wanted to meet in a public place, like a Starbucks."

"And then what? Then he doesn't show up, and after a while you get disgusted and leave; and as you are walking across the parking lot to your car, you're accidentally side-swiped by a crazy but unidentifiable driver in a car with no license plates, and you end up in the hospital or the morgue. Is that what you want?" [I admit this is an extreme scenario, but I wanted to get her attention. And you may have noticed that can be hard to do when Wife gets an idea stuck in her head.]

Silence.

"Of all types of crime, which one is the least often solved?"

"Murder. I know that."

"And???"

Long silence. Then, ... "OK, I won't contact him."

I have no way to know if she'll stick to that, and no way to enforce it. Needless to say, her word is worthless. But I hope I scared her enough that she'll back away from doing something stupid. If only she weren't so damned possessive about getting "her stuff" back. But of course she is.

I can hope.

Would you rent a car for this man? part 4

It just doesn't stop.
__________

Scene: Dinner time. Hosea and Wife are at the table. Son 2 is on a week-long field trip with his school, miles and miles and miles away.


Hosea: Well, what interesting happened in your day?

Wife: Well I got another text message from Pop asking if we could get together for lunch or something in the next couple of days. I said sure, maybe, if he could pay for it.

Hosea: I thought Pop was completely gone. Didn't I hear that right?

Wife: No, I never said he was completely gone. I asked him when I could have my money and jewelry back, and he said he can't get them for a few days but maybe Friday.

Hosea: Jewelry?? What jewelry?

Wife: Oh, that was when he was over here. He came back into the bedroom and saw my jewelry chest open, and he was admiring it. Then I made the mistake of leaving him alone in the room for a few minutes, and afterwards when he left I couldn't find this and that piece any more. I called him and told him I knew he had them, but he just yelled at me that I was crazy. I told him I wanted them back or I'd call the police and report them stolen, and he just said "I'm not talkin' to no fuckin' tin star!" Then he hung up on me.

Hosea: When was this?

Wife: Last week. Then Son 2 saw him loading stuff into his van, and there was a box whose lid was open, and the lid was mirrored ... and Son 2 said the inside was all metal. So I'm sure he has a bunch of jewelry in there that he was packing into his car.

Hosea: Son 2? Wait a minute -- how did Son 2 get into the story?

Wife: That was last Friday, when I texted him to ask when we were getting together so he could pay me my money and he texted back "We aren't. I'm gone." That was right about the time I was supposed to pick up Son 2 from school. So first I called Avis to make sure he hadn't rented another car on my credit card, and then I went to get Son 2. Only after I got him I drove past Pop's house to see if I could find him there. He was loading a bunch of stuff into his truck because he was leaving town, and I told him I wanted my money back. He said he'd have to get it from the ATM downtown, so I could drive down behind him if I wanted. We both got in our cars and somehow he worked it so that I pulled out first; so I headed off in the direction of downtown and then he peeled out of his driveway going the other direction. So I turned around and tried to follow him; and I called him and asked "Where are you going?" He said, "I'm trying to lose you." Well I wasn't going to drive recklessly with Son 2 in the car [Although you'll remember that's not what she said to her other Internet boyfriend.] So I asked Son 2 to dial 9-1-1, and then I told them that he had been drinking and now was driving ... also I described the car and gave them the license plate ... also I said that he was probably transporting stolen goods. The lady on the phone said, "You sound like you know him!" and I told her, "Yes I know him." She said, "Well I'll put out an APB, but we have to catch him in a violation to have a reason to pull him over."
__________

There was more. I can't remember it all. But after a while I finally had to ask, ...

Hosea: Have you called the police yet, to report the jewelry stolen?

Wife: Well not yet. I don't want to make him mad, because he has got a terrible temper. And the last time I asked him about all this he said he needed a few days and then he could give me "all my stuff." So I figured that might include the jewelry as well as my money. And I told him I wanted to be really clear on this because we seem to keep having these communication problems. Like then he went into a rant where he accused me of calling Avis five times, and I told him "If they said that then they were lying because I only called them once and I don't want to be accused of something I didn't do."

Hosea: OK, listen. Stop. You can't waste time worrying about what he accused you of.

Wife: But it wasn't true.

Hosea: Who cares? Whatever words come out of his mouth, they don't mean anything. You can't let yourself get caught up in worrying about them. If he promises something, or if he accuses, or whatever ... it doesn't matter. You have much bigger things to worry about. His promises especially don't mean anything. You will probably never see your money or jewelry again.

Wife: Yeah, I was afraid I might not get them back ....

Hosea: You can't be afraid. Just face up to it as a fact. Especially if you haven't gone to the police yet. And every day you put it off makes it less likely. And even that probably isn't your biggest worry. Everything you have told me about this fellow makes me suspect that you may be at risk for him physically hurting you. [I don't know what I heard that told me that, and I don't know if I have reported anything in this story that gives you the same impression or if those details have fallen through the cracks of my narrative. But when I said this I felt it as a certainty.] I don't know if he'd also be likely to hurt Son 2 or me, but I think there is a good chance he could come after you.

Wife: I know. That's another reason I haven't gone to the police yet.

Hosea: But you can't solve this yourself, and there is nothing for you to do except go to the police. You should have done it as soon as you saw the jewelry was missing.

Wife: I guess. But then I have to get a restraining order against him at the same time. And you know, I'd feel a lot better in this house alone during the day if you'd give me my gun back.

Oh great, just what we need! After all, she has shown so much prudence, restraint, and responsible judgement lately ... not. The last thing we need is for her to be armed with lethal force on top of it.

Hosea: No, I think that's a bad idea. There are too many stories of intruders getting the gun away from homeowners and using it on them. [I figure that's a reason she might buy.]

Wife: Oh, but mine is a snub-nosed .38, so it's really hard for anyone to grab the barrel and force it away from me. All I'd have to do is pull the trigger.

Hosea: But you wouldn't. Look at everything that has happened the last ... how long has it been?

Wife: I met him six weeks ago.

Hosea: Fine, look at the last six weeks. Time and again you have had something happen that should have been a trigger for you, that something was wrong. And every time you have hesitated and pulled back. That's why you haven't called the police yet. That's why you keep giving him "just one more chance." And that moment of hesitation is all he would need to get the gun away from you, because in that moment you wouldn't shoot! Figuratively speaking, you haven't "shot" at any time in the last six weeks, when you've had plenty of reason. So you wouldn't this time. Don't tell yourself that you'd have the nerves of James Bond. You'd falter ... and that is why it is far safer for you not to have a gun in the house. All you need to be armed with is a telephone. If he comes to the house to threaten you, call 9-1-1.

Wife: But he could kill me before the police get here.

Hosea: That depends on how long you wait before calling them. If you wait till he's already inside and holding a weapon on you, yes. If you call when he pulls up in front of the house (assuming you already have a restraining order) ... and if you then leave the phone off the hook so they can track the call, bolt the door, and hide deep in the house ... they'll get here pretty fast. We're in a city, not way out in the country -- the police can get here very fast when they need to.

Wife: Well, I would really need the restraining order. I don't even know how to file those.

Hosea: Ask the police. They deal with that stuff every day. They'll walk you through it.

Wife: [vacantly and without conviction] Yes, well I'll do it tomorrow.

Hosea: Hey, I have another question. If he did want revenge, do you think he'd take it on me or Son 2? Or just on you?

Wife: Oh, I think he'd just want revenge on me.

Hosea: Well then what if -- once you have filed a police report and given them all the information they need -- what if you disappeared? Go spend a few days with my parents. Or go stay with your friend Leia ... she'll be back in town tomorrow. Then you just won't be around. Would you be safer that way?

Wife: Maybe so, ... yes ....

Hosea: Well think about it.
__________

I know -- it's crazy. And why am I still here? I know -- that's crazy too.

When I told her she would falter at the critical moment, I was only partly thinking of the stories she has been telling me. Also, I was thinking of this post here, written by Alone over at The Last Psychiatrist. It is way too easy for a bully to manipulate -- almost to mesmerize -- his victim, to make the victim do anything he wants while the victim squirms but can't break out of the spell. I have known too many bullies in my life not to recognize the pattern. And it is obvious that Pop is a bully. So yeah, I recognize the pattern.

It's a mess.

Sex at Dawn, and the Republic

Name anything written by Plato. I bet the first thing you thought of -- maybe the only one -- was the Republic.

Tell me something about the Republic. Once we skip past "It's long," "It's boring," and "I think we had to read it in college but I just blew it off" the next thing to trip off the tongue -- the first remark that has anything to do with the content -- is probably "It's idealistic and impractical."

Plato gets that a lot. In the central books of the Republic, Socrates describes a made-up city, and commentators ever since (starting with Aristotle) have fallen all over themselves criticizing how silly his ideas are. It got so bad for so many centuries that in the late 1940's Leo Strauss proposed (and his students have later extended) the theory that Plato was just kidding. Strauss's student Allan Bloom, responsible for one of the most widely-used translations of the Republic, amplified this suggestion by saying that the Republic is really meant to expose the true nature of political life, and the true demands of political justice, so that we can all see just how problematic politics and justice are once we realize that the true demands of political community are impossible.



Impossible? How so? Well, there are plenty of fish to shoot in this barrel, but Bloom focusses on three specific proposals, which Socrates himself acknowledges are huge, saying they will provoke "three waves" of ridicule from his listeners: that the Guardians of the City should hold all their possessions in common, that they should hold their women and children in common, and that the whole show should be ruled by philosophers. Bloom says that every listener will naturally reject these proposals, because they leave us no fragment of private life, ... because everybody will naturally want to hold on tight to his own personal property, nobody will want to share his bed-partner with another (because of jealousy), everybody will be attached to his own children at the expense of all the others, and besides philosophers are ridiculous. Who would ever accept being ruled by them? The point, Bloom goes on to explain, is that real community -- if the word means anything -- is like that. Political groups, social groups, kinship groups ... they require everything from us, they ask for our total devotion. Holding anything back is invariably perceived as disloyal, as unjust, even (potentially) treacherous or treasonous. But since (Bloom concludes) we can't help but hold things back -- since it's a simple fact of nature that we won't give up our stuff, that we won't let our neighbors fuck our spouses, and that we'll always cheer for our own kids at Little League -- perfect justice and perfect community are impossible. There is and will always be a permanent tension between the demands of justice, of community, of the group, and the immutable requirements of human nature.



And ... well, that's fine, I guess. It's actually an impressive argument when he spells out all the details. Only, ... pause with me for just a minute to remember the argument of Christopher Ryan's and Cacilda Jethá's delightful book Sex at Dawn. Ryan and Jethá argue a number of things, but foremost on the list is their claim that the way we organize sex and child-rearing -- all our presuppositions about chastity and fidelity, about infidelity and immorality, about legitimacy and bastardy and parental affection -- that all this is a product of the agricultural revolution, or at any rate of the introduction of food surplusses that can be saved. They argue further that among "immediate-return foraging societies" these concepts are unknown. And they wind up by pointing out that for most of human history, we grouped together into bands that lived by immediate-return hunting and foraging. Durable property was unknown, food storage was unknown, ... and so were most of the concepts we use today to think about sex.

In fact, the more you think about it, the more you see that the first two of those three huge proposals actually describe the very same societies Ryan and Jethá write about. Holding all property in common? If "property" means rocks used for pounding, why not hold them in common? There are plenty lying around on the ground. Sticks sharpened to spears? There are always more sticks. Cars, computers, refrigerators, houses, money, jewelry, swords, metal of any kind? Nope, hadn't been invented yet. Look at the description of the Bushman community in the first few minutes of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" -- before the Coke bottle -- and you'll see what I mean.


What about "women and children"? Socrates says (at Stephanus 457 D), "All these women are to belong to all these men in common, and no woman is to live privately with any man. And the children, in their turn, will be in common, and neither will a parent know his own offspring, nor a child his parent." And right away his interlocutor (I think it is Glaucon at that point, though it is a little hard to keep track.) objects that this arrangement sounds both impractical and undesirable. But isn't this exactly the scenario that Sex at Dawn describes? That in paleolithic communities, men and women fucked whom they wanted when they wanted, and then the whole tribe raised children together, loving them all without caring who was whose? The whole discussion of "partible paternity" and of "intersecting webs" of mothers and fathers in Chapters Six and Seven are about exactly that. Again, so far from being impossible or impractical, this measure looks like something that may well have been the norm for most of human history.

The third proposal, rule by philosophers, we can probably write off as a piece of special pleading. But Bloom points out that in principle we would all like the wise to rule, more or less. We may disagree that philosophers are especially wise, but that is another point. Even here, though, I think there is not a total disconnect. Ryan and Jethá write that in the societies they study there is very little social hierarchy and a broad sense of social equality. Similarly, there is a reluctance to do what somebody else tells you, unless there is a better reason than that they said so. In a society like that, the most influential people are likely to be the ones who are most persuasive. And since these tribes are small and everybody has known everybody else forever, that doesn't mean someone who can run a slick propaganda campaign. Most often it will mean someone whose ideas have proven right before. Philosophers? Maybe not. But the wise? Maybe closer.

This way of looking at the subject casts a whole new light on Bloom's claim that Socrates here shows the nature of community and justice. If this is how we lived for most of human history, if this is (as far as anything can be) the way we evolved to live, then an immediate-return foraging community may indeed be the very kind of community we are built to live in. So far as we can infer purpose from long-term evolutionary development -- and I am bracketing a huge philosophical discussion here, about which let me say right now only that whatever you think of the idea of innate human purposes, it is pretty clear that cats have long claws and strong pouncing muscles in order to catch mice -- I say, so far as we can infer purpose from this kind of evidence it seems plausible that we were meant to live in immediate-return foraging communities. But these are indeed exactly communities where all individual interest is subordinated to the communal interest, where there is no private property to speak of, where sexuality is not channelled to monogamous forms of expression, and where children are raised by the whole tribe as a huge pool of fathers and mothers and uncles and aunts. In other words, the true nature of human community, the true nature of political organization, the true nature of justice ... at heart it really is this kind of communal life. Bloom is right about that. The only place he goes wrong is to say that it is impossible, when that's how we lived for most of our life as a species.

So is the tragic Straussian prognosis wrong as well? ... the gloomy story that says there is a permanent conflict (or "tension") between what is best for the individual and what is best for society? If a just society is possible because we lived that way in the Stone Age and they live that way now in the Kalahari, does that mean we truly can achieve justice and community in our lifetimes?

Sure. Move to the Kalahari.*

But short of that, ... no, I don't think so. Ryan and Jethá are really clear about saying that times have changed. With the introduction of agriculture and property, it becomes impossible to lead a life of the kind of sexual freedom they describe. And as sex goes, so goes justice. As long as we live around agriculture and property -- hell, as long as we can hoard resources for tomorrow, which may not take much more than salt and fire -- for so long we will live in an "ownership society."** And for so long will the joy of true community in the deepest sense -- including (but not limited to) a social acceptance of promiscuity -- be unavailable to us. We can't get there from here. Sadly, Strauss and Bloom are right about that too.



* Or Mars. This kind of society also looks exactly like the Nest that Valentine Michael Smith sets up at the heart of the Church of All Worlds in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. In fact, for some years I have toyed with the idea that Stranger is really an extended gloss on the Republic. Call me when you get there.

** Stephen Snyder's review of Sex at Dawn is really good on this point, so I am glad that Ryan and Jethá posted it on their website.

Would you rent a car for this man? part 3

Well, the denouement of this drama with Pop seems to have come rather suddenly. Here is as much as I have been able to piece together so far. If there is more later, I'll be sure to fill you in.

All along, Pop had told Wife she would get her money back on Friday. (This is the nearly $200 she spent renting him a car ... God only knows why.) Of course she didn't.

What she told Son 2 and me over dinner is just that she texted him to ask, "You said we'd get together today. When are we getting together?" And he replied, "We aren't. I'm gone." She double-checked with Avis that he hadn't rented another car on her credit card and then gave up.

But she must have driven over there and surprised him, because she told one of her other Internet boyfriends that she chased Pop down the freeway at high speeds, nearly got into an accident twice, and finally lost him. Then (so she went on) she called 9-1-1 to contact the highway patrol, and reported his car for reckless driving and driving drunk.

Of course there is no way to know if they took the call seriously, or if she sounded like a crank (or jilted lover). Talking with Son 2 and me, she said that she had told Avis she suspected Pop of having stolen a ring of hers and fencing stolen property. (Huh??) Naturally Avis answered, "Well Ma'am, we really can't do anything about that but I can verify that he did not charge your card again after that first day." So I wonder: did she repeat these stories to the highway patrol as well? Did they make her sound more balanced and credible?

In retrospect, I also can't help shaking my head over the high-speed chase. Sure, I wouldn't want to be defrauded out of $200 either, but is it worth dying for in a car crash? But people do crazy things when they are angry. I only hope she looks back on it the same way, so that if there is ever a next time she can stop herself first before doing any damage.

What a mess.