Doorman

The skin is stretched thin across his skull, eggshell fragile, warm with heartbeat. A hand on the back of his head could crack, shatter -- fingertips filled with responsibility, with soft whispers.

He asks me, always, the same two questions. We are walking through the small stretch of forest near his apartment building, cold clear brittle glass afternoon, sunlight sharp against our faces, and he looks down, sideways, at me and asks me, How is philosophy doing? And I laugh, and tell him that seems like a question he should ask philosophy directly (and I think of you, and how philosophy is stealing our freedom! and I want to tell that story, but it is too complicated and trying to piece it together in my head makes me feel tired, so I do not). Then, of course, he asks about love. And I smile, say that love is doing very well indeed (and then I wonder what that even really means -- to say that love is going well, does that mean that you are loving very very well, or that you are being loved very very well, or simply that you are able to see it all around you, if you look...or even if you don't) and he says that makes him happy to hear, and he wishes it were the same for him, talks about how his heart is still full of his ex even while he is with his new girlfriend. When I see him two days later, he shows me their pictures, asks my opinion (of what, precisely, I am still not sure); he compares them to each other -- in small ways, or large ones, or all of them --and I interrupt and tell him that is not fair to make comparisons between people like that, that is, finally, unkind. That it is, perhaps, impossible. And he pauses, his eyes focus on me, and he nods his head, agrees (but we do it all the same, every moment, don't we, after all?). He tells me the story about cooking breakfast for a prostitute, right after the last time we saw each other, and later asks me if I am manipulative. And I answer, without even really considering, that of course, I am -- we are all manipulative, in one way or another, occasionally or often or almost never or every single moment.

Not as gentle as you are...or, well, nobody is gentle the way that you are...and I think about this, because I wonder how gentle I really am. Or, I know that I am gentle, sometimes -- maybe even often -- but i don't know if it is by default or only on purpose, and if I am not always hard, then maybe...brittle? (When I am with you, I feel gentle, or gentled -- maybe this last year has made me softer, more permeable, both less and more distinct.)

Waiting for the tram the other night,a stranger approached me -- middle-aged, hair oiled back against his scalp, making me feel greasy just looking -- and started in with the sort of bullshit nonsense that comes out in these situations, often -- oh, you are so beautiful, do you know how very beautiful you are? Which is a ridiculous question to ask anyone, because there is no answer to that. A tight smile and an inward withdrawal, silent, but audible all the same. And suddenly he grabs my head, my face, in his palms and leans over like he is going to kiss my forehead, the top of my head. (And there is a lot that doesn't bother me, and a lot that I will tolerate, but you do not get to just fucking touch me like that without at least asking first.) I am a hypocrite, of course, because every day, constantly, I fight the urge to reach out and embrace complete strangers -- and while I keep myself from doing it, or mostly, the desire is strong and present, and what makes me think that my touch would be somehow any more welcome than this extremely unwelcome one (but of course, I think it anyway). And I almost cross the line into shoving him away, and, louder than I mean to, say Excuse me, no! And he and his friend seem almost offended, like I am the one committing some social faux pas, rude and ungrateful for what is being offered.

We laugh, this time, more than anything else, we laugh -- quiet smiles and loud throat-exposing mirth. I see, finally -- maybe -- the place he holds in my life, the where and what and how, standing quietly beside a hidden door. The cocktail napkins in the bar are printed with pseudo-wise sayings, tweaked into not-terribly funny, really, jokes -- written in English , for whatever reason, and he asks me to translate all of them (his English limited to short bursts of phrase that sound like he is chewing up the words even as he speaks them, crunchy and deliberate -- when he says we invest in people I laugh so hard I lose my breath, beg him to say it one more time) but it is near-impossible , because puns and wordplay do not translate very well; every phrase requires several different explanations, and then even more to fully clarify why, specifically, it happens to be funny (or why it's meant to be), and half the time it is still unclear. (How to explain that two words that sound the same in English, but have two different meanings, and one of those words also has an alternate slang meaning, which that same word in French emphatically does not have, but here is what it would mean, but that has nothing to do with what it translates to, and are we done talking about this cocktail napkin yet because my head is starting to ache...)

I tell him he was the first person I ever loved -- not liked or desired or anything like that, but purely, really loved. He waves away the statement with a careless hand, and I insist. You know, they say -- (and here I think of you, and what you would say) -- that when you love someone, you are never really loving them. They are functioning as something else entirely in that moment. They are opening a door to love inside of you. You never mean "I love you", what you mean to say is "You open up the source of love inside of me". I might not (do not) agree with this entirely, or always, or even often. But there is part of it that sounds, sometimes, a tone of truth. I look at him, and say, You opened up my door. So thank you. And he smiles, eyes gentle like my palm on the back of his head, and leans in to hug me, one-armed, cheek pressed warm against my face.

We are all so, so thin-stretched brittle fragile. So many strings to tear and break and tangle. It would be wise -- or simply good -- to keep that whisper-thought in mind, and make our fingers softly pliant.