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Authors: Jac Jemc
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paper from the floor in her arms and stepped onto the fire escape. She sent the armful into the air in a flutter. “You have to go down there and find out for yourself. I’m not going to talk about this book, or recommend it. This was my sole act of promotion. This is all I can do.”
“Haven’t you already messed up this philosophy a bit by telling me how wonderful the book is, by telling me I could go down and get a page, and figure out what book it is? I would be reading it with that expectation then. I’m not just randomly stopping on the sidewalk to pick up a piece of trash.”
“So don’t go down there, then.”
A moment ago I had been fascinated. Now I was seeking loopholes in her grand gesture. Why did I feel the need to ruin this for her?
As usual, I digressed. “I’m not going to go pick up a page. I think it would foil the plan. I’m sad I can’t read this book that was so important to you, though.”
“So read it! I don’t care. This isn’t some experiment that can go wrong,” my wife replied. “It was something fun I wanted to do.”
I had invested more in the act than she had. I had assumed she meant the entire action on some magnificent scale.
She usually functioned at this level.
Just this once, she had apparently wanted to share something in an unobtrusive way, without imposing herself, her opinions on the work.
She had sought to enlighten the world through a random act that could never be tied back to her.
I had made the entire situation reflect her.
And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed she was performing all these acts and tasks of hers at random. She would pick at the beginning of a spool of thread and tire of unwinding it before coming to the end. Only once do I know of her managing to maintain interest until the spool was spinning, naked, but in sight of the huge knot of thread of which it had spent its life being stripped.
21.
M Y WIFE FORCED ME TO paint wine glasses one evening. It had been something she’d been talking about for a long time, and one night she had all the supplies laid out.
She said, “We need to do something together. We need to make something. At the same time. We need to start producing.”
We had been married just over a year.
She bought the glasses, bought paint and set up a painting party. I was so tired that night, wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed. I didn’t want to do something creative. I didn’t want to do something silly and sentimental. I didn’t want to do anything that required energy at all.
I certainly didn’t want to think of some picture or symbol to paint onto a glass that I’d be asked to explain, make meaning where there needn’t be any.
What I wanted was out .
I wanted away that day.
I had come home with the intention of telling my wife I didn’t think I could last. I had married her in a blind spot.
My heart was pumping wildly as I turned the key in the lock, anticipating what I had no idea I thought I was going to say.
I was sure it was going to be irreversible. I was certain it was going to hurt her. I knew I would be even more tired at the end of the night.
For weeks I had felt trapped and weighed down.
In the first few months the marriage had been nothing but splendid. I had someone to come home to every day. I had a woman who loved me, who was endlessly interesting, who I dreamt of while she was lying next to me.
As that first year progressed though, I felt simultaneously ostracized and smothered, this being the first occasion in which I ever had to answer to anyone but myself. My wife, I came to learn, was extremely private. She simply refused to talk about certain things and sometimes refused to talk altogether.
And yet there was nothing to accuse her of. Despite these feelings of being left out of some loop, there was nothing concrete that I might point to as evidence. I would leave conversations fulfilled, and then sitting at my desk the next day I would remember a question I
“Haven’t you already messed up this philosophy a bit by telling me how wonderful the book is, by telling me I could go down and get a page, and figure out what book it is? I would be reading it with that expectation then. I’m not just randomly stopping on the sidewalk to pick up a piece of trash.”
“So don’t go down there, then.”
A moment ago I had been fascinated. Now I was seeking loopholes in her grand gesture. Why did I feel the need to ruin this for her?
As usual, I digressed. “I’m not going to go pick up a page. I think it would foil the plan. I’m sad I can’t read this book that was so important to you, though.”
“So read it! I don’t care. This isn’t some experiment that can go wrong,” my wife replied. “It was something fun I wanted to do.”
I had invested more in the act than she had. I had assumed she meant the entire action on some magnificent scale.
She usually functioned at this level.
Just this once, she had apparently wanted to share something in an unobtrusive way, without imposing herself, her opinions on the work.
She had sought to enlighten the world through a random act that could never be tied back to her.
I had made the entire situation reflect her.
And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed she was performing all these acts and tasks of hers at random. She would pick at the beginning of a spool of thread and tire of unwinding it before coming to the end. Only once do I know of her managing to maintain interest until the spool was spinning, naked, but in sight of the huge knot of thread of which it had spent its life being stripped.
21.
M Y WIFE FORCED ME TO paint wine glasses one evening. It had been something she’d been talking about for a long time, and one night she had all the supplies laid out.
She said, “We need to do something together. We need to make something. At the same time. We need to start producing.”
We had been married just over a year.
She bought the glasses, bought paint and set up a painting party. I was so tired that night, wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed. I didn’t want to do something creative. I didn’t want to do something silly and sentimental. I didn’t want to do anything that required energy at all.
I certainly didn’t want to think of some picture or symbol to paint onto a glass that I’d be asked to explain, make meaning where there needn’t be any.
What I wanted was out .
I wanted away that day.
I had come home with the intention of telling my wife I didn’t think I could last. I had married her in a blind spot.
My heart was pumping wildly as I turned the key in the lock, anticipating what I had no idea I thought I was going to say.
I was sure it was going to be irreversible. I was certain it was going to hurt her. I knew I would be even more tired at the end of the night.
For weeks I had felt trapped and weighed down.
In the first few months the marriage had been nothing but splendid. I had someone to come home to every day. I had a woman who loved me, who was endlessly interesting, who I dreamt of while she was lying next to me.
As that first year progressed though, I felt simultaneously ostracized and smothered, this being the first occasion in which I ever had to answer to anyone but myself. My wife, I came to learn, was extremely private. She simply refused to talk about certain things and sometimes refused to talk altogether.
And yet there was nothing to accuse her of. Despite these feelings of being left out of some loop, there was nothing concrete that I might point to as evidence. I would leave conversations fulfilled, and then sitting at my desk the next day I would remember a question I
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