Conversations with Women

"Hey, what are you reading?"

I've kicked off my high heels and have snuggled deep into the corner of the couch. There is, I suppose, technically a party going on around me but I haven't been listening. I stretch the kinks out of neck and reach for the beer that's been rapidly warming next to me. I lift the book out of my lap and show her the cover.

"A comic?"

"Yeah. It's called Preacher.  It's about . . . theology. I guess. An absent god. It's incredibly violent and extremely well written and I just finished issue one and I can't stop reading it."

She gives me an odd look.

"What?"

"You're sitting here in high heels and a minidress, at a party, reading a comic book?"

"Would it be better if was an actual book? And it's not actually a party. We see one another three times a week. And besides," I say, gesturing to the shoes next to the couch, "I had the good manners to take my heels off."

She shakes her head and asks the question again, for emphasis. "You're here, at a party and you're reading comics?"

"It was a tough week."

"Between the comics and the dress and the heels, you are some nerdy guy's fantasy girl, you know that, right?"

"Yes."

***

"If they don't treat you well while you're dating them, they're sure as shit not going to treat you well when you're married."

We're sitting out among her flowers, sharing a bottle of wine, having a conversation we should have had ten years ago.

"My big thing is that I want them to get along with Daddy."

She shakes her head. "Kelly Marie, as long as they're good to you, your father will learn to love them, I don't care if they're a card-carrying NRA member who hunts every weekend after opening day." She sees the look on my face and laughs. "Or if they're a skinny nerd who couldn't shoot or fix a car to save his life. They just can't treat you badly."

"I know, Momma. I know."

I don't know she hears the catch in my voice but she gives me a hard look and pours us both more wine. "You've dated some actual honest to goodness assholes, haven't you?"

"I have."

"Men aren't supposed to treat you like that. You know that, right?"

"Yes."

***

"Why would anyone recommend that book to you?" 

"In her defense, she didn't know I get anxious about serial killers."

"Well, what did you do then?" 

"So then all I could think was "What if she's only being nice to me so she can lure me there to murder me in some horrific way?"" 

She groans.

"Then I realized it was probably the combination of sleeping pills and anxiety making me a little crazy and decided it might be best to just close my eyes and fall asleep. And besides, statistically she's way less likely to be a serial killer than if she was a guy." 

"At least you're getting a lot better at recognizing when you're being crazy. You know that, right?"

"Yes." 

***

"Am I crazy for being pissed about this?"

"Absolutely not. Huge invasion of privacy aside, it's as bitchy and judgmental as the female relatives you were dealing with last weekend."

"Everyone here seems to think that I'm being crazy and that it isn't a big deal."

"It's an extremely big deal." I can hear the invisible italics. "It's hard when people don't extend the courtesy to you that you extend to them. To wit: that you see their lives, decide "that's not for me" and still manage not to be an asshole about it." She pauses. "Are you still out in the rain?"

"I am."

"There is nothing wrong with the choices you've made, you know that, right?"

"Yes."

***

We're sitting, quietly, on opposite sides of the porch reading separate books. Mine, a stack of X-Men comics from the library. Hers, a thick biography of Madeleine Albright. 

My feathers are ruffled from a series of rotten interactions over the past week. We're hanging out today because we've both been traveling and haven't seen much of one another lately, but I'm not in the mood to open my mouth. So here we are, sitting on opposite sides of the porch, reading. She occasionally tells me some fact she finds interesting from her biography, I sometimes read a joke from my comic, but we say fewer than fifteen sentences over the course of six hours. 

Eventually she closes her book and I reach over for a hug. 

"You are the only person the world I wanted to see today. I love you very much, you know that, right?"

She smiles back. 

"Yes."