Went Without Saying
This is a work of fiction, greatly inspired by ChungKing Express. No, you’re probably not mentioned in it. Don’t let the first-person style confuse you.
Yes, I find you quite attractive. But I’m not paying attention to you because the pointedly evasive disinterest and the dismissal so calculatingly polite it was offensive convinced me that my attention would be better paid, well, anywhere else actually.
But maybe you didn’t mean it that way. After all, if you really wanted to be dismissive then you wouldn’t have bothered with polite and disinterest doesn’t have to be evasive. So what were you thinking?
Mind if I take a guess?
I think you’re not comfortable with yourself. You’re barely out of grad school and already second-guessing your life choices. It’s a side effect of having bought into a deeply defective cultural narrative that told you that you were doing the right thing, the noble thing, the secure thing, the intrinsically valuable thing which is all of those things because it doesn’t pay well. And now you’re stuck with extended work hours out here, not even really on the union ladder with your supposedly secure job under budgetary threat while student loans are squeezing your meager wages.
You’re smarter than this and it grates on your psyche to be stuck here. Yes, they’re lovely people and all, but in the back of your mind you’re thinking that you didn’t choose this — you were duped into being coerced. And so your body is here with a pleasantly extroverted smile, but the dullness in your eyes gives you away as you nod vacantly at whatever inane chatter springs up around you.
Don’t get me wrong — that’s not an indictment, just an observation. You don’t see me taking a job doing the right thing, the noble thing, the intrinsically valuable thing, et al. No, I’m just a hard-working corporate slave. But what you don’t understand is that I can be here just because I want to be here. You may have a slight envy of the life choices that put me where I am, but think that my volunteered presence here — contrasted with your coerced presence — makes me something of a freak. True that, I suppose.
So that’s the first part of my guess: you have a touch of envy and curiosity, but your ongoing self-reproach holds you back from investigating things which are out of your known-but-uncomfortable sphere. And that’s how you’re stuck between interest and rejection.
But there might be more. This is where I go out on a limb. More than I already have, I mean.
Let’s suppose for a moment that you find me attractive. But you’re also an attractive person as previously stated, and well-educated… better-educated than I, actually, and more so’s the flaw in the cultural narrative. But with that going for you, the social groupings that you’ve naturally joined over the years — because people convinced you that you were an attractive person and therefore obviously extroverted, never mind recent trends — have almost certainly yielded a mate, I’d guess of at least 18 months. But your mate doesn’t understand your recent discontent with your life, your listlessness, the indignity you feel every time you attend of these charades. And now you’re wondering if you can get what you want, or even what you need, out of the relationship because you’re feeling more stuck with this than with them. But with the threat of disintegration there, the last thing you need is some beautiful freak tempting you away. Because you’re not done yet and you refuse to be done yet because you’re a better person than that. But if your current partner leaves you, then you might have a use for somebody like me after all.
And with that you’ve suspended me in your cognitive calculus between desireable and dangerous. Which would be flattering, in a way, except that I’m not into mental bondage games.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe you’ll never forgive me for having said all the things that went without saying. But I’m not paying enough attention to care.