I'm going to Paris in a little bit so random stuff is just flowing. Just had this little short guy come out, so thought I'd share.


From the fleeting direction of her eyes, I had no sense of direction. Neither in her thoughts nor in my own. I took a break from the laborious conversation to take in the surroundings I hadn’t really understood before. I cut her off mid-sentence, somewhere around “I can’t” and “I won’t.” I waved a cursory hand to stop a conversation I had long since broken off in my mind. A teak bar, dark mahogany wood paneled walls, surly bartenders, ugly barmaids. The customers were clearly Parisian regulars, motoring through a language that was part-French, part-sub-machine gun. I understood none of it. At this point I didn’t understand my own language, so perhaps that wasn’t much of a surprise. This wasn’t a place where psyches came for nourishment. They came to be battered, punished into submission, flayed alive and offered for a dollar-fifty a pound in a convenient street market for tourists who don’t know any better. This was not a place for casual discourse about a topic most commonly discussed in the privacy of comfortable bedrooms and quiet, fresh-smelling salons. What the hell was I thinking in coming here? And too, what message was she sending?
But then again, what formula have I ever etched into the folds of my brain’s oft-misunderstood connections? I didn’t have an answer then. I still don’t.

Paris was happening everywhere. In the food, in the atmosphere, in the wine. It was marvelous, and I hated every bit. We came on a lark, on some quest we thought meant everything. When it happened, it came quickly, without forethought. I loved the idea, but she thought better of it. Maybe we should wait until the relationship matured. Maybe. I won out. Or lost.

We sat there for minutes at a time without words, sharing momentary glances of the most awkward nature. The world passed outside. The two of us sharing a two-person table fit for a thousand. I was staring into a grain in the dark wooden table that worked its way past my water glass and disappeared underneath my steaming crepes, which I hadn’t yet touched. I can’t answer why, but this felt natural. I needed to feel a measure of control. The situation had spiraled so far into my own absurd culture that I felt no mooring to what was truth anymore. I let this whole thing happen. I just let it go, and I had to be there to watch the beautiful twisting metal melt into the brown earth and the flames rise higher and higher as everybody just watched.

“What are you thinking?” she said.

A long pause followed. That crack in the wood… something about it. It explained things better than I ever could.

“I don’t know. How big of an asshole that cab driver was, I guess.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t trivialize this. You know how I hate that.”

“I know. I don’t know why I do that. I guess I think it helps. I don’t know what to tell you.” I was telling the truth. I really had no idea. The wheel had a mind of its own. If it chose to crash me into an embankment... well... I'm just along for the ride.

“Tell me all this matters. Everything you’ve done. I haven’t stopped trying for one minute. We’ve been here for two weeks and I haven’t stopped trying for one minute. Sometimes I think that’s all the time you’ve given this. It’s like it doesn’t register. I’m looking around and seeing roses on tables and people holding hands and you haven’t given me so much as a fleeting glance. Things haven’t… they haven’t been okay. You know that. I don’t know why I even have to say this.”

That crack… it was speaking for me. She just couldn’t hear it. I spoke up quickly but the words weren’t there. They were fake. She could tell.

“Look, I thought the place could fix this.” I told a lot of lies to her, but this wasn’t one of them.

“The place? Where… what place could possibly fix six months of a loveless marriage?”

This stopped me. The crack disappeared, the teak, mahogany, the asshole Parisian cab drivers, the beggar outside… all of it. All gone. Nothing had any cushion anymore. The world was suddenly jagged, full of spikes and very, very cold. It’s funny how everything matters one moment and at once the curtains are on fire. There is no way to come back from that. I still don’t know if she understood that.

I got up slowly at first. She was crying. The world was still silent but full of fury and anger. The cobblestone streets outside. The lovers walking two-by-two past fashion boutiques with careless smiles and wayward glances. It was dark outside now. I couldn't remember how long it had been that way. I bowed my head and walked briskly to the train station, collar upturned to the cold and eyes glazed from the sting.