Chapter Thirteen

Doc was sitting up one morning eating his cold Pop-Tarts. Here it was, April and already summer. It was summer again while people could still remember the last one. They started killing each other immediately and getting very irritated. Something about the wanton brutality made Doc associate freely to that damn woman in the white leather.

Embraces remembered or still vaguely hoped for.

“Oh no,” Doc said. “This is a memory that is too much to take. It is the illusion of something that no longer exists but still should exist.”

Trying to escape this melancholy manifestation, Doc went back further in his mind, flipping through images until he could relax with a benign one and watch between commercials. Nostalgia is so much more palatable than real feeling.

Okay, there were certain truths he couldn’t face. But there was still some comfort for Doc when he remembered, from time to time, that he was basically a nice person. It was all because he listened. He listened when people spoke so he knew what they cared about and what they needed. Without listening there is no love. There is nothing. Doc knew this. He hated interrupters. He despised them. They don’t let other people say their words. They lock them up. They stop them every time. Just like that woman in the white leather.

What did she have that made me feel so much?

(There are so many inadequate responses to a question of this nature. It is hard to see the precise shapes of things. The precisely stacked boxes of air and boxy trucks that bring The New York Times. It’s hard to sum up those people who pass you on escalators. Some people have sex by putting fishhooks in each other. Couple this act with a simple understanding of the basic function of all living creatures to expand and contract. Now, try that with fishhooks.)

But there was still more to listening. It can’t simply be waiting until the other person is finished before you talk. Listening means not having something to say back until after they’ve told you everything. Even if the other spoke in code, all Doc had to do was take it slow. For example, if someone said,

“I just shot up heroin,”

Doc knew that they had just shot up heroin.

Doc looked out the window. Sometimes in his imagination a bad person did good things and was redeemed. But was the bad person actually Doc himself, awaiting another’s benevolence? Or was the bad person someone else, and so he’d have to forgive her? It was so hard to know/decide. If only they could talk things over for a minute so he could remember how awful she really was.

Doc had a dream. Three white people were standing on a street corner. All were junkies. One, a man, had shot up so many times that there were bleeding track marks and needle pricks in his arm. There was an inadequate bandage soaked in blood. He was standing in casual conversation with another drug addict who held a bloody syringe. A third was staggering toward them, on the nod, finally impacting his arm on the other’s needle.

At first Doc thought it had something to do with penetration. That was how he had been trained to think about things. But after some time it became clear to him that using drug addicts as metaphors was perfectly natural since they were a normal part of his environment. It would be like someone in Nebraska dreaming about the plains. Then he realized that this was a dream about three different states. About having too much. About having something to give. About being in need. When it came to listening, of course, Doc was all three of these people.

He recalled an instance of failed listening.

 

DOC

I’m leaving you because you don’t listen.

 

THE WOMAN IN WHITE LEATHER

You left me because you think my artwork stinks. You left me because of your mother. You left me because you won’t stay in the relationship for the good and the bad.

 

To Doc, this was a litany of diversions. Why would this lady in leather project all of her imagined deficiencies onto a situation where all she really needed to do was be quiet? Apparently she preferred to be completely despised over simply paying attention. What was she afraid to hear? What was it?

 

Doc proposed another alternative for this scenario.

 

DOC

I’m leaving you because you don’t listen.

 

THE WOMAN IN WHITE LEATHER

(Silence.)

 

Silence is the constructive response when being told you don’t listen.

 

(Silence.)

 

Then Doc would propose.

WOMAN IN WHITE LEATHER

I’m sorry I didn’t listen.

 

Then she would simply do it. She would let Doc say every word without being rushed. She would let him have a long time to say it. She would not be planning her rebuttal all along. She would ask clarifying questions, not trick ones. But she would only be able to do that if she really wanted to know. If she didn’t really want to know it wasn’t love. If it was, she would have listened and then she and Doc could stay together.