today during a break in cashiering i told the other cashier that i had a line from the billy joel song, "pressure" stuck in my head. the line goes, "all your life is channel thirteen, what does it mean, what does it mean." actually, i didn't remember the sesame street part in between thirteen & what does it mean. it's been a long time. the cashier, whose name rhymes with sigh, looked me straight in the eye and stated flatly, "it means you need a girlfriend." i was taken aback. i waited for him to smile. i waited for the joke. i turned and walked back to my cash register. i told the young woman cashiering next to me about the song in my head. she told me about her friend skipping past an 80's station and how she insisted on keeping it there for the song, "take me home tonite" which she considered a not-so-bad 80's song, and then sang the chorus to me. then suddenly, the man whose name rhymes with sigh jumped in and informed us the bret michaels has a tv show about restoring RVs and that the guy who did ice, ice baby has a show about fixing up homes. then the young woman & the man whose name rhymes with sigh began snapping their fingers in unison while chanting ice, ice baby and the woman who was checking out at my register started rolling her shoulders and then the young woman cashier pointed at the guy whose name rhymes with sigh and demanded he rap and he began to rap the song and do a little dance move. i am remembering this at home, in my bathroom, after dropping a whole roll of toilet paper in the bowl. do i need a girlfriend? i look outside the little window, noticing how the fog & mist are beginning to shroud the morrison bridge. it's been awhile since the street was wet like this, and i think to myself, need is an awfully strong word. need? how about, it would be nice or strategically advantageous? but need? and then it hits me - have i been walking around all this time looking like a guy who needs a girlfriend, NEEDS A GIRLFRIEND! and both, not knowing i need a girlfriend and simultaneously unaware that everyone else is looking at me as THE GUY WHO NEEDS A GIRLFRIEND!
All your life is Channel 13Sesame StreetWhat does it mean?PressureDon't ask for helpYou're all alonePressureYou'll have to answerTo your ownPressure
Ah, but you know--this may well be a case of "pin the tail on the obvious." If you'd had this same conversation and you had three kids under the age of five, your remembering those lyrics would have meant "You need to get a babysitter and have an evening to yourself." If you were in school, you would "need to take a night off from studying." People are anxious to diagnose other people's eccentricities. Perhaps you do need a girlfriend...or perhaps you need associates whose attunement to need goes a bit deeper than the obvious. And this in itself is a wondrous paradox, isn't it? Saying that you need a girlfriend is shorthand, in many ways, for saying that you need acceptance and belonging. If the people around you provided more depth and insight of community rather than saying you needed a girlfriend, perhaps you wouldn't "need" one so much. Or at all. (Incidentally, I've been single for quite a while, but nobody ever tells me I "need a boyfriend." They tell me I "need to stop working so hard." It's the most obvious thing about me...and while on the surface it's an accurate observation, the real truth remains obscured by the obvious.)
ReplyDeletewow, thank you! i think you're right about the eagerness of people to diagnose and then exult in its naming. i think i may also fall into a kind of hubris of believing i have discovered all of my mysteries and also feeling too confident in the security of my secrets or privacy. but there are ways that we are in the world that the world sees that we don't or forget. the other night i was thinking about how presumptuous it is to point out faults & shortcomings as if anyone is perfectly well-rounded in all aspects of their life, as if that's at all desirable? we don't get to everything and we won't. i do need deeper company. it feels absurd to live here and yet feel like i'm starving for depth and connection, but i am. in a weird way it feels like i'm lonely & unfulfilled in a marriage with kids. surrounded by people & occasionally teased with moments of connection or promises, working for years beside people who only want to talk about themselves, not that they have anything to say really, but whose social status allows them to bask in their superficiality. or just being refused because i'm not in my twenties anymore, or i don't read the same books, watch the same shows, listen to the same bands, blah blah blah. it's weird how you can spend so much time at work with people and get to know them really well in some ways and yet not know them. but can you expect or even hope for depth from colleagues? don't you have to make do? something that struck me when i first moved here was that some of the people who also moved here were trying to get away from somewhere else because they weren't allowed to be themselves, that their native environment demanded a curtailing that was too severe to endure without terrible pain? it hit me that i feel that way living among them. maybe that's what needing a girlfriend really means, the recognition of a need so flagrantly unmet that it stinks the room.
ReplyDeletethank you so much for commenting! it was so validating to read.
It's a strange thing about Portland, though...it is a land of superficial connections. It's really easy to strike up a conversation with a stranger here, and difficult to get to know people deeply. I've heard this many times, from many people. I think that I am unusually fortunate in that I have a job that allows me to connect with people in some intense psychological/emotional ways that shows all of us who we really are, and many of those people have become genuine friends. But the curious crucible of circumstance they experience with me allows that reality to occur, and without it, I would know very few people. This is indeed a town of people who are in hiding for one reason or another, and while many of them extend a hand to say "Yes, I can live out in the open now," they are still cloaked, deep down. And they are threatened, sir, by someone who is luminous with self-knowledge and who wants to see and be seen.
ReplyDeletefunny, i was cashiering today and using the experience to practice being open & present. after each transaction i would place my palms down on the counter and take a breath, make eye contact with the next person, open my chest, and welcome them. at some point during the hour i realized how marvelously unique each person's approach was, and i don't mean that everyone was flamboyant necessarily, but definitely unique, even at its most subdued. it just amazed me that there could be such a variety to such a simple thing, approaching a cash register to buy something.
ReplyDeletethanks again, i'm really enjoying the exchanges.
i am tempted to ask what you do but i would be happy not to know if you would prefer not to disclose it.
I experienced that same thing when I worked for a while at a wine bar...there are many ways to understand acts of service, even when those acts are as simple as cashiering, or taking an order. The way I showed up often influenced how the customer showed up...which drove my co-worker crazy, as he could never figure out why I didn't have difficult customers, and why I got better tips than he did. The simple reason was that I showed up with the intention of holding space for people so that they could enjoy themselves, and he didn't do that...he was just, you know, working.
ReplyDeleteI sell real estate, and I also work as a freelance editor for a self-publishing company. It's the real estate that leads to connections with people, although actually, so has the copyediting, in ways that I would never have expected.
Feel free to ping me on the Facebook if you'd like to converse offline sometime...I live in SE, and I'm always interested in talking to people who are approaching life thoughtfully, and by thoughtfully I don't really mean brain-thinking, but thoughtfully as in responsibly and with contemplation.