Yes and some people claim that there's a woman to blame
And I know it's my own damn fault
- “Margaritaville,” Jimmy Buffett
With mock cheerfulness, she quipped, “I am a cheap date” when the check arrived. Although the announcement was expected – she uttered the same thing every time we had dinner – hearing the words, hearing the actual words pissed me off. Since she did not suffer from low self-esteem, the boomerang that she launched punctured my hypersensitive self-respect before returning to her with a satisfying snap for future deployment. Like most frugal people, I resent being called cheap, but resisted the temptation to tell her to shove it. According to my prelapsarian way of thinking, dinners in the ten to twelve dollar range are not cheap. And, besides the coed restroom was clean – a sure sign of an upmarket establishment in my estimation.
Casuist distinctions now sink like broken shards of a fine porcelain vase to the bottom of our mutual indecision. Attracted to her beauty and self-confidence, I was smitten at first sight. My solidity refracted through a hazy atmosphere of loneliness appealed to her maternal impulse – she would rehabilitate me. A mutual attraction grounded in shared interests and tastes and spiced with intriguing dissonances developed. As time wore on without consummation, her confidence, her overconfidence – declarative sentences punctuated with a hearty “Period. End of story” – curdled into a willful avoidance of reality in the Arizona sun as my solidity withered into unreconstructed stinginess, deliberate obtuseness.
After dinner, we went back to my apartment where she resumed her trenchant denunciations of my furniture – wrong kind, not enough, shabby. The same lame excuses stuck in my throat like a fish bone as intimations of comforting silence beckoned from just beyond the scrim. Failing to interest her in my latest deep thoughts, we parted with an awkward hug – she seemed simultaneously older but too young for me.
Desiccated, hope floated like leaf in the middle of an ocean as recriminations lapped against shores of my mulish obstinacy. With perfect records of failed relationships, we wordlessly negotiated whether to put this one on life support or euthanize it with indifference. I opted for the latter. It seemed cleaner. I miss her bubbly voice.
***
Two weeks ago last Saturday, I absentmindedly turned the knob to set the height of the seat on the stationary bike to fit my six-foot, three-inch frame, clicked the cleats on my shoes into the pedals, mounted the bike, and started pedaling leisurely before the spinning class began. Looking like an unstrung puppet, the startlingly thin instructor bounced into the stuffy room, twittered nervously like an excited bird, cranked up the formulaic electronica that passes now for hip music, and began issuing commands, incongruous with her slight frame. After taking at least three hour-long spinning classes a week for ten years – during some periods I would take seven classes per week – the music was boring and the innocent narcissism of the teachers tedious.
Faking it until the endorphins kicked in and stoked my enthusiasm, I lifted my hands from the handlebars and sat upright on the seat, pedaling slowly. Suddenly, I heard the sickening sound of a seat post sliding down and looked around to see which schmuck in the sparsely attended class had failed to properly tighten the knob on their seat post. As I was falling backward, the realization dawned on me that I was the schmuck. Milliseconds after my lower back and left hand thumped to the floor, I glared at the instructor as she rushed to my bike.
As I twisted my shoe free from the right pedal while reclining on the floor in supine position like a boxer who suffered a crushing body blow, she launched into an explanation of how to tighten the knob on the seat post without asking the one obvious question: “Are you alright?” Indignant at her lack of concern and insulted by her chirping nonsense, I rose to my feet and roared, “I know how the knob is used!” As I stalked out of the room, she restarted the class on an upbeat note, determined not to let a middle-aged curmudgeon interfere with her intrepid, inspiring happy talk.
Marching indignantly to the front desk, I demanded that the clerk accompany me to the room to check the bike. As he followed beside me, I scowled impressively, offering an expert opinion on the “ridiculous design” of the bikes. The old bikes had spring loaded bolts that fit into holes in the seat posts – making them more secure but less amenable to subtle adjustments of the seat height; the new bikes have threaded knobs that allow adjustment to any height with the concomitant risk of sudden failure if the device is not secured properly.
When we got to the room, he tested the seat and proved to my infinite chagrin that the post and knob were OK – I had simply failed to tighten the knob sufficiently. Humiliated once again, I turned on my heel and stalked out, keeping my fierce gaze sternly ahead. Still fuming, I took a shower and, to seal my reputation as a mad man, marched once again into the spinning room, purposefully avoiding eye contact with the instructor or the remaining cyclists, and copied the serial number off the offending bike on the chance that I decided to notify the club or pursue a claim. Small comfort for a wounded ego.
***
Recently, I moved to a different apartment in pursuit of lower rent and quieter surroundings. One evening, shortly after getting settled, the red, macho-looking Jeep in the parking space next to mine began to whistle and flash as I pulled in. Put on guard, I slowly opened the door, only to set off the full cacophony of the alarm – headlights flashing, horn honking, siren whooping and wailing. Abashed, I slunk away as quickly as possible with my head down, glancing furtively from side to side, hoping that no one would suspect that I was trying to jack the Jeep. The next morning, I left a note for the manager of the apartment complex asking him to address my discourteous neighbor.
That weekend (Halloween) the alarm accosted me again as I returned home on Saturday afternoon so I marched purposefully over the manager’s office to ask him in person to deal with the issue – and he said that he would on Monday morning while looking at me with bovine indifference as ghoulish revelers lurked and lurched in the background.
With one exception, the alarm continued to blast away whenever I unintentionally violated the personal space of the haughty Jeep. My frustration moderated into curiosity so I stopped by the office and talked to one of the sincere staff members who assured me that management would look into the matter. A day later, the manager left a voice message stating that he had talked to the owner of the Jeep who said that he planned to address the problem soon.
To my momentary relief, the next morning the alarm did not sound when I snuck warily into my car at 5:00 a.m. Properly set up, it blasted me out of my temporary complacency when I returned from working out (yes, I took a spinning class at another club). After fuming through breakfast, I unloaded on a bicyclist who passed me on the sidewalk by telling her in no uncertain terms that sidewalks were not a proper venue for bicycles. I am an expert on all things bike.
***
Challenges to my fragile, masculine dignity trigger automatic, instantaneous impulses to strike back and defend my manhood as deep roots of obsession ramify into the reptilian part of my brain if the impulse is thwarted. All slights, all affronts, all misdemeanors inspire an immediate desire to denounce the miscreants summarily. If not given an outlet, the urges transmute into grievances that fester while I probe incessantly at the emotional canker sores.
My large body deterred others from retaliating against my sharply worded retorts when I was a kid and allowed me to survive to middle age. With maturity, spaces usually open up between the desire for retribution and the verbal lashing out. The out-of-control displays of road rage are a thing of the past and emails documenting my contempt are wisely deposited in the trash can after they are composed and quarantined overnight.
Still, the desire for retribution seems inappropriate to the gravity of the threats – the impulse to fight or flight no longer enhances fitness. It has been decades since I have lashed out physically and often after the desire for revenge marinades for a couple of hours rationality gains the upper hand and the impulse morphs into regret and despair and self-loathing.
Increasingly, neuroscientists are demonstrating, we are strangers to ourselves – the title of David Eagleman’s book summarizes the human condition well: Incognito. A surprising number of emotions and thoughts are controlled by subconscious elements that developed in evolutionary contexts that are quite unlike modern society. However, the naturalistic fallacy prevents one from applying genetic excuses to boorish behavior. The battle to moderate and adjust those impulses is as close as the neighbor’s car or as far away as the humiliation of Gaddafi.
He’s seen a lot of women, but she never escaped his mind
And he just grew, tangled up in blue.
- “Tangled Up in Blue,” Bob Dylan
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