The Glass Wall

The mood came suddenly.  Previously, his companions had been with him; now they were around him.  The separation came swiftly—between standing to leave the first bar and entering the second—and absolutely.  He might have been amongst perfect strangers rather than friends.

It was a lonely mood, but a powerful one.  He felt no joy, true, but no pain.  His mind became ruthlessly analytical.  He watched the interactions of those in the bar as a stranger and could describe their trajectories with almost mathematical precision.  He anticipated their actions, their gestures, almost their words.  The vision was intoxicating; he used it as an addict uses a drug.

Now that cruelly clear vision saw a man—early thirties, of indeterminate background—approach one of his female companions.  They turned around one another like neutron stars or two marbles rolling around the rim of a bowl.  There were changes, close passes that spun into distance, but he knew how it would end.  He had known the moment he saw the pair form.  The laws of social physics permitted only one end.

He should stop it.  He liked the girl in more than an innocent manner, and liked the man’s looks in much the way that a fish likes hooks.  So he should stop it.  It was impossible.  He did not know how.  If he had, it would still have been impossible.  What was happening was could not be stopped.  His predictive powers relied upon all actors—particularly himself—remaining in their roles.  Indeed, those powers required this, for the clarity with which he saw the current trajectory made any other unthinkable.  He could see, but not change.  He who cannot change should not attempt to do so.

This was the truth of the glass mood.  He could hear; he could see, but he could not talk, could not move.  Such acts were as useless as tapping on a wall.  Indeed, that was how it felt to him, as a glass wall separating himself from the world and all in it.  How can a man who is not in a place interact with those who are?

On some level, he understood the illusory nature of this mood.  Did not all men and women start in the same situation as he?  Are they not able to connect with one another, speak openly to one another?  It seemed that they did not suffer from glass mood; if it affected none but him, what could it be but sophistry and illusion?

Yet on the base, animal level of emotion, he wondered: how can they not feel it?  Can any man go through life without feeling this barrier around himself?  Are all men doomed, not only to die alone, but also to live alone?  And if that is so, does all of man’s art consist of fleeing this truth—all joy consist of hiding from that reality?

Now, through the clarity of the glass mood, he saw the two-body problem come to its logical conclusion.  The man—for the man was driving the affair—stepped in front of her, slipped a hand along her waist, brought her to him.  She returned the kiss, hungry, furious, passionate.  It was as he had seen.

It should have hurt.  It should have cut him deep.  It did not.  It was a thing that was, and had to be, and could not have been otherwise.  He might have been watching a perfect stranger, rather than a girl he knew and desired.  That, too, was part of the glass mood.  He felt no anger, no pain, no shame, no desire, no joy.  He felt nothing, thought nothing, believed nothing.  There was only the clarity of vision, as if viewing the world through crystal.

This mood inevitably found him in such environments.  Loud, overcrowded, composed mainly of a sea of strangers; the great scrum of men that defined such “social” hours—he understood its purpose, but it was anything save social for him.  The inputs were rapid, overwhelming—extremely loud—incredibly close.  The glass mood was distance.  It allowed him to observe—to filter—to isolate—to protect himself from the noise.  It was self-preservation.  He could not be in such a place.

He could escape.  With supreme effort, he could force himself to feel, to act, to engage again with the world.  But to do so was futile.  The escape seldom lasted long.  The glass mood was an attractor.  Or perhaps the environment around it was a repulsor.  It mattered not.  Slip into it, however briefly, and return became inevitable.

Always such gatherings ended the same way.  He was weary of them.

He must change the ways in which he met other men and women.  Three or four in conversation, he could engage, enjoyed engaging.  Groups of three or four dozen were another matter.  And the social scrum—it never encouraged meaningful conversation, only the stale, obvious questions that serve to shield rather than reveal a man.  He knew this, because he used them in this way.  His responses to such questions served to build a labyrinth around himself.  A labyrinth is no less labyrinthine for being made of words.  And he knew that others did the same.

It was ironic.  In a setting in which men were supposed to most show themselves, most men wore masks instead.

He walked home alone.

He always walked home alone.

Breaking In

She sat across from him, clearly puzzled at his revelation.  He, for his part, stared at a point about four centimeters to her left, looking past rather than at her.

“You’ve been here for five months and we still know nothing about you,” she said, still with that puzzled expression on her face.  “Why do you spend so little time with us?”

He was silent.  It was a legitimate question, but entirely the wrong one.  He did not know how to explain this.  He must try.

“Have you ever moved away from home?”

“No…” her eyes unfocused for a moment, then refocused on him.  “I made an Erasmus in Dublin, but I suppose it’s not the same.”

It wasn’t.  The comparison gap was oceanic.  Bridging it seemed impossible.  He turned to look outside, trying to slow the centrifuge that his mind had become.

“Put yourself in my shoes for a moment.”  He stared at the building opposite but did not see it.  “You’ve moved away from home to go to university.  You’ve left family, friends, classmates; you need to rebuild your entire social group from zero.  It takes years, but you manage it; at the end of college, you’ve finally found a small group of people whom you trust absolutely, with whom you can be utterly comfortable, whom you can always call when you need something.

“But your job is a dead end, so you move in order to continue your education.  All the friendships you’ve spent four years building are rendered, not quite irrelevant, but pretty damned close.  Now you need to start all over again.  And, just to make it harder, you’re living in a different country, which uses a language which you can neither speak nor understand and an educational system which fundamentally differs from that with which you know, to say nothing of the bureaucratic nonsense that such a move necessitates.  Well, that’s rough, but you’re still living in student housing and going to classes, so you still meet people.  Once again, it takes time and energy, but you manage to build a group again.  Three years later, you’ve found people around whom you can leave your shell.

“And then your career compels you to move again.  Once again, a new country, a new language, a new system, new bureaucratic nonsense.  But this time, you live in a flat with two other persons who have neither the time nor the apparent desire to socialize.  This time you are working, which means no classes, no obvious way to meet persons outside of your laboratory, no organized ‘introduction week’ where one can meet fellow newcomers.  And, just to finish off the whole affair, your colleagues—the people with whom you spend the vast majority of your waking hours—they have their own lives outside of the office, and those lives do not include you.”

That was the fundamental barrier that he felt upon entering a new city, a new office, a new life.  He came knowing nothing and no one, looking to rebuild a social circle from scratch.  Yet those with whom he worked, those most obvious starting points, always possessed a circle, a schedule, a life which did not include him.

Ah, yes.  That was the kicker.  He could endure long hours at the office; he had always preferred to work alone.  But on days outside of office…to remain in a place that held nothing…not to know who to trust, who to call…and to know that to act would invite rejection and not to act would lead to isolation…

Was this why he so despised living with other men?  In his experience, men were preoccupied with work, parties, their machines; they did not understand the need for human contact.  Or perhaps they did not wish to seem to need it.  Such an admission would be a sign of weakness.  Either way, men seldom created those small but essential signs that signaled safety or community.  Flats inhabited by men inevitably came to be persons living alone together.  To be lonely while alone; ah, that cut deep.  But to be lonely while next to other persons—that cut deeper.

He should look elsewhere, in his gyms, his hobbies, his weekends.  Yet to find the time and energy to look elsewhere, while deep in the whirlwind of moving and integration…to find spare time, to make any plans beyond the bare necessities of survival, required energy, discipline, and most of all stability.  None of these things existed in the first dizzying month, nor had they existed in the months following.  Each time he seemed on the cusp of attaining them, a new emergency obliterated his gains.

He had managed this problem in Switzerland by hosting dinners, organizing trips, starting hobbies—in short, by remaking himself into a magnet.  He had succeeded and come to love it, but at a heavy price in time, energy, and money.  More than once, it had almost cost his M.Sc.  To repeat that performance now, on his current financial budget, at a time when he needed to write a proposal, to teach, to write reports, and to finish a project—it was impossible, an unaffordable risk.  The necessary stability did not exist.  He had to weave a net of an entirely different pattern, and before that, he had to invent the pattern.  He did not know how to begin.

And in honesty, he was not certain that he wished to.  He had often wondered if he gave more to those relationships than he received.  Often he had wondered if he was attempting that great futility—to buy camaraderie, to buy loyalty.

Was that what he sought?  Loyalty?

He turned back to her.  His eyes snapped to focus.  “Your first question—why I spend so little time with you—start by turning it around.  Why do you spend so little time with me?”