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.