I knew S for almost a year. We started as friends, made a half hearted attempt to be more but could not and finally parted as friends. We decided it was best not to stay in touch and maybe it is just as well. Early into our acquaintance we once talked about our reading habits. He was fascinated by criminal psychology and forensic pathology - I wondered if it had to do with his father being a psychiatrist and his two long term relationships with highly unusual women. It was almost like his fascination with aberrations in human nature caused him to gravitate towards them - they both had an abundance. I had to wonder if the same was true about me given his interest.
He could make jokes about things like necrophilia without batting an eye. I would find myself laughing and then feeling strangely queasy that I did. I often teased him that he should try his hand at crime fiction - maybe he was destined to become the next Thomas Harris
His reading was confined to his subjects of interest and we could never come up with one book we had both read and enjoyed as adults. Everything diverged after Three Men In a Boat which we both had by the strangest coincidence read in third grade.
I wondered if our paths could ever converge again. I have never read Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett or James Ellroy and he had no use for Derek Walcott, A.S Byatt or John Updike. So, I started to seek the happy medium believing that discovery would help us understand each other better. Perfume by Patrick Suskind turned out be just what we were looking for - we read the same collection of words to entirely disparate effect and meanings. Finding a book in common with S brought home the realization that the perception of what two people have in common, its outward signs and reality itself are very different things.
I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
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