The Visible Man

  So how was I different, I asked. Certainly, I had no fewer issues than anyone else. In fact, I might have had more.

  “You didn’t immediately assume things. You asked questions, but you didn’t pretend like you already knew the answers,” he said. “Nobody else was comfortable with the information I refused to provide. They always assumed my unwillingness to tell them information was an unconscious attempt to tell them something deeper.”

  “Give me an example,” I said.

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” Y____ replied. “Look: You have a black husband. Right? And I’m sure the fact that you married a black man made certain people in your life skeptical of your motives. I’m sure close-minded people assumed that his blackness was part of the reason you were attracted to him, or that this had something to do with your father or your upbringing or your education or your liberal guilt, or that this relationship was somehow political. But would any of those assumptions be remotely true? Should you be required to deny those accusations, lest they become the conventional wisdom? I can’t accept someone who forces me to explain how I feel, simply to contradict a preexisting opinion they incorrectly applied in the first place.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “I know that feeling. But when did I ever talk to you about my husband?”

  “When we were sitting on the bench that day,” Y____ said. “Outside the coffee shop. You talked about your husband. He’s an academic, right? A historian? A big nineteenth-century guy, no?”

  I didn’t remember that part of our conversation, but maybe it happened. It probably did. My memory is good, but Y____’s was always better. It probably happened. I’m going to believe it happened.

  Sometimes he was just a weirdo.

  “You never talk about your romantic relationships,” I said one morning. “Most of my patients talk about those things constantly. But you never do. Have you ever had a serious relationship?”

  “Oh, not really,” he said. “There was a woman I dated in college—Alejandra Llewellyn. She was half Argentinean and half British. She had beautiful, condescending eyes. She listened to techno and cooked a lot of steaks. We were only together for seventy-four days. It was like having sex with the Falkland Island war.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Be real with me.”

  “Men who talk about the details of their sex life are not real people,” he said. “I’m not a rapper. I’m not a Jewish novelist.”

  It seems obvious to me now—and, in fact, it felt obvious to me, even then—that Y____ has never had a girlfriend and is probably a virgin. That he had been skipped two grades during his adolescence surely contributed to this; it’s not unusual for academically accelerated males to enter college with the stigma of asexuality. Very often, they embrace that discomfort as a personality trope. Y____’s unconventional physical appearance and his inability to understand human behavior (much less the needs of an adversarial gender) compounded that problem exponentially. I felt for him. It was ironic: It seemed so many of my insecure patients reveled in their over-the-top sexual histories; somehow, finding partners for empty intercourse was the one thing they could always succeed at. Over time, these oversexed patients would inevitably come to accept that unfeeling physicality complicated their mind and eroded their self-worth. It was an impulse they needed to overcome. Yet here sat the most self-assured, knottiest patient I’d ever encountered … and in his world, the act of physical intimacy was so terrifying he refused to engage with the concept on any level. He couldn’t even talk about it. Instead, he pretended not to care. He made jokes about it and tried to position me as prurient and intrusive. It was a hard thing to watch. I wanted to help him. It made me think his problems were profound, but still solvable. Maybe he was only missing that one chip?

  When our final August session ended, Y____ started to collect his things and leave (sometimes he brought a tote bag with him, usually filled with notebooks and half-empty water bottles). We were both smiling; our conversation had been lively. Our meetings were no longer work, and I felt guilty for charging him. I wasn’t thinking like a therapist anymore. I wanted Y____ to think I was spontaneous and laid-back. I wanted him to enjoy talking to me, so I asked a stupid question.

  “When won’t I see you again?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “When won’t I see you again?” I asked again. I thought this was so droll.

  “You’ll see me next week,” said Y____. “I look forward to it.” He wasn’t getting it. He didn’t get me.

  “Of course,” I said. “But I want to know when I won’t see you again. Will I ever get to see you cloaked? That first time I saw you, it was too intense. I couldn’t keep it together. I couldn’t appreciate it. But I think I could, now. I’d love to not see you again. Or is it too much hassle? I can understand why you wouldn’t want to come here in the suit. I was just curious.”

  (I have no idea what I thought I was doing here. Any criticism of my decision-making is justified. I was lost in my own head.)

  Y____ looked at me for a long time. The smile left his lips, but he was still smiling with his eyes. He was a supermodel.

  “What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?” he eventually asked.

  “Tomorrow? What am I doing tomorrow? Nothing.”

  “Meet me at noon,” he said.

  “Where? Here?”

  “No, not here,” he said. “Somewhere else.”

  “Like where?”

  “I’m not sure. How about the Capitol Building? Meet me outside the Capitol Building, where the tourists take pictures,” Y____ said.

  “Why the Capitol Building?”

  “Because it’s a place,” he said. “Just be there, unless this is some sort of mean joke. I’ll find you. Try to stand apart from other people. Don’t stand in a crowd. And come by yourself, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” I repeated.

  “Are you sure about this?” Y____ asked. His smile returned. “If I show up and you’re not there, I’ll be devastated. It will ruin my weekend.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t show up.”

  Today, as I type the words from that exchange and consider the choices I was making, I want to vomit. It’s like remembering I’d forgotten a baby in the backseat of a car. But on that summer Friday, I was excited. I was as excited as I get about anything. It was all I thought about for the next twenty-four hours. It was what I wanted, and I almost knew why I wanted it.

  The Thirtieth of August

  It was twenty minutes to 12:00 when I arrived on the grounds of the Capitol. John didn’t ask where I was going when I left the house. He always assumes there’s a predictable reason for everything I do. Y____ had said I should avoid crowds. This was not a problem; almost no one else was there. I sat on a metal bench and looked at the white dome in the distance. I remember thinking, “Why do so many capitol buildings look exactly the same? Who made that decision?” I also remember thinking, “This is such a picturesque place. It’s so lush. Why have I never visited before?” I also remember thinking, “The sky looks a little gray. Maybe it will rain. Will today not happen if it rains?” And then, suddenly, I was no longer alone with my thoughts.

  He was on the bench.

  “Good afternoon,” said Y____, his words slightly muffled by the fabric covering his lips. I looked directly at the sound of his voice. I saw no one, but I saw something. Imagine watching an IMAX movie with the dead center of the screen softly out of focus; that’s what it was like. I tried to locate his eyes, but that proved impossible. I brushed the back of my hand against his leg to get a fix on his location. He was exactly where I anticipated. I looked into the area where I should have seen his lap; I saw nothing but the coils of the bench and the grass underneath (its greenness looked muted, but the difference was only perceptible when I forced myself to search for it). It was shocking, but not like before.

  “Hello,” I said, turning to face the body that wasn’t there. “We’re both early.?
?? It occurred to me that—as far as the rest of the world was concerned—I was talking to my imagination. I was a schizophrenic. I pulled out my cell phone and held it to my ear. I was smiling. I assume Y____ was smiling, too. “This is incredible,” I said into my phone. I felt like a spy. “No matter how many times I remind myself that you can do this, I never really believe it.”

  “Believe,” he said. “Believe.” He didn’t speak in a stage whisper, but in a low register that sounded like talk radio played through paper-thin hotel walls.

  I imagined strangers looking at us from across the lawn, completely bored by their own colorless reality, reasonably assuming I was merely having a phone conversation in public. I pretended that I could see Y____, even though I could not; I constructed his facial expression and the intensity of his stare. Somehow, my projection was more attractive than who he actually was. In my mind, he was no longer Ichabod Crane. Now he was Conan O’Brien, or maybe Adrien Brody.

  We talked for ten or fifteen minutes about nothing worth mentioning—recycled conversations from the past four months. I wanted to say clever things, but my words were like bricks. He made a complimentary joke about my age, which should have been a signal. Because he was speaking so quietly (and because there were no physical cues to respond to), I can’t say for sure that Y____ wasn’t nervous, but I took my own insecurity as proof that he was at ease. He complimented me on my prescription sunglasses, which prompted me to instantly remove them. I was a teenager.

  “What should we do,” he asked. “What should we do today?”

  I had no idea. I asked if he planned on observing someone. He said, “Not today. Today is recreational. Today is for you.”

  We bantered over possibilities. He suggested we walk up to BookPeople and Waterloo Records, a pair of stores on North Lamar Boulevard about fifteen minutes away. It was something to do. We started walking; I turned off the ringer but kept my phone to my ear. As he moved, Y____ totally disappeared into the ether—no matter how closely I looked or how hard I squinted, the combination of movement and refraction dissolved him into nothingness. We passed dozens of people on the sidewalk; no one noticed anything. A bulldog looked at him quizzically but did not bark. It was godlike. I was godlike, or maybe just on a date with somebody who acted the way an obnoxious god might behave.

  We talked as we walked, but only sporadically. He was cautious, sheepishly admitting that he’d never been cloaked around a person who truly understood what was happening. I mentioned how difficult it was to talk with a person I could not see, because I didn’t know how my words were being taken. It was harder than the telephone, somehow. “In twenty-five years, that’s how it will be for everyone,” he said. “Kids live through computers now. They make all their friends over the Internet, so they don’t understand how non-verbal communication works. They don’t understand body language or casual sarcasm. They love irony, but they never understand any joke they don’t make themselves. In a hundred years, no one will be able to talk in public. Talking will be like blacksmithing.”

  He was in control. I was just a prop.

  We reached the record store and walked inside (I could feel him behind me as I pushed open the door, even though we never made physical contact). It had been years since I’d entered an actual record store, but the smell of patchouli was immediate, familiar, and transportive. The shop was full of customers who didn’t seem to be buying anything. The music was dissonant and deafening. It was too loud for talking and I had nothing to shop for. I flipped through posters of women posing with beer logos and tried to act like I was supposed to be there. My eyes kept darting around the space, constantly trying to figure out where Y____ was located—I often thought I knew, but perhaps I was wrong every time. After maybe five minutes, I felt a tug on my shirtsleeve. “Outside” was all he said.

  As we crossed the street to BookPeople, Y____ put his mouth next to my ear and asked, “Are you having fun? Or is this boring?” I said it was beyond fun. We walked inside the bookstore and wandered the aisles, avoiding congested sections and potential bottlenecks, pretending to look at books about philosophy and sex and advertising. Every so often, Y____ would knock a random hardcover off the shelf to watch me jump in surprise. It amused us both.

  We walked down to the store’s lower level. It was desolate. We were essentially alone, except for one female clerk behind a register. Suddenly, Y____ tapped me on the shoulder twice. “Listen,” he said. I listened. There was music playing over the sound system. At first I thought it was Muzak, but then I heard a pair of dulcet voices; there was a female voice and a male voice, but I recognized only the former (and just vaguely). The song seemed familiar, but I could not place it. “What song is this?” I finally whispered. “Go ask,” Y____ replied.

  The ectomorphic girl behind the counter had a nose ring loosely attached to her earlobe on a chain. The highlights in her bangs were the color of Mountain Dew. She was reading a magazine called Decibel. “Who is this?” I asked her. “The music. Who is this?”

  “It’s a music service,” said the ectomorph. “It’s, like, I don’t know, satellite radio or something. Whatever replaced satellite radio. Pandora? Not sure.” We listened together for another ten seconds. Suddenly, I saw recognition in her face. “Actually, this is so random, but I think I used to have this in junior high. I think it’s the I Am Sam soundtrack.” She looked at the ceiling and listened for three seconds more. “Yeah, I remember buying this. I sucked.”

  “What song is this?” I asked. “Do you remember?”

  “It’s Aimee Mann and her husband, or maybe her ex-husband, or whoever he is,” she said. “It’s called … oh, man … it’s called ‘Two of Us.’ The whole soundtrack was bad Beatles covers. Actually, that’s not true. There was an okay Grandaddy song near the end. And I guess this song is okay. I mean, it’s okay for you to like it.” The clerk returned to her magazine, uninterested by my interest.

  “Thanks,” I said. I walked away from the counter, back toward where I thought Y____ might be standing. I guessed right. He was waiting for me.

  “See,” he said. He said it so quietly the ecto-clerk never lifted her head. “See. What did I tell you? The Beatles are popular. Not everything is symbolic of something else. Not everything is a trope. Sometimes music is music.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. The clerk looked up when I spoke. I had spoken louder than I needed to. She glared at me like I was naked.

  We left the store soon after. It was just past one o’clock. I asked what was next. Y____ said, “Let’s find a bar.” I found this suggestion surprising, and I told him so. “Just for ten minutes,” he said. “Let’s check on the Horns. Just wanna see the score.”

  It had never occurred to me that Y____ would care about the local college football team, but he was a man living in Texas.

  We walked to a bar where the game was playing on six televisions. It was too crowded. There was another bar up the block with only one TV, but the room was only a quarter full. It was ideal. “Follow me,” he said. “How?” I asked. He grabbed my left hand. I could feel the creamy grit from his glove. It reminded me that this situation was more precarious than I was allowing myself to recognize.

  Y____ led me to a booth and sat down, facing the TV behind the bar. I sat across from him. “No,” he rasped. “Sit on this side, next to me.” I followed his order immediately. “What if someone you know inexplicably walks into this bar,” he said. “Or what if some random bachelor decides he wants to chat up a lonely Longhorns fan drinking in the middle of the afternoon? He’d come over and sit down, and he’d sit right on top of me. This is safer. The closer you stay to me, the safer we are.”

  We sat together on the same side of the vinyl booth—two of us, riding nowhere. Texas was playing Rice. It was the first game of the year, and there were two minutes until halftime. The Longhorns were already ahead by thirty points. “Let’s just watch until the end of the half,” Y____ said. “Let’s see if the Owls get something going.” I wondered
if John was watching the same game at home. He probably wasn’t. He probably didn’t even know it was happening, and if he did, he was probably mad about it.

  A waitress came over to our table. Would she notice anything? Would she sense that there were two people in this booth? Would she sense that the hazy, unpredictable shadow against the wall was not an accident, and that this was a moment unlike any she would ever again experience, and that I was in a bar with an invisible man who was not my husband?

  Of course she didn’t.

  “What can I get for you?” she asked. I ordered a Diet Coke. “Do you need a food menu?” I did not. She walked away. I was alone in this.

  I felt myself blushing. Something was wrong with me. Part of me felt exhilarated and part of me felt humiliated. My Diet Coke arrived. It tasted awful: flat, warm, and mostly syrup. Every component had something missing or something unnecessary.

  Again, I placed the cell phone to my left ear. “Do you like football?” I asked Y____. “I didn’t think you’d like football.”

  “I don’t know if I necessarily like it, but I follow it,” he said. “I follow the Longhorns, I follow the Aggies, I follow Texas Tech. I watch the Cowboys on Sunday, and sometimes I’ll try to get down to Lake Travis on a Friday night. It’s a diversion. It’s in the newspaper, and I read the newspaper. You?”

  “Oh, I never watch football,” I said. “But I don’t have any, you know, ethical problem with the concept. I’m not one of those. My father loved it. I just never have the time. The rules seem more complicated than necessary.”

  “What about your husband?” asked Y____. “Does he like to watch?”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I don’t think he likes football. I mean, maybe he does, but I don’t think so.” It occurred to me that I didn’t know the answer to this question.

  “What does he like?” asked Y____. “What are his interests?”

  “He’s interested in working,” I said. “He’s very, very interested in history. Very interested. If he could read all day, every week, for every minute of every month, he’d be ecstatic. Reading is his favorite thing, followed by writing about whatever he just finished reading. He likes to watch documentaries about the Reconstruction. He likes to look at those maps on the Internet that predict how all the different states will vote in the electoral college. He likes to fact-check Wikipedia articles. He listens to jazz, but only the earliest known recordings. He’s just an intense man. His interests are intense.”