the Sign

Posted by Ace on June 29th, 2008 filed in Tales of the Interregnum

Am I OK with dating a Hindu woman?

I trace my middle finger around the rim of the wine glass slowly, touch the tip of it to the dark fluid within. And if I am, can I then in good conscience rule out Wiccans?

I am sitting in front of my Cintiq computer monitor, frowning reflectively at my web browser. Only a few hours earlier, while sitting in the Empress’ living room, the advertising streaming from her television set contained not one, but two different thirty-second spots for E-Liaison.com, the match-making site. Buried between the teasers for other programs and the visual histrionics of Family Guy, they attracted neither the Empress’ nor Longstreet’s attention. But I noticed them.

Now, a forty-five minute car trip and several glasses of Argentinean red wine later, I am perhaps two-thirds of the way through completing E-Liaison‘s questionnaire: an exhaustive battery of questions designed to determine where I stand on a variety of key issues. It is by turns funny, surprising and thought-provoking, and seems extremely well thought-out. Concerning the aforementioned topic of religion, for example, the questionnaire requires me not only to specify my own religion (it includes a selection for “spiritual, but not aligned with an organized church”, a particularly nice touch), and how important the practice of it is to me, but also any and all of the religions I would be comfortable with my prospective match practicing, and how important it is to me that she practice them. And it gives me the option to yes/no prospective matches on the basis of religion alone. Given the immensely contentious nature of the subject and its central role in so many lives and relationships, it’s impressively, obviously rational, and goes a long way towards salving the lurking sense of unease I’ve been experiencing since pulling the site up.

Maybe I should rule out Christians, just on principle.

But it doesn’t get rid of it. Somewhere underneath my concentration, like a pea beneath the mattresses, lies a germ of discontent– something invisible, awaiting its own discovery. I take another sip of wine to shut it up and move on. There are questions about my personality. (What’s a happy-sounding synonym for “morbid”?) Questions about my appearance, and my perception of it. (Dave Barry: “Most men think of themselves as average-looking, and will think this even if their faces cause heart failure in cattle at a range of 300 yards.”) Questions about what I like to do, and how I resolve conflicts. As with the religion questions, most of them have parallels aimed at getting me to define clearly what I find desirable in a member of the opposite sex, then ask me to attach an importance factor to those definitions, presumably as a way of qualifying how much wiggle room there is in hooking me up. I checkbox my way thoughtfully through them all, down to a question where there is no checkbox, just a field for entering data, and read the line above it:

WHAT THREE THINGS ARE YOU MOST THANKFUL FOR? (these answers will be shared with your potential matches)

I stare at it blankly. Thankful?…

Thanksgiving, years ago, and the dining room table at Willowview is decorated with autumn plants and ancient stemware, family surrounding it, plates laden high with turkey and potatoes and rich gravy, the smell of mushrooms and garlic in the air. There is no prayer; someone has decided that we’ll go around the table instead, and each person will say what he’s thankful for. But as the responses come, as the crest of that wave slowly washes around the table towards me, I’m not even listening, because I am newly divorced- the future I knew I had destroyed; the future I thought I might have had instead, nowhere in evidence. And try as I might to think of something, the only word that keeps echoing in my head is “Nothing…”

Nothing…

Except-

MY SON, I type.

The cursor blinks at me. The shadowy horde of imaginary women peering over my shoulders shifts and splits; the young women and career women and world-travellers all walk off-stage, leaving behind a motley assortment of dowdy matrons and desperate spinsters. Oh yeah, Ace. That’s sellin’ it. And?

What the fuck do you want me to put? I think, rolling my eyes. “My Maserati?” I swill the wine. I’m thankful I’m ALIVE. Or more accurately, I’m thankful that, having been rendered alive through no choice of my own, I’m not yet DEAD. I’m thankful that the world is big enough that there are still places I can go in it that aren’t tainted by my memories. I’m thankful that the Empress CALLS me periodically to make sure that I’m not lying unconscious on the floor in a pool of my own BLOOD.

The matrons and spinsters stare at me, wide-eyed. Get lost, I tell them, shooing them through the walls. I bite my lip, scowling. Steady, boy. There’s a germ of truth in there somewhere that won’t send them screaming for the hills. Find it. Pull it out.

I return my fingers to the keys and type deliberately:

THE LOVE OF MY SON

THE GIFT OF THE WORLD

THE STRENGTH TO KEEP FIGHTING

Nnnh, I think, rereading it. It’ll do. Next.

DESCRIBE THE THINGS THAT YOU’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT. (these answers will be shared with your potential matches)

Fuh-uck, I think, letting my forehead drop into my hand. Why do I have to DO this? I peer through my fingers at the screen. The answer is the same! Nothing. Not anymore.

Two decades ago and a different table, in the cafeteria of the college Student Center: beige plastic top rimmed with dull steel metal, black plastic chairs. The elderly man who has spent a semester teaching me Metaphysics leans back in his chair and considers me over his cup of coffee, watching me shovel my way hungrily through a styrofoam bowl full of soupy chili and lament about loves both lost and imagined. “You’re an intelligent man,” he says, shrugging. “Rational. I think you’ll find as you get older that passion, emotion, is an unsuitable basis by which to conduct your life.”

Not quite the same thing, Doc, I think, and I remember as I do it that he’s dead, too, a long time now. But what if that IS the answer? What if I’m not ” passionate” (my lip curls into an involuntary sneer) about anything, because “passion” results from ambition and a lack of contentment- from caring too much about something, and from the delusion that anything we do has intrinsic worth or ultimately matters in some way, other than to ourselves? And I just don’t have that in me? Does that make me deficient somehow? Or evil?

Dear God. Would YOU want to date someone who answered the question that way?

No, I admit. Probably not. I press my thumb and forefinger into the orbs of my eyes, and rub them hard. But neither would I ask anyone to answer that question up front, in two thousand characters or less. I’d just let it evolve. The answer might change because we met each other. I remove my hand, look over the screen, bleary-eyed, mostly unseeing. No one wants to think of themselves as passionless, or be perceived that way. Even if it’s true. Just like no one ever comes to a dance class to learn the waltz, or the fox trot. They all want to learn the freakin’ tango. I sigh, wearily. It doesn’t make me evil. It just makes me seem- hollow.

The cursor continues its patient beat. Can’t use my son again, I think, smirking. Already mentioned him in the last question. I widen my viewpoint, jump out of semantics and into structure. Interests. That’s mostly what they’re looking for. What are the focuses in your life, what do you like to do, what fills your time? I have INTERESTS, right?

Yeah. Broadly speaking?- anything that isn’t real, or useful, or actually exists. Starting and ending with an online game about a ten-thousand year old civilization under the New Mexico desert that made magic books. Spin that, Hoss. See how it goes.

COOKING, I type, sticking out my tongue. WINE. But I learned so MUCH there! (VISUAL ART) I made friends all over the country, all over the world!- people with the same interests, people who liked what I had to say and how I said it, people I could listen to and trust. (STORYTELLING, IN EVERY MEDIUM.) I learned how to use Photoshop, how to use Flash, how to use this Cintiq. (VIDEO GAMES) I started teaching myself HTML, became a forum administrator, became a Shoutcast DJ- all because of it. (ROLE-PLAYING GAMES.) It made me HAPPY.

My typing slows, peters out of its own accord. I tried to balance those things with Jack and Faye, or thought I did. I always put the two of them first, shelved the other stuff where I couldn’t reconcile it, because they made me happy, too. And they were more important. But doing that wasn’t enough. It was like I was supposed to compartmentalize completely somehow, feel guilty for allowing myself to think about any of the rest of it at all. I stare into the wine glass. I never intended to spend every spare moment I had sitting by myself in front of a screen, or to make anyone else feel bad because that was where I wanted to be. All I did, all I’ve ever done my whole life, is try to balance what’s right with what makes me happy, and follow the path where it leads. Why does that always mean in the end that I wind up alone?

I give up, I think helplessly. I don’t understand anymore. I-

Give up. And suddenly the pile of mattresses tumbles before me, spills out into the room, and there, atop the one mattress remaining, lies the pea. That’s the catch. In order to do this, you have to have given up. You have to no longer believe that the universe is a just place, one that will bring you what you need for acting justly within it. Or that you have a path within it, and that you are on it, and that following it, doing your Work, will bring you where you are meant to be.

The question about passions is actually the last question on the survey; the button beneath it reads “Submit” instead of “Next”. It’s faintly ironic. Or you have to have decided that you don’t LIKE where you’re meant to be. I swirl the last remaining bit of wine in the glass with a twist of my left hand, raise the bowl to my nose and breathe in the scent, sadly. Fate’s a slippery slope, after all. I could be MEANT to press this button. The thought makes me smile, but like most smiles these days, it disappears quickly.

Magic has failed me, I think.

Faye… Belovéd…

I shift the wineglass from my left hand to my right, toast the screen. The hell with it. Let’s see what Science can do.

I click the “Submit” button.

The questionnaire disappears and is replaced by a “processing” screen with a scrolling yellow bar. I catch myself holding my breath.

The processing screen disappears. It is replaced by a single, unornamented box, containing text:

E-LIAISON.COM RELIES ON A PERSONALITY PROFILING SYSTEM CREATED THROUGH EXTENSIVE SOCIAL RESEARCH ON SUCCESSFULLY MARRIED COUPLES TO CREATE ITS MATCHES. IN APPROXIMATELY 20% OF THE CASES WHERE OUR SERVICE IS REQUESTED- ABOUT 1 IN EVERY 5 PEOPLE- THE INDIVIDUAL REQUESTING THE SERVICE CANNOT BE PLACED WITHIN THOSE PROFILES WITH SUFFICIENT ACCURACY FOR E-LIAISON TO GUARANTEE AN APPROPRIATE MATCH. WHEN THIS HAPPENS, WE PREFER TO DENY THAT INDIVIDUAL OUR SERVICES, RATHER THAN LEAD HIM OR HER TO BELIEVE THAT THE PROCESS WILL PRODUCE RESULTS IT CANNOT. WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU FALL INTO THIS CATEGORY.

I set down the wineglass.

HOWEVER, THE PERSONALITY PROFILE CREATED BY YOUR ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONNAIRE IS STILL VIEWABLE AND PRINTABLE BY YOU FOR FREE, AS ORIGINALLY INDICATED. WE HOPE THIS WILL BE OF ASSISTANCE TO YOU IN YOUR FUTURE PLANNING.

SINCERELY, THE E-LIAISON TEAM

There is a long, long time where I do nothing: only sit motionlessly, and stare at the screen, re-reading the words. But at length, my eyes slide down and to the right, where there is a grey button that will forward me to the personality profile. I roll the cursor over it, and press.

The profile, it turns out, is pretty good. It covers five or six different areas relevant to interpersonal relationships, makes a blanket statement about my style in each, then assesses the pros and cons of that style, with an emphasis on how other people are likely to react to me. I can see the areas where it was having trouble nailing me down and hedged its bets. But in a lot of places it seems spot-on, accurate without being patronizing, so I send it along to the printer. I realize belatedly as I do so that the printer has no paper in it. I scan quickly around for more, pick up a few unused sheets that are lying atop my clipboard and slide them into the intake.

The first of the sheets rolls forward. There is a horrible grinding noise as the paper accordions into a solid mass against the platen, and the printer spits plastic pieces of itself into the tray.

I pick the wineglass back up and drain it to the lees. Then I stand up, turn off the printer, and the computer. And above the computer, the light.