Empathy by Sarah Schulman

Author:Sarah Schulman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2011-01-13T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

“We’re there,” she said. “This is the right stop.” They got out together and walked down the platform.

“Wow,” Doc said. “You were looking for morality and personal recognition in the middle of serious tourism. That’s very Heart of Darkness of you. I mean, there’s no way to be there and be polite because your presence itself is rude. But geographically, we’re in the sphere of your humanity now. That’s what is up for consideration. If this was the World Court, probably no one would care. But that’s one of the strangest aspects of analysis, Anna. No one is looking at you but you. That, of course, has its ups and downs.”

“I know, Doc, it’s really confusing. I mean something different in the World than I mean in my world.”

“You watch,” he said meekly. “You listen when people talk. You listen too closely. You listen so closely to find the meaning that you never find the meaning.”

“Not the meaning,” she said. “But a meaning. If I look too closely I get these strange results that make it worth it. The same thing is true in love, Doc.”

“How?”

“When a woman is really happy. When our faces are close and there is only streetlight, she looks slightly Mongoloid, her most beautiful. There’s that way that she kisses when she really likes me. Too lightly on the forehead.”

“Then you have to choose,” Doc said, feeling slightly hurt, like there was some distasteful counter-transference going on. “You have to choose between your own vision and reciprocity. And remember, reciprocity is not on the general agenda for the nineties.”

“Why not, Doc?”

“Because, Anna.” Thank God I got my authority back, Doc thought. Why do I want her to like me? That’s supposed to be one of the advantages of being a man. I’m supposed to be able to have control and still slide around at the same time.

“Because, Anna, most people don’t listen to each other. They don’t listen to themselves. They don’t think about what other people mean and are feeling and the impact of their own words on others. They don’t remember later what they said in the first place. They don’t think about it when they’re saying it. You listen too closely. You are overinformed. Do you want to have lunch first? What are you staring at?”

“Wow, Doc. This is very important to you, isn’t it? Someone must have interrupted you big-time. You keep coming back to this listening thing over and over again.”

Then she said, “Let’s have lunch, buy the flowers, and get this over with.”

Confidentially, it was Doc’s birthday too, his thirty-first. He wished she would give him the flowers. Flowers. When they got out of the subway he made a phone call to an old number that he still remembered. He left a message on the tape asking something of this woman, asking this person who did not know how, to remember his birthday with kindness. It was a sneaky thing to do since Doc already knew what would happen. But he did it for reassurance of the status quo.

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