LITMIR.BIZ

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or an incompetent waitperson. She considers each of these events a hidden opportunity, a portent from the gods, yet another manifestation of the world’s independence and revivifying fickleness.

      Though I have somehow been appointed the “breadwinner” of our family, I am extremely lazy: my favorite activity, as Freud said of poets, is daydreaming, my buttocks wedged firmly in a chair. She is never idle, raising domesticity to an art form, a Buddhist perfection in every ironed crease.

      Being a devotee of Bishop Berkeley’s formulation to the effect that, if you can’t see it, it isn’t there, I prefer neatness to cleanliness: My idea of housecleaning is to sweep the large dust balls under the bed, stuff plastic and paper bags sloppily into a kitchen cabinet, cover the bed hurriedly with a creased down comforter, cram my underwear (freely mingling with socks) into a dresser drawer. She is almost maniacally clean, sniffing each of my shirts and socks daily to make sure they don’t need to be washed, vacuuming in corners, changing the pillowcases and sheets with the regularity of tides.

      I like to buy cheap things, particularly clothes, frequently, wearing them until they fray or lose their shape, and then cart them from place to place without ever wearing them again. One of the things she seems to enjoy most is to go through my clothes closets, reminding me of all the cheap items I bought and never wore, or which I have worn once, washed, and which are now “totally useless.” She buys clothes almost never, but always things of good quality, preferring to wear the same few things (always immaculately clean) time and time again.

      I fancy myself a great dancer and a sex object. She thinks of herself as physically awkward and more sensual than sexy. I can type like a madman and, albeit reluctantly, use a computer. She considers a keyboard a frightful artifact.

      I like to drive. She likes to navigate. On those few occasions on which she drives our car, I nag her relentlessly about shifting at the wrong speeds, or squeezing too hard on the brakes. When she navigates and we begin to lose our way, I immediately become so ornery and hostile that, on at least one occasion in Budapest, she threatened to get out of the car and go home on her own. In countries known for their dangerous drivers, she insists I do all the driving, an affirmation of my manhood I accept reluctantly, though I don’t object to being in control.

      I am the kind of person who can do many things at once, most of them rather imperfectly. She does only one thing at a time, but always with a sense of perfection.

      I like to cook without recipes, freely mixing Marsala wine, mustard, artichoke hearts, candied ginger, maple syrup, and plums, hoping something capable of being digested will emerge. She always uses a recipe—except for things she has made before—but everything she makes is successful and delicious.

      I would have been a rock star, or a concert pianist—or perhaps, even, the proprietor of an illicit sex club—had I felt freer to follow my lyrical and immoral heart’s calling. She would have been a sister in a Carmelite Monastery, or a gardener.

      She is an enthusiastic and natural mother. I am a reluctant father.

      She could have been many things, all of them having something to do with taking care of others or using her hands: a nurse, a dentist, a carpenter, a potter, a refinisher of furniture, a restorer of antiquarian books. I could, though I like to imagine otherwise, probably have done only the one thing I am doing now: putting words to paper.

      I like to live part of my life in the if-but-only mode of wishful thinking and fantastical alternatives. She accepts the life life has given her as her one possible destiny, without complaining.

      She doesn’t like to think of money—in fact, her refusal to think about it has, on occasion, gotten her (and me!) into heaps of trouble. I, while I don’t like to think of it either, am usually left with the unpoetic task of having to worry about it. Since I have been with her, in fact, hardly a day has passed without thinking of it . . . almost constantly. She, on the other hand, worries about many other unpoetic tasks in our lives that have nothing at all to do with money.

      I can imitate people from many countries, and with many different accents. She is too much herself to imitate anyone.

      I like to have some kind of music playing whenever I am not reading or working. She usually prefers silence, or only to have music on when she is actually listening to it.

      I will continue to eat even when I am no longer hungry, just for the pleasure of it. She eats only as much as satisfies her hunger on any occasion. I abhor all forms of table manners, eating with my fingers, chewing with my mouth open, taking food freely from others’ plates, licking my fingers at the table, stuffing my mouth with large quantities, burping and passing gas. She never eats before being seated at the table, waits for everyone else to do likewise, chews only small morsels at a time, and eats so slowly, and with such deliberate pleasure, that I have usually finished what is on my plate well before she is actually seated. Only twice in our eight years together have I observed her passing gas. Burping, never.

      As soon as I make a decision, I immediately, and relentlessly, tilt toward wanting the other alternative. She immediately accepts, and begins to implement, any decision she has made. She often says that I am a neurotic and “special” kind of person; she feels that, living with me, this kind of behavior is the “statue quo.” Occasionally, when I am in one of my periods of manic reconsideration, she smiles slightly in her slightly smiling French way, as if to say, “Oy vey, what a case I am married to.”

      I like to eat on the street—frequently, and mostly greasy and unhealthy foods—which accounts for the fact that most of my clothing have grease and/or coffee stains on them, souvenirs of my animalistic habits she claims American washing machines are incapable of eradicating. Most of all, I like to devour greasy Hungarian sausages at stand-up counters in Budapest. She likes to eat only “à table,” quietly, savoring every morsel of, say, pâté with, preferably, a glass of red wine. Among the tastes in life I can truly not abide are pasteque, fennel, and every form of anise, all of which she has rather an affection for.

      I am often angry at others, friends, foes, and family alike, and like to hold, and nurse, these angers for as long as is humanly possible, until I can almost feel them eating at my liver, like an earthquake with numerous, sustained aftershocks. She is incapable of sustained anger or hostility and would, I believe, (perhaps already has) forgive me the most egregious deeds and betrayals, an attitude I have no desire to test to its limits. Even in her case, I like to remind her as often as possible of the ways she has disappointed and betrayed me. She, on the other hand, rarely mentions my betrayals and weaknesses.

      I never cry, even when I am truly unhappy, yet I have a tendency to grow teary-eyed whenever an athlete experiences some major triumph, or after the last out of the World Series, when the players all rush to the mound and hug each other. She cries easily, even at sentimental movies whose pandering to sentimental feelings she despises.

      I will take any kind of pill or medicine anyone recommends in order to relieve pain and discomfort. She prefers “natural” remedies. Although I am not terribly Jewish by religious conviction, I wanted to have our son circumcised when he was born. She felt it to be a pagan ritual tantamount to permanent disfigurement, and began assembling propaganda from various anti-circumcision organizations around the country depicting vast armadas of mutilated children with heavily bandaged penises. She won. She usually wins.

      I think she is beautiful, but too thin, and am constantly after her to try and gain weight. She thinks she is less beautiful than I do, but comments frequently about her “beautiful arms.” When she was younger, in California, she wore her hair very short and looked like a kind of postmodern French punktress on her way to the wrong discotheque. Now, I think, she is much more beautiful and womanly, and, like I am, a bit older.

      When we met in Ecuador, she had rather gray hair and was wearing purple nylon pants and a yellow sweatshirt. She seemed, at first, more interested in reading her mail than in talking to me, a fact that I soon realized was due more to her shyness—and her passion for her mail—than to lack of interest in me. On the two-hour bus ride between Quito and Otavalo, across the Equator, I slowly began to realize that she was quite beautiful, in an undemonstrative sort of way, and that night, as I way of getting myself into her room

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