#1: Slow and Meticulous Pursuit

1995, New York, New York

By JANET GARBER

That evening, I was on the train, on my way to Stage 3 of what the French see as a typical day in typical dead-end life: Metro-Boulot-Dodo. Train job sleep.

I was too tense to read about “How to sex up your marriage,” so I forced myself to study my fellow passengers instead.

I watched one man with a stringy yellow ponytail, in his late 40s, dressed in an Italian suit. He was very clean and smart, yet he had a faint scent of the ’60s - the strange and the hippy. My type. But look!

Wedding rings on Metro-North I always took as a sort of personal affront. They hurt my eyes – solid-gold bands, so boring, really, thrust into my line of vision, folding the Times, whipping out the commuter ticket at the conductor’s voice, popping out of leather gloves like a maladroit rabbit just when you least expected it - like a slap of cold water in the face.

“You’re not wanted here,” they seemed to scream out at me, a sound like a spoon hitting against the sides of a stack of wine glasses: “We don’t want you/We don’t need you/You’re not wanted here (DING).”

If only some of the rings were silver, etched, antiqued, interesting. But no, they bespoke ownership, willing chattel - cows and oxen - one head in the yoke, visible, one only to be guessed at, unseen.

I got into bed and opened my journal. I thought: I could write like this every day, every moment, and never stop and become completely asocial, mute, trapped inside my own linguistic mazes, a befuddled minotaur (minus Theseus in slow and meticulous pursuit). I could never talk to another living soul again - just play forever, in my mind.

I turned off the light and wondered if I would ever again be touched by human hands.

Janet Garber has published extensively on career topics but harbors fantasies of some day publishing all those essays, poems and stories in her bottom drawer. She can’t wait to retire from her HR career and have some real time to fantasize about people. She remarried in 1997.

#2: The Tender Way They Touch

2007, California

By EMMA ORTEGA

I am not afraid of the dark, of being lost in the back roads of Japan, of driving in India, or of staring down the barrel of M16s.

I came close to a panic, however, when I held my father’s hand as he lost his battle with cancer.

I accepted defeat in marriage. I pleaded with my lover, with whom I have never known greater pleasure, to let me go because he did not love me as I he.

I am fearless, except in the presence of couples holding hands.

You see them everywhere: at the market; in the shoe department in Nordstrom; arguing in Home Depot; staring lazily off to the left over a glass of wine during dinner at California Pizza Kitchen while the kids color the children’s menu, until a half of the couple reaches across the table and squeezes the other’s hand.

Being witness to couples holding hands - the tender way they touch, the way he opens the door for her, how she sets his cup of coffee down at Barnes & Noble - empties my reserve.

In their presence, I quiver. I am hollowed, with no armor to stand and face them like a man. Their quiet tenderness scares me and sends me inward.

Emma Ortega resides in the Bay Area, her third home since reaching adulthood. San Francisco is her favorite U.S. city, running close behind Barcelona, Spain, where she wants to live next, and Edinburgh, Scotland, where everyone should visit once - but only in the summer, because the sideways rain that falls wildly in the nonwarm months is a killer. She is using a pseudonym.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, November 5th, 2007 | Email This Post

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