i booked a meeting with claudia at the usual café to discusssocial behaviour. i realised that improving my ability to interactwith other humans would require some effort and that my bestattempts might not convince rosie. but the skills would beuseful in their own right.
i had, to some extent, become comfortable with being sociallyodd.
at school, i had been the unintentional class clown, andeventually the intentional one. it was time to grow up.
the server approached our table. ‘you order,’ said claudia.
‘what would you like?’
‘a skinny decaf latte.’
this is a ridiculous form of coffee, but i did not point it out.
claudia would surely have received the message from previousoccasions and would not want it repeated. it would beannoying to her.
‘i’d like a double espresso,’ i said to the server, ‘and my friendwill have a skinny decaf latte, no sugar, please.’
‘well,’ said claudia. ‘something’s changed.’
239/290i pointed out that i had been successfully and politely orderingcoffee all my life, but claudia insisted that my mode ofinteraction had changed in subtle ways.
‘i wouldn’t have picked new york city as the place to learn tobe genteel,’ she said, ‘but there you go.’
i told her that, on the contrary, people had been extremelyfriendly, citing my experience with dave the baseball fan, marythe bipolar-disorder researcher, david borenstein the dean ofmedicine at columbia, and the chef and weird guy atmomofuku ko. i mentioned that we had dined with the eslers,describing them as friends of rosie’s family. claudia’s conclusionwas simple. all this unaccustomed social interaction, plus thatwith rosie, had dramatically improved my skills.
‘you don’t need to try with gene and me, because you’re notout to impress us or make friends with us.’
while claudia was right about the value of practice, i learnbetter from reading and observation. my next task was todownload some educational material.
i decided to begin with romantic films specifically mentioned byrosie. there were four: casablanca, the bridges of madisoncounty, when harry met sally and an affair to remember. i added to kill a mockingbird and the big country forgregory peck, whom rosie had cited as the sexiest man ever.
it took a full week to watch all six, including time for pausingthe dvd player and taking notes. the films were incrediblyuseful, but also highly challenging. the emotional dynamics wereso complex! i persevered, drawing on movies recommended byclaudia about male-female relationships with both happy andunhappy outcomes. i watched hitch, gone with the wind,bridget jones’s diary, annie hall, notting hill, loveactually and fatal attraction.
240/290claudia also suggested i watch as good as it gets, ‘just forfun’. although her advice was to use it as an example of whatnot to do, i was impressed that the jack nicholson characterhandled a jacket problem with more finesse than i had. it wasalso encouraging that, despite serious social incompetence, asignificant difference in age between him and the helen huntcharacter, probable multiple psychiatric disorders and a level ofintolerance far more severe than mine, he succeeded in winningthe love of the woman in the end. an excellent choice byclaudia.
slowly i began to make sense of it all. there were certainconsistent principles of behaviour in male–female romanticrelationships, including the prohibition of infidelity. that rule wasin my mind when i met with claudia again for social practice.
we worked through some scenarios.
‘this meal has a fault,’ i said. the situation was hypothetical.
we were only drinking coffee. ‘that would be tooconfrontational, correct?’
claudia agreed. ‘and don’t say fault, or error. that’s computertalk.’
‘but i can say “i’m sorry, it was an error of judgement,entirely my fault”, correct? that use of “fault” is acceptable?’
‘correct,’ said claudia, and then laughed. ‘i mean yes. don, thistakes years to learn.’
i didn’t have years. but i am a quick learner and was inhuman-sponge mode. i demonstrated.
‘i’m going to construct an objective statement followed by arequest for clarification, and preface it with a platitude: “excuseme. i ordered a rare steak. do you have a different definitionof rare?” ’
‘good start, but the question’s a bit aggressive.’
‘not acceptable?’
‘in new york maybe. don’t blame the waiter.’
241/290i modified the question. ‘excuse me. i ordered a rare steak.
could you check that my order was processed correctly?’
claudia nodded. but she did not look entirely happy. i waspaying great attention to expressions of emotion and i haddiagnosed hers correctly.
‘don. i’m impressed, but … changing to meet someone else’sexpectations may not be a good idea. you may end upresenting it.’
i didn’t think this was likely. i was learning some newprotocols, that was all.
‘if you really love someone,’ claudia continued, ‘you have to beprepared to accept them as they are. maybe you hope thatone day they get a wake-up call and make the changes fortheir own reasons.’
this last statement connected with the fidelity rule that i had inmy mind at the beginning of the discussion. i did not need toraise the subject now. i had the answer to my question.
claudia was surely talking about gene.
i organised a run with gene for the following morning. ineeded to speak to him in private, somewhere he could notescape. i started my personal lecture as soon as we weremoving. my key point was that infidelity was totallyunacceptable. any benefits were outweighed by the risk of totaldisaster. gene had been divorced once already. eugenie andcarl –gene interrupted, breathing heavily. in my effort to get themessage across unambiguously and forcefully, i had beenrunning faster than normal. gene is significantly less fit than iam and my fat-burning low-heart-rate jogs are majorcardiovascular workouts for him.
‘i hear you,’ said gene. ‘what’ve you been reading?’
i told him about the movies i had been watching, and theiridealised representation of acceptable and unacceptablebehaviour. if gene and claudia had owned a rabbit, it wouldhave been in serious danger from242/290a disgruntled lover. gene disagreed, not about the rabbit, butabout the impact of his behaviour on his marriage.
‘we’re psychologists,’ he said. ‘we can handle an openmarriage.’
i ignored his incorrect categorisation of himself as a realpsychologist, and focused on the critical issue: all authoritiesand moral codes consider fidelity critical. even theories ofevolutionary psychology concede that if a person discovers thattheir partner is unfaithful they will have strong reasons forrejecting them.
‘you’re talking about men there,’ said gene. ‘because they can’tafford the risk of raising a child who doesn’t have their genes.
anyway, i thought you were all about overcoming instinct.’
‘correct. the male instinct is to cheat. you need to overcomeit.’
‘women accept it as long as you don’t embarrass them with it.
look at france.’
i cited a counter-example from a popular book and film.
‘ bridget jones’s diary?’ said gene. ‘since when are weexpected to behave like characters in chick flicks?’ he stoppedand doubled over, gasping for breath. it gave me theopportunity to present him with the evidence withoutinterruption. i finished by pointing out that he loved claudiaand that he should therefore be prepared to make allnecessary sacrifices.
‘i’ll think about it when i see you changing the habits of alifetime,’
he said.
i had thought that eliminating my schedule would be relativelystraightforward. i had just spent eight days without it and whilei had faced numerous problems they were not related toinefficiency or unstructured time. but i had not factored in theimpact of the enormous amount of turmoil in my life. as wellas the uncertainty around rosie, the social-skills project and thefear that my best friends were on the243/290path to domestic disintegration, i was about to lose my job.
the schedule of activities felt like the only stable thing in mylife.
in the end, i made a compromise that would surely beacceptable to rosie. everyone keeps a timetable of their regularcommitments, in my case lectures, meetings and martial-artsclasses. i would allow myself these. i would put appointments inmy diary, as other people did, but reduce standardisation.
things could change week by week.
reviewing my decision, i could see that the abandonment ofthe standardised meal system, the aspect of my schedule thatprovoked the most comment, was the only item requiringimmediate attention.
my next market visit was predictably strange. i arrived at theseafood stall and the proprietor turned to pull a lobster fromthe tank.
‘change of plan,’ i said. ‘what’s good today?’
‘lobster,’ he said, in his heavily accented english. ‘lobster goodevery tuesday for you.’ he laughed, and waved his hand athis other customers. he was making a joke about me. rosiehad a facial expression that she used when she said, ‘don’tfuck with me.’ i tried the expression. it seemed to work byitself.
‘i’m joking,’ he said. ‘swordfish is beautiful. oysters. you eatoysters?’
i ate oysters, though i had never prepared them at home. iordered them unshucked as quality restaurants promoted theiroysters as being freshly shucked.
i arrived home with a selection of food not associated with anyparticular recipe. the oysters proved challenging. i could not geta knife in to open them without risking injury to my handthrough slippage. i could have looked up the technique on theinternet, but it would have taken time. this was why i had aschedule based around familiar items. i could remove the meatfrom a lobster with my eyes closed while my brain worked ona genetics problem. what was wrong with standardisation?
another oyster failed to provide an opening for my244/290knife. i was getting annoyed and about to throw the full dozenin the bin when i had an idea.
i put one in the microwave and heated it for a few seconds. itopened easily. it was warm but delicious. i tried a second, thistime adding a squeeze of lemon juice and a grind of pepper.
sensational! i could feel a whole world opening up to me. ihoped the oysters were sustainable, because i wanted to sharemy new skills with rosie.
