57 :: 6odum [return] :: 7/16/01
Lydia walks into 6Odum, pays her admission, and picks up a square blue flyer off of the info table. The flyer is advertising some upcoming festival, Trans 004. It looks kind of interesting, but the light in here is dim, as always, so she can't make out any of the details— she folds the flyer in half and sticks it in her pocket for another time.
She pushes through a door into the main performance space. There's some weak AC in here; she's grateful. Some bright lights are on up at the front of the room, where a few people mill about, adjusting the arrangement of their computers before the show begins. Playing tonight: Ian Epps, Ian Nagoski, Rafael Toral.
She's loosely familiar with Toral's work. She first read about him on Thomas' website. Speaking of Thomas: she bets he's here. She scans the people sitting in the chairs that line the room's edges, and, sure enough, she spots him. He hasn't seen her yet: he is staring up at the front.
Anxiety billows through her. What should she do? She hasn't seen him since the Niblock show, almost two months ago now. In the past few weeks she's barely even heard from him. She knows when to take a hint. She supposes it's about time to write off the relationship as dead. She looks away, searches for a seat on the other side of the room.
But things were so good at that show. And she can't, for the life of her, figure out why things went sour after it. She wants to know. She has to know. She sent him an e-mail a while ago, asking him just to let her know what the deal was: he never responded. She'll be fucked if she lets him just drive her away with silence. And so she heads over there.
—Thomas, is how she greets him.
He looks up and sees her. Some complex feeling surges up: if he had to identify it, he would likely call it shame. He has tried, lately, to just let go of her. And yet here she is, before him, and all at once he understands the inadequacy of that strategy of release; he becomes aware of all the buried points which still connect them. Attempting to forget those points will not stop them from existing.
He says her name. He can barely get it out. She can detect pain in him: a tangle so expansive that his form seems hardly able to contain it. She had imagined that this conversation would call upon her to be assertive, incisive, perhaps cold to the point of a small cruelty: instead she finds herself choked up.
—Listen, she says. —I just want to talk to you.
He nods OK and she sits down next to him.
—I need you to talk to me, she says. —What's going on?
—I don't know, he says. —I'm sorry. I'm just—I'm not very good at relationships.
His language is failing him. He doesn't have time to think about the right words. (This is why he doesn't like using the phone.) His trouble with this relationship is inextricably wound up in his fear of losing his virginity, which in turn is wound up in the dormant troubles of his long-ago relationship with Rachel. But when he tries to explain that to Lydia, the words get lost in some kind of mental labyrinth; they can't find their way to his mouth. I'm not very good at relationships is the only summary he can articulate, and he knows it's a cop-out: it reveals so little of what is important.
—Look, she says. —It's OK. I mean, that kind of stuff, we can try to work it out. If you want to. I just need to know whether you're interested in working with me. I don't even know if you want to keep going in this relationship. I don't even know if we have a relationship. I mean, if you don't want to see me anymore, just tell me.
—No, says Thomas, quietly. —No, I want to see you. I thought—I thought it was you who wouldn't want to stay in a relationship with me.
—Thomas, why? Why would you think that?
—I don't know, he says. —I guess because—I guess because I'm so—fucked up.
—Yeah, Lydia says. —Who isn't? That's what relationships are about: two fucked-up people trying to find their way to one another. Do you want to try?
—Yes, he says.
—OK, Lydia says. —We can try. But you have to be willing to talk to me.
—OK, Thomas says.
And then there is a long silence. Thomas wonders if he should change the subject. He wants to just say something like I'm really excited about this show. But somehow that seems mundane, out of keeping with the line of conversation which just ended: he desperately needs a transition and he cannot find one.
The show is about to begin; Ian Epps sits down in front of his computer. The lights go out.
