41 :: human nuance :: 5/5/01
Thomas and Janine are watching the final episode of this season's Survivor. The final votes are cast, and then, in the space of a commercial break, the competitors are transported from Tribal Council in the Australian Outback to a Los Angeles soundstage, where they are surrounded by a studio audience, and accompanied by an ensemble performing a live rendition of the Survivor theme music.
—Oh my God, says Janine. —It's the Academy Awards!
The scene switches to an image of a helicopter, airlifting in the precious million-dollar votes. The skyline of Los Angeles glitters.
—No, says Thomas. —It's the opening scene to Blade Runner.
The scene switches back to the soundstage. Thomas and Janine are treated to a closer view of that live ensemble, including a guy playing the didgeridu.
—Oh no, the didge! Thomas says.
—You have a problem with didgeridus? Janine asks.
—No, I love the didgeridu, Thomas says. —It's a droning instrument.
—Oh, sure, Janine says.
—I just hate this—the way they're used for, you know, exotic flavor.
—Instant Australia, Janine says.
—Yeah, exactly, Thomas says. —It's such a wonderful instrument; it can be used for so much more. This guy Niblock who I like has a piece where he uses massed didgeridus. It's gorgeous.
—You should have brought it over, Janine says.
—Eh, Thomas says. He doesn't often play the music he likes for others. He knows that the music he likes is hard for others to like, and he doesn't want to put his few friends in a position where they feel obligated to force an enthusiastic response.
—Niblock, Janine says. —That's the guy you and Lydia are going to see next week, right?
—Yup, Thomas says.
He's kept her up to date. Tonight, during Survivor's commerical breaks, Thomas talked to Janine about his concern about the age difference.
—What exactly are you worried about? Janine had asked him.
—I don't know, Thomas had said, picking at the edge of the label on his bottle of Heineken. —I just always found the whole older guy / younger girl thing to be creepy. Those guys always look like they're taking advantage of those girls.
—She's twenty-one, Janine had said. —You're not that much older. It's not like you're cruising around the junior high schools or anything.
—Yeah, yeah, I know.
—But there's something else going on here that troubles me, Janine says. —I mean, if you assume that if you and her get together it'll be because you took advantage of her, you're actually denying her her autonomy. You may actually be treating her with less respect than you would be if you just assumed she was capable of making her own decisions about you.
Thomas finds that he can't contest this, and yet he somehow doesn't feel relieved, which he takes as a sign that maybe he hasn't yet found what's really bothering him about the whole deal.
—On the other hand, Janine says, —you should keep in mind that sometimes twenty-one-year-olds are still trying a little bit to sort their shit out. They're just barely out of adolescence; they're still all turned around and fucked up. They're trying to figure out how to be adults. I'm not saying that that's necessarily something that You Must Avoid, I'm just saying to be prepared: that's an aspect of the relationship that you might need to deal with, and you don't want to go in not expecting it.
Janine stops there. She can see that Thomas' anxieties about the relationship run high; she's afraid to say anything too discouraging because she doesn't want to see him just drop the whole thing. Getting laid would do Thomas some good. In the two years since she met Thomas, she hasn't known him to be involved with anyone; and the longer you go without dating, the harder dating becomes. You begin to forget the language, the motions, the entire system of choreography that governs a relationship.
The flip side of this is what Janine thinks of as the "when you're hot, you're hot" phenomenon; the perverse truth that when you're in a relationship is when you are best equipped to take on other relationships. Around the time Janine quit working at the hotel she was involved with both Ed (bartender) and Lila (grad student); managing both of those relationships was simple, effortless even. But then Ed found the monogamous girlfriend he'd been looking for, and cut Janine out of the picture. Janine wasn't too upset—she wished Ed well—but being with Ed had helped her to practice certain skills, and in the days and weeks following the breakup she could feel those skills begin to atrophy. Sure enough, things went out of whack with Lila soon after—couldn't have been more than two months later. And ever since she started working at the Woolcot Group there's been almost a year of nothing, a total dry spell.
And so she wants to encourage Thomas to date; even though she's not certain that Lydia is the ideal candidate. She'd like to see him become more communicative, and being in the company of another would help with that, having to negotiate the complex topography of another person's sexuality would help with that especially. In general, she'd like everyone to be having great sex; she wants everyone to be well-fucked, all the time. Sexuality is a high order of communication; learn how to be a good lay and you learn human nuance.
Survivor, live from LA: —How often do you get a chance where you get to have sixteen strangers, together, who are gonna ultimately give you their opinion, what they think about you, how you play, how you interact socially, who you are as a person, and then you get to watch it play out, learn what they think about you, and also view yourself and maybe gain some new insight into your own self-perception?
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