Pork chops

don't let the vapid ruin your marriage, or whatever

I was making pork chops when the Marines moved into Los Angeles. This felt disingenuous, but one has responsibilities.

“Pork,” I answered G when picking him up from work. Despite the Marines moving into L.A., the streets were no different than they had been the day before. The road construction has moved a block here or there; one bridge has opened but another closed. I ask and G prattles off the day’s absurdities. Some days, it seems the entire purpose of G’s job boils down to the absurd. People pretending to know what they are doing but not knowing what they are doing, and saying silly things in consequence. Other days, it seems the work is valuable but inscrutable to me: they do things I do not understand, and these things are necessary in a way that connects to families, city politics, national mores, and Democracy generally. It’s also structural to our marriage and things like dinner.

There seems to be a discordance. I am trying to make conversation, but it won’t go. I can’t quite say what I mean, and then I feel he hasn’t understood or perhaps wasn’t listening. That in turn frustrates me to a retreat, while turning the steering wheel right and pushing down onto the gas. We are two people utterly alone sitting right next to one another in a car.

I am trying to articulate something about the state of the union, states rights and federalism, and the uses of violence. There is an irony I can sort of grasp but want to reflect to him; usually talking with him helps me find my way to the clear thought. There is a feeling I suspect to be crucial, but can’t quite tap. The discord is confusing, and unbearable.

I rarely feel so clear, so at one with myself, as when he and I are talking. Thought becomes expressive and breathing free, the heart loud. Nothing makes me feel so alive, and in the world, and absolutely sensate as the conversations between us. There is a sense of peace in our marriage, certainly, but there is also a sense of excitement, and in the elucidation of the two the murk about things dissipates. Dust is blown off. Life’s old grittiness is washed away.

This isn’t always the case. In other relationships or communications, there may be more or less of this communicative self-clarification. Instead there is an abrasion, a pulling away of comfort, or a hard edge that feels less stimulating than like an affront. Communication often challenges the very nature of who I am, what I think, or that I dare. There is conversation that makes one shrivel, rather than wax glorious. Phrases become cliche, misused, brittle and ashy. The words may be crude or trite, lucid or guttering, but one hates to be talked at. The more assumed the talk, the more indistinct the person speaking, and I’m lost without knowing I’m facing a person. The soul becomes inured after a while, acclimated to noise and fissure. The self is both small and hollow behind reactions and platitudes, gummy talk that has become completely opaque and meaningless. It is a thousand tiny deaths.

Even within my intimacies, G amongst them, there are times when connection fails. When this happens I feel demoralized and vague.

“Of course sending in the Marines would be different,” he says. We’re at home now, standing in the garage, and I’m shifting my bag about to get at the house keys. “But that’s exactly what I just said: the Marines are involved.” That’s what I’d tried to say. Isn’t that what I said? I crumple my forehead and he catches his next phrase half way out his mouth. Now it seems I have whined, or accused him of not listening, and further I’ve been the bearer of bad news. He sulks: I feel more confused and discordant. I walk ahead while he closes the garage door. He stops to look at things in the yard, moving something with his toe or looking up into the sky, all guises to not be close to me. To preserve, maybe, himself. I stand in the kitchen knowing it will only take me a few minutes to get dinner going, but he isn’t ready to eat; I’ve nothing with which to fill the next twenty awful minutes. I check the phone. I swipe through the news. I feel vindicated. I feel sad. Now that I’m standing in the kitchen and he’s on the couch playing a video game, it feels like Gender Roles have come into play. I feel Resentment.

I open the fridge door and stand there. “Asparagus or green beans?” I ask and he, in a jolly voice, says green beans. He has rallied and I notice. I take out the colander of beans. I set them next to the pork chops, which have been brining on the counter. I rub the chops with olive oil, brown sugar, and mustard. Paprika, onion and garlic powder, salt and pepper. I turn on the oven and put the cast iron into it to preheat. I stand at the sink eating a green bean and looking out the window without seeing anything at all.

Of course, there are familiars whose bond is something other than vital conversation. All sorts of relationships are based on circumstance, routine, complacency or need. The conversations in such relationships are repeated and thematic; prior conflicts have demarcated the communicative landscape to scarred places one must never go and old grooves one never seems to leave. Of course, my marriage has some of those qualities - or possibilities - too.

I hear little news blips wafting out of his phone in the other room. His sigh. His suspended next breath. The news shocks - and depletes - the air between us.

I tilt my own phone back to my face and tap it awake. There are images of burning self-driving vehicles, and people in zip ties seated in awkward positions on the ground, and the National Guard. I swipe away from this and into my email. A friend has asked me to have dinner; given my brittle exhaustion, I don’t want to go. I start thumbing out an excuse but close the app before I send it. My eyes burn and brim with tears. I tap into my contact list and fire off several missives to folks I know, in various kinds of ways, in L.A. It’s nothing, really, just a jolt of care. The messages come back: bafflement, but in reality things are quiet. Frustration at the bald lies. The oven dings it’s hot readiness and I set down the phone, pull out the cast iron, arrange the chops inside it. Salt and sweet to flash sear a meat crust - which is more delicious than it sounds. The idea of serving and sharing, the fat of pork and the sharp of green, help my click click brain and my painfully stark mouth to start up again, start over.

I take the phone back up and re-open the email app. I delete my excuse and type yes, thank you, where shall we meet? to the friend. There is a rinsing feeling. Tomorrow is exhausting, but now that I’m committed exhaustion feels tolerable.

I set the timer and put a pot of water on to boil. I throw salt into it and then lick a finger. Taking a breath, I leave the kitchen, push through the staticky air, and sit with my husband on the couch. I sit doing a complicated thing inside myself I sum up as apposite vulnerability. I am hungering. Tempering.

The bond holds.

We talk about everything.