Still.
Dickerson is a fun read but he's also a pump-primer for me--reading his book gets me wanting to write; it's a little free-associational, but here goes. One of the things that happens in the book is that Dickerson tries to figure out why he's failing socially with most people at the company: he's told he talks too much; he's told that people are complaining that he makes "too many literary allusions," which baffles him. And then he starts to figure it out. Here's a story from page 300:
I began to figure out some of my problems. One time, for example, in my wanderings, I was on the stairs from Nine to Eight and saw an artist I knew casually coming up as I was coming down. We nodded in passing. Two hours later, while down on the seventh floor, and coming down yet more stairs, I saw him again. My god, I thought bemusedly. It's like one of us is omnipresent.
"You again," he said, chuckling.
And I blurted out the first joke I thought of: "Yeah, I'm just working on my Omnipresence merit badge."
He continued to smile with his mouth, but his eyes froze, and he nodded quietly and we passed in silence.
My initial reaction was to say, Goddammit, that was a good joke! Why didn't he at least laugh? But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that it had been almost mean of me to spring that on him unawares. He was just saying hi and making social noise, and I had essentially asked him to suddenly process two distant cultural references and respond appropriately, and I'd done it unthinkingly, instead of just saying, "Ha ha."
This is familiar to me because I have killed many a casual conversation in exactly that way, and then I vow not to do it again…and then I do. Because it's hard not to when that's the way your mind works. I did it to some stranger in the toy aisle at Meijer the other day, and it embarrassed us both.
David, on the other hand, is, like me, always tossing off jokes that reference, say, the Norman invasion and simultaneously an old episode of ST: TNG. Years ago, when we were having a rough time, a therapist asked us to make a list of the things we liked about our relationship. #1 was "shared wit"--though, because of certain quirks of my handwriting, it looked like "shared ert" when we tried to read it to the therapist.
(We often have these "what the hell" moments because of my handwriting. The other day I was getting ready to go grocery shopping, and pulled the list off the fridge. "Coffee cake?" I said. "Why the hell would I think I wanted to buy coffee cake at Meijer?"
David said, "That's what I thought it said too."
It said "caff-free Coke.")
On the other hand, the last woman I dated before I got involved with David had no sense of humor at all. This was an eye-opening experience for me because I have always tended to associate quick-wittedness with intelligence, and I do think the intelligence of quick-witted people is flashy and easy to see (though on the other hand, some people might ask of me: "If she's so smart, why doesn't she know when to shut up?").
But this girlfriend could not be accused of not being smart: she was a philosophy professor. And yet, she was not funny, and she couldn't see that I was. Since I tend to think my funniness is one of my most appealing features, I found myself wondering why she wanted to date me in the first place--it would be like a blind person dating someone who had no positive qualities other than good looks.
My attempts at humor--reflexive, spontaneous, and irrepressible--were the source of many an awkward moment in the early weeks of our relationship. And then I would attempt to explain to her why what I had said was funny; she had, at least, a philosophic interest in the topic, and by late in the relationship, we had progressed to this:
Her, just after our dinner has been delivered to our table: We have no silverware!
Me: Well, that's OK. Lasagna is pretty much a finger food, anyway.
[pause]
Her: That was a joke, wasn't it?
No wonder we only made it six months despite all the mutual goodwill in the world.
We had the most amicable breakup in the world, agreeing in bed one Sunday morning that "the girlfriend thing" wasn't really working out for us, and then going out for breakfast as usual. But months later, over lunch, we had our only fight, and I have to say that I do not recommend fighting with a philosopher. Whether you are right or wrong makes no difference; she has spent her entire life thinking, and thinking about how to think, and constructing thoughtful arguments, and she will simply annihilate you with philosophy. I think it was four years before I could go back into that restaurant without sweating and feeling like an ant about to be stomped.
It occurs to me that although I think my sense of humor is one of my more appealing qualities, I suspect that it is also one of my more annoying. As David Ellis Dickerson learned as well.
On his 30th birthday, Dickerson lets the guests at his party vote on whether he should shave his head. He's in among a fairly conservative crowd, and the vote barely passes, but it does. And he shaves his head. "Shaving my head…" he says, "turned out to be a great move. Underneath that shaggy mane, it turned out, was a very nicely shaped skull. Everywhere I went the next day, I'd catch myself in the mirror and think, This is a good look. I might keep this around for awhile" (325).
Another thing we have in common. I shaved my head summer before last, because I had always wanted to. I looked for an excuse, in case it turned out badly, and ended up raising a couple hundred bucks for research into childhood cancers. But it turned out well. "I have a shapely head!" I kept saying for the rest of the day.
Like Dickerson, I haven't gone back--though I don't keep a full shave. I don't like the sensation of actually shaving my head. David trims it close with clippers every few weeks. This has been extraordinary for me. I have always had a very high forehead, and during my pregnancies it receded and my hair thinned; I've always been self-conscious about my hair, and yet entirely disinclined to spend time making it look good. Buzzing it is the perfect solution. I don't know that it's my best look, but I do think it's a good look for me--I like pictures of myself. But best of all, except when it's time to trim it (as it is today--I have let it go way too long), I just don't think about it. A huge part of my self-consciousness about my appearance just disappeared.
The only downside is that I am going gray in a very pleasing silvery way, and it doesn't show much when my hair is very short. I can live with that.
One final Dickerson thing: his explanation of why, after getting an MFA in writing, he didn't pursue it professionally (though now he has a book, so clearly he did eventually). From page 11:
[I]n writing stories for money, the way I was told to go about it was to submit to small nonpaying literary magazines, then get enough published that you could get a story collection with a small press, and then--on the basis of that or whatever small-press novel came next--get a teaching job at some obscure college no one much cared for. Yet even this simple plan seemed impossible. I could barely manage to submit ten copies of a story and send them off to various magazines (writing a different cover letter every time, making sure you got the editor's name right, including the SASE that was properly weighted, etc.). Just thinking about it made my limbs heavy, and my brain gasped for anything more exciting to occupy it. Mailing off stories involved actual suffering. And for what? For ten rejections to trickle in over the next nine months. And even if I made it (I'd succeeded once in the six mass mailings I'd managed to shoulder through), you got no money and no one noticed you were in this stupid magazine that only other MFA students had ever heard of. You were supposed to do years of this. I could barely handle it for two hours.
He took the words right out of my mouth.
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