The outlines of a day

It’s Syttende Mai, we’re in the living room of our apartment, there’s a TV mounted on a white wall.

You take your earrings off, which are large, and silver, and quite reflective, your hair is blonde.

Our bedroom is quite sunny, as is the entire apartment –

I watch your hands as you take your earrings off, your ear is almost glowing a bit in the light, and I can see the faint outlines of the vessels branching under your skin, and your earlobes look like small, slightly opaque gumdrops in context.

It’s all a bit disorienting, and I’m relieved we’re finally home, and it’s nice that you seem so comfortable around me, undressing slowly and casually, with something between indifference and affection, occasionally making eye-contact with me, and smiling warmly.

I’m borderline offended by your pantyhose, which take me by surprise, given that what you’re wearing is tantamount to a costume from my perspective –

The translucent brown top is high-waisted, looks a bit cheap, like a beer bottle, but I can see the outlines of your underwear in the bright light of the room, which compensates.

Our apartment is not that big, but it’s certainly not small  –

My snobbishness keeps me from fully appreciating most things, including our home, though you are the rare exception, leaving even my exhausting pretensions at a loss, unable to find an unflattering aspect of your appearance, or behavior.

The bedroom has what looks like floor to ceiling windows, and the room is filled with typical Scandinavian summer sunlight, ultra-bright and white.

Your knees are shaking somewhat, planted into the bed, with your palms also flat on the bed, supporting you, with your back approximately upright –

Your hair is down, obscuring your face, which is looking into your lap, just a few inches away from mine.

I drank beer for most of the day, to avoid getting too drunk, and acting like a jerk, so I must really like you, and it seems as though we love each other, but I’m nonetheless concerned with your opinion of me, which is atypical –

It breaks my confidence, leaving me less free to enjoy my drunkenness than I’m accustomed to, which I dismiss as an unavoidable consequence of adulthood, and a mature relationship.

We’re engaged, and I can feel pangs of financial anxiety at times when I see your ring, and my obnoxious car, and my obnoxious clothing, my obnoxious expenses generally, all tethered about some pretentious drivel that I do, pushing papers about a desk, quantifying some nonsense risk, all of which leave me carrying the constant weight of a career that appeals in many ways to what is worst about me –

An overly aggressive jack ass, eager to remind everyone else that they probably wouldn’t fare terribly well but for the constraints of civility.

You elicit something else in me that I’ve grown dangerously addicted to, perhaps because I’m being paid to be my worst self most days, providing me with an escape –

An exaggerated privacy that is all ours:

We both enjoy the same pretentious bull shit, shamelessly enjoy the way we both look, the fact that we share the same set of cues that lets everyone around us know exactly where we fit in now, and where we expect to be;

Nonetheless, we seem to really love each other, and spend a significant amount of time laughing at each other’s expense, suggesting that despite healthy mutual admiration, there’s a current running under it all that keeps us from slipping too far into our own graces.

The light cuts through a glass plant vase, through the soil, illuminating its roots, which distracts me from you –

It’s on a table near the bed, to the righthand side from my perspective, just a few feet away from my eyes.

Your legs are shaking, seated near me in the center of the bed, as I’m still laying on my back, and you’re crying.

You say, in a disappointed tone, with inappropriately long pauses, “Charles, … ”

“I want us, to have a kid.”

You don’t look at me, struggling with your delivery of the idea, using the word, “kid”, which I’m not sure was entirely deliberate, though you say it with the insistence of a demand, and not a suggestion, so it’s clear to me that you’re serious, and that you’ve been hiding this idea from me.

I become nervous, and uncomfortable, expecting something quite different initially, but I noticed a change in your mood, so I expected something.

The birds are up and chirping quite a bit, which is seriously annoying me, and subtracting significantly from the gravity of the moment.

Without much pause, I sit up a bit, placing my lefthand on your arm and say, “OK”, though I’m still not sure of the merits of the idea, and I grow worried that my apprehensions have shown in my delivery or expression.

You slip your arm out, and place your hand in mine, and I squeeze it, with a firmness consciously adjusted to convey both manly assurance, and sensitivity.

I was drinking Carlsberg, or Tuborg –

I don’t remember which one, but it was a green glass bottle, for sure.

The curtains are open, we’re on a somewhat high floor, so no one can see in as a practical matter, and the Sun is so bright, it cuts through the fabric of the curtains –

We must look like lit up cutouts from a distance, haplessly entangled in each other, while our handler is off doing otherwise.

You have extremely beautiful eyes, and some freckles near them, and though I’m used to seeing you at this point, I’m always taken back by your appearance, especially now –

Faint outlines of your lips flash, mixed in with the bright sunlight bouncing around your hair, and your skin smells and looks simply wonderful, and as you lean in to adjust your posture, I can see droplets on your eyelashes, which remind me of the light breaking through the roots of the plant minutes earlier, though I can’t make sense of why I made such a superficial association at a moment like this.

“You think it’s, OK, that we have a child together?”

To an American, you have a sophisticated accent, suggesting plainly that you grew up speaking British English, but you nonetheless have the charm of a Norwegian bumpkin, with the typical bouncy pronunciation when speaking English.

You start laughing, at yourself, and my thoughtless response, for a bit, for having been so emotional, which suggests it’s out of character for you, which might be why I’m actually worried about what you think of me.

You wipe your eyes, and your nose, collecting yourself, and though an imposingly mature person emerges, I can see that part of your persona has been shattered a bit by your own honesty, which brings me a bit of pride, and guilt, but mostly pride.

You slap my right shoulder quite hard, laughing harder, and say,

“You’re such a prick! Charles,” sounding this time entirely British, and I gather that you measured my placating had grown to something else entirely, leaving you confident in my love for you, and your expectations, though its realization may have been a bit off from what you had hoped.

You slip in the shower afterward, and hit your head, which leaves me feeling legitimately hopeless, for the first time in my life –

The prospect of an impossible loss becomes a possibility, and my arrogance shrinks into meekness.

It’s something I’ve never known, and I resent having let myself slip so far into my affections for you, but my concern for you preoccupies my thoughts, after a moment of initial hesitance in reflection –

All I can see is your wet hair stuck to the bones of your naked back, and the top of your head, your hair roughly split down the middle, darkened from the falling water, and I’m terrified that I’m about to see blood color the soap running down the drain.

I cautiously move your hair back from the left side of your head, as you’re still seated on the shower floor, not saying anything at all, or moving, simply staring forward –

Your skin has been scraped off a bit near your left eye, but you don’t seem to have any serious injury to your head, which I find relieving, though I did hear something crack, so I sit behind you and take your right hand, and lean in toward you, giving you a moment to organize yourself, and your thoughts.

You slip your fingers in between mine, and the water becomes a bit of a nuisance to us both.

Just before she fell in the shower

She resents that her professional life has forced her into thinking like an adult, which is now creeping into her personal life –

The poisons of reason, observation, and strategy.

So she wishes you were different –

Realizing that your petty criticisms are entertaining when it’s at the expense of her outfit, or someone else’s hairline, but then she imagines your cruelty directed at her child, that perhaps has some unchangeable aspect that disappoints you, and that no matter how well you mask your thoughts on the matter, a subtle glance or comment will reveal the stinging criticisms of someone whose opinion is deeply valued, changing their own mental image, which is something she’s felt when your references overlap a bit too much with her life –

The loud joke about an ostensible stranger at a dinner, of course painted as some idiot, with ruthless disregard for anything other than clarity, leading to the quiet realization that she has more than nothing in common with this stranger, and that perhaps you did it on purpose, though your thoughtlessness suggests otherwise.

The realization that you operate as a type of highly entertaining constraint on her self image –

Vacillating between the immediate, physical and emotional love for her that you make no secret of, the relentlessness of which leaves her numb, and a bit guilty, because no normal person has the energy to sustain something like this.

The feeling of being constantly celebrated by another person:

She can see that every new moment with her, if she just opens a door, sets off a carnival in your eyes, an energy too big to be contained, that borders on embarrassing, even when no one else is around to see it.

But the horrendous things you say about other people, suggest at least the possibility that somewhere in your mind lives a small box of devastating insults that you keep handy, in the off chance that she ever decides to leave –

So that if you can’t have her, then she’ll be ruined for everyone else.

That all of her happiness, and all of her memories with you, exist in a set of places, at particular times, when both of you behaved in a particular manner –

That you voluntarily, but perhaps unconsciously, limited your options in life, simply because you are so happy.

It creates a window within which she is the happiest that she’s ever been, but it is nonetheless a range of conduct, beyond which a terrible anxiety exists.

Making things worse, she realizes that you may simply echo the hostilities of our environment –

Some kind of evolutionary bargain that allows for otherwise impossible, unconditional love, that she never questions.

In her weakness, she can see at least the possibility that she probably wouldn’t find you attractive if you weren’t so cruel –

That your love for her would otherwise appear foolish.

She imagines the possibility of getting sick while pregnant, and being unable to feed herself, remembering how automatic your care for her is at moments like that, able to see how the rest of the world falls completely out of your focus, leaving not even yourself, and only her –

An aperture that drops to a single fixed point, her;

A total animal that has invested all of its psychological well-being into a single, exogenous thing, her.

She knows this makes her emotionally lazy, and that your predictability allows you to be manipulated, but she also knows that you’re plainly conscious of it, and that you don’t care, and so she doesn’t find it unattractive.

That on balance, compromise is inevitable, leaving her with a temporary sense of being completely trapped.

The realization that morality necessarily implies that love operates as a trap, while at the same time, basic emotional needs suggest the alternative is less desirable.

The economics suggest the same conclusions, and she feels guilty for even thinking about those things, but she’s afraid of you, because she realizes that you probably are a trap, otherwise you wouldn’t make sense –

That she has to make a decision over a set of two drastically different outcomes, suggesting in that sense that she has already been trapped.

These considerations lead her to the possibility that she’s just as petty as you are.

The day we found our apartment

The door to our apartment is painted matted black, with brushed chrome accents and components, and the modern finishes give the hallway the overall aesthetic of the interior of a high-end sports car.

The door, and lock tumbler are both very high quality, as are the hinges upon which the door is mounted.

The key is however cut by the building, and is quite cheep to the touch, with an awful, hard plastic casing around the top, which annoys me.

There is no handle to the door, and you instead simply turn the key, and push the door in, which I quite like in terms of simplicity of gesture, and the resulting overall finish of the door, and the hallway.

The apartment itself is immediately bright, and sun-filled, the moment you open the door, with high ceilings, painted white brick walls, grey concrete floors, and a large flowering tree by the windows, housed in a large, green glass vase filled with dark soil, and a mix of matted and partially reflective stones –

A significantly larger version of the same vase that’s in our bedroom.

There are small glass accents scattered about, that light up when the apartment has enough incoming sunlight, which we both really enjoy coming home to.

I sold nearly all of my belongings in New York before moving, other than my primary guitar, which is now stored in a closet, as instructed, producing an aesthetic that is a severe compromise on my part, skewed heavily towards your preferences.

None of it is too effeminate, and is instead somewhere between the look of a Williamsburg condo, and a reasonably high-end apartment in Stockholm.

There are large, floor to ceiling windows, and it’s a generous one-bedroom, with a very oversized bedroom, two bathrooms, including an equally oversized bathroom in the bedroom, that has dark, plank wood, heated floors, a large glass-doored shower with no tub, that also has plank wood floors.

The building itself is tall for the area, a bit dated, with an almost kitsch, soviet brick exterior, but it’s been completely renovated, and the interiors of the apartments are legitimately outstanding.

We had an argument the day that we first saw the apartment, and we were very late to the showing –

It’s because I showed up preposterously late picking you up, ultimately due to drinking with a friend, Ove, that you really do not like, because you know that I use my time with him as an opportunity to discuss awful things, and that he is a terribly misogynistic man, that religiously complains about his wife’s laziness, and is also an alcoholic.

When I met Ove

I met Ove after a night out in Oslo, soon after first moving there, on line at a kebab stand near Oslo Central Station.

I had been drinking in the center of town, and things did not go terribly well for me, having been repeatedly rejected on multiple, independent occasions, mostly because I was alone, making my many unsolicited social intrusions appear like the outset to a sexual assault.

Ove took it upon himself to say hi to me, and given my circumstances, I was in no position to be picky about new friends, so I took up his conversation, which was surprisingly entertaining.

Ove’s a bit older than me, sort of bald, about my height, and though he didn’t seem to have the greatest fashion sense in the world, he seemed relatively normal in terms of his appearance.

His English was pretty good, and after a rather forward discussion about his wife’s many inadequacies, and some stories about my life in New York, he reached into his pocket, unveiling a folded piece of paper.

He had the posturing of a man revealing something not quite secret, but nonetheless earned, during my brief tenure at the kebab stand, with a cautious pride as he unfolded the page, making eye contact with me just before it opened –

It turns out, it was a bit of dated, internet pornography, that had been printed on a very low-quality machine, producing a heavily pixelated representation of what appeared to be a seated nude woman in her 30’s, with a background that I’m quite certain was lifted from a high school year book.

It was a truly worthless bit of smut, not notable by any metric –

She was not particularly attractive, the subject matter was perfectly mundane, all conveying the sense that it had been engineered for mediocrity.

I was simply astonished by this display, and decided that this is definitely someone that I need to keep in touch with, and so any obstacles to two men making friends, publicly exchanging contact information this late in life had been decidedly overcome.

There were a group of girls in their early 20’s behind us that had witnessed our interactions, and burst into laughter upon seeing the pornography.

I gathered that they couldn’t quite make out the entire conversation, and because we ultimately exchanged numbers after jointly admiring 8-bit pornography, they likely assumed that we were some kind of deranged middle ground between homosexuals and ordinary perverts, perhaps resorting to homosexuality to satisfy our insatiable lust for mediocre porn.

When I finally show up

I finally show up, noticeably smelling of alcohol, despite driving a considerable distance from Ove’s house, an hour late, blaming the traffic, which did play some non-trivial role, but this is disingenuous at best –

We had been texting back and forth the entire time, and I more or less lie about where I was, and what time I’d show up.

As I pull up, an arguably atonal piece by César Franck that I am positively blasting inside the car reaches its zenith, and I burst into singing along to the shrill violin, knowing full well that you cannot stand this piece.

An old lady exits a fish shop behind you, unsure of what she’s experiencing, visibly astonished that you’re about to get into my car.

You hate where I currently live, and this adds to your aggravation.

All of this reminds you of my self-entitled willingness to impose a total nightmare on other people, though to your credit, you understand that this is due to my inordinate enjoyment of life.

You open the car door yourself, before I can reach over, and before I can even utter a single word, you say,

“At least chew some gum, because you look a bit shit at the moment, so try to not smell like shit as well.”

Taken back by your rudeness, I look in the mirror to find that you are in fact correct, and that my hair has been blown upwards, causing me to look a bit like a cockatiel, and upon inspection, I find a dark, oily stain on the right leg of my jeans.

There is a candy bar wrapper to the right of the gas pedal, suggesting that I even stopped to get something to eat, which you notice.

You also saw me quickly, and clumsily eating it as I pulled up, which adds to your temporary revulsion towards me.

All of this breaks my confidence, and I clumsily fix my hair, realizing that I am in fact a bit drunk, which in turn sours the mood, as I begin to feel legitimately bad for upsetting you, though you know that I do these things at least in part as a form of performance art, to amuse you with my outrageous conduct.

You eventually laugh at how stupid I look, and fix my hair, as if I were some kind of disabled child that you have been tasked with caring for.

You know that this is simply how I am, and that for most of my life, I somehow simply get away with these things, perhaps because I look a bit stupid at times, but nonetheless, it annoys you, occasionally.

You’re not bothered by my drinking, and you trust that I would never consciously put you in any danger, which is in this case the result of hubris, adopting the same at times careless attitude towards how I spend my free time.

Perhaps you trust my vanity more than anything else, which would never allow me to cross the line from the outrageous to the truly degenerate.

You want to participate in how I see the world –

To show up drunk, an hour late, with stained pants and disheveled hair, and somehow get away with it, driving off with a beautiful woman.

Though you’re the reason it’s possible in this case, it is in part driven by your desire to understand the mechanics of the process.

You could have walked, as it’s only a few blocks away, but you waited, perhaps because you want to be part of these moments, where you’re legitimately disappointed in my petty, inconsiderate nonsense.

Ove’s House

I’m surprised, and a bit relieved to find out that Ove lives in Bærrum, which is one of the nicer suburbs of Oslo, making my trip to his home less uncomfortable for me.

My ex-girlfriend grew up in Bærrum, and so I already have fond memories of the area.

I’m honestly astonished by how nice Ove’s place is, and it turns out, that he’s an electrical engineer, with his own company, and does commercial electrical wiring for large buildings around Oslo, and neighboring cities in Norway.

We have a common interest in engineering, and sports cars in particular, which really makes our initial conversations go remarkably well.

I looked around for a dot-matrix printer, as the presumed source of his carry-on pornography, but didn’t see one, so I concluded that he had printed it at work, as an executive privilege of sorts.

However, Ove has a pet rat, which is immediately distinguishable from the cliché lab mouse, and is instead an actual rat, that is visibly unhealthy, with disgusting teeth, and matted hair, that he’s simply left to coagulate.

He keeps it in a large, square, glass fish tank, that has a plastic, model race car in it, and a more traditional hamster wheel, neither of which appear to be getting much use by this visibly sickly creature.

The tank is large enough to fit a dog food bowl, and its internal condition is simply disgusting, though I can see that the outside of the tank is cleaned regularly.

On this day, the bowl contains a left over steak, that had clearly been chewed on extensively by, “Micky”, which is apparently the rat’s name, suggesting either a language gap, or perhaps an inability to distinguish between cartoon mice, and large, diseased rats.

The story of Ove’s pet rat

He was working on a construction site in East Oslo, and they had recently torn up the ground under a new project, which had otherwise been left relatively undisturbed for centuries.

This released an enormous number of rats, which caused problems at the construction site, with workers frequently spotting rats attempting to steal their unattended lunches, and otherwise infesting the site, with many rats fighting each other, rather viciously, extending their presence to surrounding neighborhoods as well.

Occasionally, teams of rats would run after pedestrians, with local newspapers featuring zoomed-in, pixelated photographs of vicious-looking rats, with off-center, sensational headlines, alerting locals to avoid particular corners, reportedly due to trash cans that had been completely overwhelmed by rats.

Ove is convinced that he had befriended a particular rat, and took to feeding only this rat each day at work, insisting that the rat’s matted hair, and personality, allowed him to discern between Micky, and his many friends, all of whom ultimately terrorized the neighborhood for months.

Their friendship had reportedly blossomed over a few days, and so he brought a trap to work one day, that he had fashioned himself at home, baiting Micky with what I’m told was his favorite cheese, Jarlsberg, cleverly ensconcing him in the trap, and ultimately taking him home.

The race car was purchased during another work trip Ove had taken to Trondheim, feeling guilty for having to leave Micky at home alone for over a week, so he bought the race car just to cheer up Micky, which cost Ove $150 USD.

I asked whether his wife had come with him to Trondheim, and after a brief bit of reflection, he simply said, “no”.