So highly critical of everything despite being unqualified to criticize (that is, offering blind critique of films he had not seen, theories he had not studied, and so on), listening to him was instructive in ways not to be, i.e., behaving in pseudo-intellectual going against the grain for the sake of going against the grain… but it was also unproductive, spending time on ineffective, uninformed opinions crafted for controversy’s sake without even being wrapped in the blanket of devil’s advocacy.

It was all Moonlight (which he had not seen) was “pretentious navel-gazing only praised because it was a ‘black movie’”. Or “women are routinely jealous of other women, and that’s why you don’t appreciate Kate Tempest” (now Kae Tempest, whose coming out as non-binary is probably another thing he’d have uninvited commentary on). Or worse yet, and most offensively, it’s “not numerically possible for as many people to have perished in the Holocaust as commonly claimed” (a “theory” relayed to me by phone in the waning moments of our acquaintance, as I sat in a Jewish restaurant glancing across the street toward a heavily guarded synagogue).

Now of course my brain screams the words I should have blurted out then without hesitation: “What happened to you, dude? What happened to you that makes you like this?! Why would these be the thoughts you think are worth sharing?” I was so much in it at the time, in the moment, wanting everything to progress in a linear stitch, that I did not dare voice my disbelief. I was so much in my own cloud of grief and recovery from a variety of unrelated things that I didn’t see it clearly at the beginning of the conversation. I sewed myself into this predicament that could never yield anything. This is what happens when you believe that any change will be preferable to the current circumstances … and the more dramatic and jarring that change, the better.

Years and years removed from this brief, quilted little mess, it’s these incongruous utterances, betraying a strange mix of what I can only characterize as a mix of jealousy, unconscious bias, latent prejudice, and a need to be perceived as driving dialectical arguments that were nevertheless completely subjective, that occasionally spring to mind. It’s impossible to say if these vignettes reflect who he really was, who I interpreted him as being, or someone he projected or pretended to be in a bid to get rid of me without having to be direct. Or some combination of all of these.

While none of these things matter and don’t figure into my life, sometimes while driving long distances in the dark (my favorite way to drive), listening to music I collected during that period in my life, the mind wanders.

And now in the present, I think, my god, what did I see in this person? I was so tightly wound, I’d have overlooked a lot and basted a patchwork of excuses over the top of both of our inconsistencies and shortcomings. All to prevent my own unraveling. In truth, I never knew this person. I tried to live according to a pattern that was less a form and more a bubble. Being in that momentary bubble, we were not who we really are – on so many levels. We were ephemeral, interim people. Or at least I was … just a thread – loosely connecting one part of my life to an entirely different one. And I can only interpret him and his presence in my life through that lens.

Beyond that, though, and once again only through my own filters and limited information, I can only wonder what his actual partner saw in him? I can only think – based on what little I knew of her and what pieces of himself he showed me – that she suffered. For years. Even if he complained about her (which was exceedingly and respectfully rare), he spoke reverently of her intelligence, her potential, and of all the beautiful things that made her her. She sounded so much more enchanting, patient and forbearing than he could ever be, and certainly more than he deserved if he really did put her through the things he described doing in the course of their lives together. I thought I understood why they were, as he claimed, splitting up, given their long and complex history (the first thing of which I can’t pretend to know about), but even so, I could only guess that she wasn’t living the fullest life she could have been by staying with and relying on him. She sounded like she deserved so much more. It’s not as simple as that, and it’s easy for a rootless character like me to dismiss roots, ties, history and even – or perhaps especially – love.

I find myself thinking of these kinds of people – the person in a partnership who must get something fulfilling from it but who suffers at the hands of the whims, addictions, fickleness and capriciousness of the partner to whom they’ve tied themselves. It’s not rare. Another man I’ve known for years is a serial philanderer (I use this word without assigning a moral judgment to it); I have always wondered what his wife thinks and how she feels. She, like the aforementioned woman, is deeply intelligent, worldly, talented, beautiful, and at least on paper, everything her husband could ever want. But it’s still not enough (or rather, he is not enough so constantly has to prove and reprove that he is attractive to anyone and everyone else). To satisfy his own low self-esteem, some aspects of his choices and behavior must erode her self-esteem. I hope not, but I can’t see how it wouldn’t.

But what do I know? Desensitized to joy, indulging in the purchase of preposterously expensive keychains, seeking out highly practical portable air compressors and searching out capellini in a pasta wasteland, I am always casting an eye on the past and the scales that blinded me.