Timing Issues (I) - Impeccably bad timing
Some of my friends are aware of this; they've seen it happen.
It is the most thoroughly puzzling phenomenon of human interpersonal dynamics I've ever lived through.
It is a phenomenon, or perhaps phenomena, related to timing.
I'm convinced that in over seven years of various degrees of association, my partner and I have only ever had one fight. It's just never ended. And it's ridiculous. And because it's ridiculous it's neverending. Defeat is one thing, but to be defeated by the ridiculous? Nay, nay. Run my horse smack into a windmill first, let these bones sink into a peat bog. Anything but be defeated by the ridiculous.
What can I say? I'm human.
There's a line by Douglas Adams about how a house almost but not quite exactly failed to please the eye.
And that's about the best I can explain my partner's timing: so impeccably bad that it almost but not quite exactly hates me.
And while I'm not exactly a world traveller, I have, in fact, dealt with a fair enough variety of people--suicidals, people who wanted me dead, addicts, dealers, thugs, thieves, rapists, Christians, ad nauseam--to say that I've never seen anything like this before and expect people to be suitably impressed.
Something of an approximate sequence of manifest symptoms:
- Initially, she would watch the commercials vacantly and then begin showing me pictures of people I had never meant and telling stories that, like those of John Candy's character in "Planes, Trains & Automobiles", went nowhere. I had a few Martinesque blow-ups early in our relationship. Eventually this progressed into our first fight; I asked her to stop doing that--several times--and eventually she lamented that I never wanted to look at her pictures and thus must not care about her or who she is or where she comes from. We've never gotten over that.
- Eventually I stopped caring when she asked about my favorite this or that. In any movie, song, or television show, at the defining moment, she turns her attention from what is taking palce in front of her to tell a story about how cool she was at work. Again, I asked her to find a more appropriate time. Again, I apparently didn't care.
- You know that little breath a person takes right before they start speaking? It's like she listens for that. If she hears it, she vomits words. Anything. How cool she is. How stupid someone else is. Never anything wise about life. Lately she's exhausted because she's devoting so much energy to thinking about fixing up the house. I've already been told I have no say in the process, yet why does she interrupt me when we're talking about our daughter to tell me her latest color scheme for the kitchen? Nothing important ever gets discussed.
- So ... she calls me into the room. It's important. Stop what you're doing and come here. And maybe ten per cent of the time it's anything important. And then she waits until I leave the room and, usually, if I'm lucky, I get to sit down or pick up my book or unzip my fly before she asks, "What are you doing? Can you do me a favor?" Fuck. Was there some reason you couldn't ask while I was ... oh ... say ... standing right there?
And it dominates all aspects of life. Renders two people at least nearly completely immobile. The ridiculous is upon me; this goes beyond Camus' absurd. This is unneccesary absurdity.
People wonder why I don't sleep at night.
Because it's quiet. It's the only quiet one can get in this house. Don't ask me about the fucking television.
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