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It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue

Janice possesses a rare gift: with a few words, with a single question, or especially, with  a hard glare from her eyes, she can make me furious. In fairness, though, I don’t think she always intends to make me mad; I’d be willing to give her the benefit of doubt if she didn’t declare her position with her facial expression -like a predator in the woods, her eyes have the uncanny ability to put me immediately on guard.

Janice didn’t used to be a political animal -neither did I- but current events in the world have managed to harden her views; mine too, I suppose, but in the opposite camp as it turns out. I mean, who would have thought she would think I objected to DEI? Who could have guessed that ‘gentle Janice’ was a misnomer for her? I nicknamed her that because the name sort of resembled the ‘Gentle Giant’ of my childhood -the name I used for an elephant I bonded to in the local zoo. And, uhmm, yes Janice is a large woman; she nicknamed me ‘G’ for some reason -not at all clever like hers, but she was her own woman.

At any rate, we were walking along the Ambleside seawall in West Vancouver. The weather was changing, I guess, and there was a fierce West wind blowing past Lighthouse Park and down the throat of the Burrard Inlet. As topics sometimes change in sync with Nature, we began talking about how hard it was to keep our hats secure in the teeth of the gale we were facing. “It’s like one of those late-night teenage party dares isn’t it?”

I cocked my head; amazed by her imagination as usual.

“Spin the bottle! Remember…?

I grinned, took my hat off, and stuffed it in my pocket, but she refused to capitulate and walked holding hers on her head as her dress and coat billowed like sails she had yet to trim. “I hated the game,” she admitted with what I thought was a blush. “I’ve always been… large…”

A one-time sailing instructor, I chuckled, and suggested that maybe given the current situation and no bottles in sight, she should reef her mainsail instead. But, as clever as I thought my remark was, she immediately swivelled her head as if to jibe, and I could see ‘the look’ as her forehead shrivelled into wrinkles and her eyes withdrew into their fencing position -not at all in keeping with the nautical theme I had introduced.

“Why would you say that G?” She had to yell in the wind, but her anger was a predator closing in on me. “Why are you being so insensitive?”

I have to say her anger caught me by surprise, and for once, I was speechless. I could only manage a shrug, which actually served to incriminate me further.

“You’re like some of our southern neighbours who seem to be down on DEI recently…” her glare was hard to watch, so I stared at the ground at my feet -a gesture which I realized too late was almost a confession; an inadvertent mea culpa.

“You think I’m too fat, don’t you?” It wasn’t a question; it was an accusation.

I shook my head, but not hard enough I guess, because the shake seemed to infuriate her. 

“Thin, white male privilege rearing its ugly head again, I see! Why can’t you guys make up your minds? Brains, or brawn: they don’t often go together do they?” She turned her head and started to walk back the way we had come. Then she stopped and turned toward me again. “I thought you were better than that, G! I should have known, though; now that I can see you with trimmed eyes, I realize that you’ve always looked at me as if I were different; as if my weight was -and is– a problem for you.” She turned again, then changed her mind, and pinned me where I stood with a menacing glare once again. “And I am not wearing a sail!!”

I was starting to get mad as well; she was accusing me of things that just weren’t true. We were friends, not partners. I enjoyed her company, but she had fangs that she unsheathed every so often, and that always seemed to affect me; I felt the need to fight back, although I’m not sure why.

She turned again and started to walk away -but not so quickly that I couldn’t catch up if I wanted. Following her gave me time to think about why she had been so angry, though. I hadn’t meant anything by my nautical metaphor -I hadn’t tried to insult her…

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether I was criticizing her. She was … large…  and I found that part of her unattractive, I suppose. But I loved her mind; she was a publishing poet and was currently working on her second novel – I loved that about her. So why had the nautical stuff surfaced? Had I been trying to amuse her, or me? Was my response actually how I felt…?

She kept turning her head and glaring at me, so it was hard to concentrate. I decided to respond to her attack. “Thank you for accusing me of being thin, eh?” I don’t know why I said that; but memories of the taunts in school in my childhood surfaced like the unpleasant itchiness of the  woolen sweaters my mother used to make me wear in the cold Winnipeg winters… I was usually the shortest boy in class, and wore the heaviest glasses; and I was so thin, that my classmates used to say I disappeared into my clothes like a worm going underground. That used to hurt. I don’t remember telling Janice about that, but she had a memory like a safety deposit vault in a bank….

Suddenly, something occurred to me: we were now both accusing each other of issues about ourselves we regretted; ripping away the carefully placed bandages we’d worn over the years. Like rival political parties, we were exposing each other’s wounds; cooperation seldom worked when the opposition was inflicting pain; it just goaded both sides to retaliate.

Still, the gauntlet had been dropped; and although I didn’t feel like picking it up, I grabbed it for a second or two. “Tell me how you really feel, Jan!” I hissed, thinking my retort would injure her enough that she would relent… or at least smile at me…

And then, unexpectedly, with the slightest of movements of her lips, a reluctant smile crept slowly across her face; and I couldn’t help smiling back at her. In fact I felt foolish for trying to out-metaphor her with my ill-conceived sailor stuff, and I slowly shook my head for… what, forgiveness? Absolution?

I couldn’t decide my motivation, but she grabbed my hand before I could overthink it. “We can be so silly, can’t we, G?” Then she hugged me -crushed me, really- “We both wear our pasts like hats: you took yours off; I tried to keep mine on…” she added, reaching for her hat and stuffing it in the pocket of her voluminous coat as it billowed like her dress, like her hair, like her smile…

“I never played spin-the-bottle, you know.” I admitted and then shrugged when one of her devilish smiles suddenly appeared. “Nobody ever invited me to play either…” I added, blushing for the first time in a long while…

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