"You've always looked like you'd be a nice woman," he said a little later.
"Yeah? Nice if I did what?" she asked.
"What? No, no, I didn't mean 'nice if you changed something or other.' I just meant you look like you are a nice woman. Jesus, that does sound vapid, now that I've said it out loud!"
"Oh? Well, that's nice," she chuckled. She shook her head, perhaps meaning to show that she wasn't taking any of this seriously, including her own witticisms.
"It is a flaky thing to say, I guess."
"You're right!" she said quickly, then just as quickly added, "No, not really."
Dogger looked up, wondering why she'd suddenly "let up" on him. He was pleased to see that she was smiling.
"It's just always a damned hard sort of thing to react to," Dottie said, "when someone says shit like that to me. It's one of those quirky kinds of compliments that's always hard to respond to, and men never seem to realize it. It seems to have its origins in a past so distant that it might almost be considered another planet.
"Men come around and say something like that, and then I wonder if they even realize the gross assumption they're making that women like that sort of thing in the first place. Then I wonder if they mean it, and after that I wonder if it's true, and then I wonder if my head's screwed on right and then I don't know how to react at all, no matter which combination of meaning and truth is operative. Do you know what I mean?"
Curiously enough, he did. Her thoughts seemed so much like his own that he fell another degree in love with her without meaning to. Still, it didn't mean that he was one whit more honest or generous than any other male who might attempt to disarm her with a compliment.
"I get your drift. You're a very reflective woman, aren't you?"
"Yup; as reflective as a fun house full of mirrors and just as crazy."
"You can be pretty crazy, I've always found," he told her, "and still manage to get by. Uh-you know, if you're as smart as I think you are, I may be in love with you in a few minutes."
"What? God, what am I supposed to say to that?"
"Since you're not telling me you think I'm a jerk yet, maybe I've got a chance, anyway. Tell me more."
"Tell you more about what?" she said in a loud voice. She sounded amused, and thus her loudness seemed somehow intentionally hysterical. He hoped her smile meant simply that she was making sure he realized he was being teased.
"About yourself, of course, silly rabbit."
"Mmmf!" she said. Her mouth was full, so she raised her eyebrows and shook her head. He watched her eat and wondered what she thought. She was teasing him, surely; but why? Some women did such things to keep men interested and some women teased to throw men off their scent.
Dogger Gatsby could see there was no particular point in sniffing Dottie. It was all very confusing. Sometimes women put him off with the exact qualities that attracted him to women in the first place, and a lot of them seemed to sense it and make use of it. Only "intelligent women" understood him, he felt. It was nice to be understood, of course, but it always became intensely difficult when he found an intelligent woman who was as manipulative and ironic as he was. Hellfire! It was damnably hard to keep track of. "I should just stop thinking about it!"
Dogger had one friend who was always insisting that part of a woman's basic training was flirtation, that even in most of the modern liberated women, the vestigial trait remained as a non-vicious ever-present nerve-response. Women couldn't quite shake it off.
"Many women today," Phil had written in a letter recently, "make a sort of sport out of attracting and infatuating men even if they're uncertain whether they want to get involved. Somewhat like the old Indian custom of 'counting coup'..."
"There's a phrase to make you shudder!" Dogger Gatsby thought. A phrase that didn't inspire confidence in either sex.
There's nothing intentionally evil in what women do," Phil said, "nor in what I think of them for doing it. They are just-unconsciously, sometimes-using the best bait they have, even if the wrong bait, to attract new friends."
"The main thing," he'd written, "for all of us, is to acquire and keep a friendship."
"That sounds wise enough," Dogger thought.
"Unfortunately," Phil added, "sometimes women are just as confused as men are and can only reach out for friendship through a sexual come-on, and then the man becomes so pissed off when it isn't consummated that he pushes her out of his life completely."
Dogger kept staring at Dottie; it had been a long time since he'd given so much attention to watching a woman do anything as insignificant as eat. A long time since he'd watched a woman he cared for do anything at all. She caught his eye on her and looked a little put out. Maybe she thought he was searching for flaws or maybe she just didn't like being stared at. He wanted very much to blurt out something, even if it turned out to be dumb.
He wanted to say, "You mesmerize me! Sometimes I like you so much that I can't stand to look at you!"
He stayed the other kind of dumb and said nothing. Essentially nothing. He talked, but he felt like a klutz. He wanted to run away when the simplest thing ought to have been to just stay. He did stay, but he stayed nervous, too.
"How, in this jaded day and age," he asked himself, "can you be so solemnly shy?!" He knew how. It was easy. For him, somehow, it was always easy to do it the hard way. He took another breath.
"How, in this jaded day and age," he tried again, "can you huff up and say to her, 'I want to devour you! Be my friend or I'll die!'"
Weak women wouldn't understand the strength of such talk, and strong women would, but wouldn't care for it. There was too much desperation in it.
"I'm just sitting here staring at her!" he thought uncomfortably. "God, I'm an idiot, I'm blowing it!"
Suddenly Dottie spoke, breaking into his funk. "Did you go to college to learn this sophisticated an art of conversation or did you just stumble on it by accident?"
"I studied at home," he told her, breaking his silence. "Of course I didn't major in anything."
She looked at him askance and grinned. She said, "Do you get the impression we're dueling?"
"Definitely."
"Are we having fun yet?"
"Within limits, I'd say so. Wouldn't you?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Maybe we should get married," he laughed.
"I wouldn't go anywhere near that far," she said.
"How can you know how far you'd go until you get there?"
"I go pretty far as it is," she told him, "but we're not that far yet. Jesus, this is the weirdest conversation!"
"But fun. Isn't it?"
"Yeah... Yeah, it is," she said, settling her chin on her palm and shaking her head. "Where have you been all my life?" she added.
"Just waiting around, I guess. Waiting for you, perhaps?"
"Don't get too optimistic," she told him, pursing her lips. "I'm not that easy, or easy to live with, either."
"You might not be this pleasant all the time, either," Dogger Gatsby said.
"But I'm not really optimistic, I'm just romantic."
He was too busy studying the shape of her lips to realize the two conditions might be the same approximate thing. As to the condition of her lips: "Christ, that's pretty!" he thought. "She probably knows it too." Still, maybe she didn't know it; maybe she needed someone to tell her. A lot of people need someone to tell them they're wonderful, though she didn't seem like one.
"Would you like to go out sometime?" he asked, his heart in his mouth.
"I thought you'd ne?vah ask?" she said, affecting that coy southern drawl that makes even the most affirmative statement seem to end in a question mark. She fanned herself theatrically with her hand for the full effect.
"Does that mean yes or no?"
"It means yes, silly rabbit."
"Thank God!"
"No, thank me."
"Thanks, Dottie."
"When?"
"Oh, uh-I don't know!"
"How can we meet, if you don't know that?" she asked, giving him an exasperated but friendly look.
"You're right. You're quite right," he said, looking down at the floor. He looked back up right away and opened his mouth, but for a while nothing came out.
"We'll have to work something out," she smiled.
He nodded and smiled back.
rcs.
5th draft:03/01/06
©1989 Ronald C. Southern
