Big Mike: A Silence That Speaks Loudly

It just occurred to me that The Loved One and I haven’t had a real conversation for about two weeks.

True. It’s not that we’re fighting or anything. Matter of fact, it seems we’ve moved past the fighting phase of our relationship. We had a major league blow up last November that was so alarming I actually was on the phone to my oldest friend in the world, in tears, asking if she and her husband had room to put me up for a while because, well…, you know.

I wouldn’t say The Loved One and I had ever been street fighters. Not like The Honeymooners or anything like that. More like head-shrinkers locked in a room for a weekend. More like George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Lots of psycho-play. Tests of wills. Cleverly disguised broadsides. Stealth attacks designed to reach into the opponent’s amygdala, putting said opponent into a state of paralyzing fear. Oh hell, we didn’t even know we were doing it, consciously at least, so we’re weren’t psychopaths terrorizing each other for sport. We’d learned our tactics from the best (worst?) possible source — our birth families.

Not Us.

So no, the neighbors didn’t have to call the cops every other weekend for all the racket of shattering serving plates or shrieks of pain. But, make no mistake, we did as much damage — spiritual and psychological — that any other smart, quick, loving couple would do to each other.

That November tete-a-tete seems to have been the last act of our fighting years. One or both of us had pushed the games envelope a millimeter too far. We both saw our shared breaking point and decided Hey, we like each other too much to put ourselves through this.

That’s a relief. We’re both reasonably happy here in Bloomington, Indiana. She loves her job. I’m crazy about what I’m doing here — peddling books with the crew of proud lunatics at The Book Case, writing the news for the community radio station and pretending that one day Benny Jay and I will make a living off The Third City.

So our silence is neither tactical nor the omen of an impending storm. We’ve just been sick as dogs. I, of course, had the crap kicked out of me by the 2009-10 seasonal flu. The Loved One has been merely grazed by it. For my part, when it feels as though all my insides suddenly want to be on the outside, idle chitchat ranks way down on the list. And even if the topic were pressing, I hardly had the strength to follow it.

Funny how I feel warmest toward my lovely bride in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep and I can hear the occasional dainty snore emanating from the bedroom. I have the urge to wrap her in my arms and tell her how much she means to me and how ravishingly gorgeous she is, a move that works well in the movies but in real life would only earn me a stern scolding, the hour being late.

It’s now 4:07am, eastern standard time. I just put down one of my PG Wodehouse compilations, my equivalent of a warm glass of milk. I still don’t know if I’ll be able to close my eyes before the 6:00 o’clock alarm rings. Probably not. An American in Paris, one of my ten fave movies of all time, has just ended on TCM. There’s a little bit of Leslie Caron in The Loved One. The two of them are spritely, China doll-like. I’ll have to tell her that.

Not now, of course. I don’t want to be scolded for waking her up in the middle of the night.

Still Not Us — But Closer!