Years ago, my daughter, Regan, told me something I’ll never forget. It must have been just before or just after her mother and I divorced. Probably after. (Regan was always sharp, but the trauma of that experience honed her edge a bit.) I was trying to salvage our relationship. I promised to become a better person and father.
“Oh Dad,” she said, “people never change. They just become more of what they are.”
Now, 7 years later, her insight has proven prescient. I’m the same as I was, only more so. Nothing like living alone to invite all your idiosyncrasies home to roost. I’m set in my ways, as said in the old days by old people who might smell faintly of naphthalene. And yet…change is also in the air. Lately I’ve been feeling the need for a better half. But when you’ve spent years striving to be whole by yourself, how do you suddenly reverse course and share your life with someone else?
When we were a family, we often spent summer vacations in the Adirondacks. The Adirondack Museum (now the Adirondack Experience), in the hamlet of Blue Mountain Lake, was a frequent destination, and one of my favorite exhibits was the tiny, primitive shack of the hermit Noah John Rondeau, who lived alone in the woods of the Cold River basin for 30 years.
Depending on your circumstances, you might choose one role model or another to guide your life and choices. If you choose Noah John Rondeau, it’s unlikely that intimate conversation, candlelight dinners, and say, swing-dancing with the opposite sex (or any sex, for that matter) are high in your skill set. And you can just plain forget about bowling, romantic getaways, and romcom films with or without popcorn. Mr. Rondeau had no time or interest in such frivolities. He was too busy boiling up squirrel in his cast-iron kettle and keeping fresh bark on the roof. That man knew how to do solitude right.
One day last winter (it was snowing, as I recall, and chilly in the renovated barn I call home), as I leaned against my kitchen counter eating peanut butter out of the jar, I came to the sobering realization that, while the spirit of Noah John Rondeau had guided me well through solitude, it could not guide me out. When it came to lifestyle, he was a one-trick pony.
I ruminated over this for a few months; made some tentative and generally disastrous attempts at connecting, and ran from others. Only then did I consider the online approach, which I had previously held in contempt. Only losers had to resort to that, I reasoned. My change of heart was not hypocritical; I merely accepted that I was a loser (by other means), and found satisfaction in knowing that my reasoning was sound.
I’m comfortable online, a domain that favors the written word. Where each text and tweet and email is the modern equivalent of a message in a bottle. An SOS for the introvert and socially awkward. The perfect solution for me. I was born at the right time – antibiotics, indoor plumbing, and internet. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
But what makes it the perfect solution also makes it problematic. Anyone checking out your profile knows only what you say about yourself – and perhaps more importantly – how you say it. If, for example, if you cloak your worst qualities in intriguing, perhaps even beguiling terms, you’re far more likely to snag some interest than you would by simply describing yourself as an asocial troglodyte who lives in a barn and eats on his feet. As when talking to a shrink about yourself, you have to be brutally honest, but also sensitive and articulate and not gratuitously self-deprecating in order to have a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting a response based on your true self, or at least the truest self you know and can express in words. Also, a few photos can’t hurt (unless they do...)
I used a service that promised “results,” (despite noting the missing adjective) and crafted a profile that I hoped was irresistible. I read it aloud to my cat. She purred. I clicked SUBMIT and waited.
And waited.
And waited some more. I became convinced that I was doomed to break Rondeau’s 30-year record. I decided to make the first move. I perused profiles, found someone close by who sounded interesting, disliked folding laundry as much as I, and had a slight overbite I found strangely compelling. I screwed up my courage and sent her a “Like.” She replied in kind. Spritely correspondence ensued. Next thing I knew, we had made a date.
I didn’t sleep for two weeks.
We met in Autumn Leaves Used Books on the Ithaca Commons at 10:30 in the morning of a sunny Saturday in late March. The place is large and lots of people were milling about, browsing the volumes and finding bargains. I spent a few minutes looking for her, curious to see how closely she resembled her photo.
In her photo, she’s smiling. When I rounded a massive free-standing bookcase and nearly ran into her, she looked pensive. Then she recognized me and the faint crease between her brows disappeared. I took it to be a sign of compatibility that we found each other in the science fiction section.
I don’t remember exactly what we talked about. I was too busy trying to stifle my nerves. Books, probably. Favorite authors. Writing. Politics. Her social activism. I do recall the moment she mentioned her marriage, how it ended painfully just two years prior (minor red flag, quickly folded and pocketed), and how proud she was of her adult son, who was a successful doctor or lawyer or fire fighter or whatnot.
We walked aimlessly around the book racks, then out into the commons. The air was cool but the sun was warm. Traces of snow and ice huddled in the shadows. Our conversation continued, but I was distracted by the cross-talk of my internal dialog: Are things going well? How the hell do I know? We’re total strangers, pretending not to be! Not totally total. Ok great – partially total. Focus! What did she just say? Stop talking about yourself! Ask questions. Try to be social for a change. Oh my god, what do we do next?
We paused on the fringe of a group of onlookers to watch a young man with basketballs strapped to his feet dance bouncingly to music pumped out by an old-style boom box. I put some bills in his tip jar.
The breeze picked up and I shivered. We stepped into a coffee shop and found seats at the counter. I ordered a latte with an extra shot of espresso (as if I wasn’t already sufficiently wired); she chose carrot juice. My fight or flight instinct kicked in. I took a deep breath and tried to get comfortable in the noisy, crowded space. She said something I didn’t quite catch.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “what was that?” I leaned closer to her. She fixed me with a steady, serious gaze.
“Are you dark?” she said.
I furtively checked my complexion in the mirror across the bar. Pasty white as ever.
“What do you mean?”
She looked away. Dread welled up inside of me.
“I can feel it,” she said.
She’d looked into my soul and made a judgment.
“Maybe so,” I admitted. “Maybe my mood is a little dark sometimes.”
As much as I admired and appreciated her insight and honesty, those feelings were eclipsed by the collapsing artifice of optimism I’d been building in my back brain, the place of no words where desire lives.
“I don’t think we’re a good match,” she said plainly, frankly.
I thought of all the things I might say then, to try and turn this ship from the shoals. But only fools mourn the loss of something they never had. And the clever words that I feverishly conjured might change her mind, but not her heart. You can’t argue your way to love. Even a loner (maybe especially a loner) knows that.
“Ok,” I said.
She looked relieved and gave me the barest flicker of a smile. It was the goodbye smile, the thanks for not making things awkward smile.
After a few moments of silence, I pulled up my sleeve dramatically and stared at my bare wrist.
“Oh my goodness, look at the time! I should be getting back. My cat must be missing me terribly!”
The tension evaporated and we both laughed. I stood up; she didn’t. We said goodbye, and I left.
The drive home passed in a blur. I lapsed into the liminal space between destinations. I realized that I was relieved. I would never be able to match her brightness, because it’s true that I’m dark. I don’t cast a shadow; I am the shadow. I thought of other profound ways to describe myself to someone who might dig the dark. By the time I got home, I had a completely new profile in mind.
_ _ _
Late in June, I treated myself to a few days of canoe camping the Adirondacks. One advantage of still being single was that I could take my smaller, lighter, solo boat, which is faster on flat water (and a hell of a lot easier to lift onto the roof of the car).
There are only a few places left up there where you can camp on lakes off-limits to power boats. Among them are Little Tupper and Lake Lila. To reach either of them, if you’re traveling by way of Old Forge, you pass the Adirondack Experience. I couldn’t resist the urge to drop in and see Noah John Rondeau’s hermit shack again.
The museum seemed unchanged by time. I headed for the “Life in the Adirondacks” building, which is located at the far end of the grounds and overlooks Blue Mountain Lake. When I entered, I was greeted by the familiar musty smell of artifact collections and decades-old dioramas of nature, human and otherwise, in simulated outdoor settings. I worked my way through the maze of exhibits to the alcove where the reconstructed shack had always been and found, instead, a wall of white plastic sheeting draped floor to ceiling.
My disappointment was unaccountable. I went outside in a daze and then entered the Lake View Café next door. It still had the cafeteria-style, help yourself, pay at the end arrangement that I remembered. I selected a few ready-to-eat snacks at random. When I got to the cashier, I asked about Rondeau’s shack.
“It’s getting fumigated and rebuilt,” she said. “A few months, they say. Everybody asks about it.”
“Fumigated?”
“Yeah, some kinda bugs are eating the logs and the planks. Funny, isn’t it? Thirty years out in the woods and it’s just fine. They bring it in here, and it starts to rot away.”
“That is funny. Strange.”
“Yeah, strange more like, I guess.”
I paid and carried my tray outside to the deck and took in the view of the lake as I opened my “Jello Singles” pudding cup. I was dazzled by sunlight on the water. Small boats bobbed here and there between the islands of sand and stone and dense stands of pine. My magical thinking dreamed up a companion by my side. Could this day be any more perfect? I spooned chocolate pudding into my mouth as I leaned against the railing and wondered what Rondeau would say.
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