He said, she said
a new poem by Kath Gerobin
He said, she said
She thought of it, before finishing in the bathroom, before brushing her teeth. The words came to her as easily as water falling down the drain: a perfectly acceptable reason why she was leaving the man she would’ve married right there and then if he proposed yesterday, the same man whose bed she’d been happily sharing with for the past year and a half, the same man who, in the middle of summer nights, would kiss her hand in between states of dreaming, between his tossings and turnings.
Why it occurred to her so casually scared her. A script? A foreshadowing? A prophecy? There was a plot brewing in her head. She couldn’t tell if it was her or fate preempting it. Could it be the poet in her, glimpsing divinity before it arrived as horse sense? Not that someone beyond them was in charge. But that forever might simply be beyond them. That they already knew, from past collisions, that there was fire, for sure; their stars do cross, but perhaps crossing was all it ever was.
——
When she lay in his bed, that night, she reached out to hug him. By habit, of course. By guilt, actually, this time. Because when he felt the cold of her hand, his body, by this point, had learned how it belonged: though fast asleep, he took her hand and rubbed his palm against hers. Not a kiss; it was not yet summer, not yet time for routine kisses but careful tendering.
While he drifted along the slumber of romance—- while his chest was still fastened by her arms, she had already thought it.
——
He made his silly puns and she thought it.
He texted his silly jokes and she thought it.
He swayed his silly hips and she thought it.
——
Though she laughed along, pulling her head back, guffawing, dropping punchlines and clapbacks, she thought and thought it. The words, slipping from the back of her mind, like a yawn, we’re just too different people.
She wanted to cover her mind’s mouth. Swallow the words back. Unthink. She feared that now that the words had formed, they’d stain her every other thought. They’d talk, he’d sing, and she’d think and think of how the words were right: that if she asked another question, his answer would then again satisfy another’s; if she took another hit with him, even a bong wouldn’t send him where she landed; that, put simply, they were just too different people.
It came to her, so naturally, like hunger rising from her gut. She looked at him and she craved. She hugged him, bit him, called for him and she craved and craved and craved.
Now that words were gnawing at her, she wanted an elseness—something than the string of words that followed her thoughts like wet trails, we’re just too different… we’re not working… we don’t fit… it’s over…
——
A man of science and a woman not-in-STEM. Rather, in steps, descending library basements for vaulted books, secretly hating Derrida, hated seeking him and his unstable meanings, his obscure language. Because what if Derrida had the answer to why was it that even though she met him in english, they remained foreign to each other.
——
They came from places unstable: Palestine, the Philippines. Standing on shaky ground wasn’t new to them; they understood each other’s Canadas; they knew that their time on this land was but merely borrowed; his document was her document: name, address, citizenship, valid from, valid until. They knew each other’s expirations, how deadlines were the reaper counting their final steps.
So when he came to her with his papers saying he had 3 months left, despite his appeal for yet another extension, he knew that when she asked yet again if he had told a lawyer already, she was not simply asking if the task had been done. If you lose your status, you can’t get funding, you can’t get a job, I don’t have a full-time job yet. When he said, I know, it did not only mean that these were facts he knew as well. But that ultimately, they shared the same kind of fuckery. It meant, to both him and her, that though they were in love, they were not home.
Oh, Canada: not merely a pin on a map, a stamp on their passports, or a bordered land. It was an elseness where they could meet. Signed and signified as the only home of their shared home. Derrida makes it lovelier when he says poets aren’t confined to one sense of a word; that there is no one true “Canada,” that they are free to mean it in the manner of their choosing. And so did she and he arrive at a Canada, a country where they could hold each other’s hands.
——
Yet, despite how their shared fuckery eventually both got them fucking, this passion needed a kindling he did not give, and she didn’t know how to ask. She tried, she did ask,
Am I your best friend?
He said, yes, of course, you are. He insisted he loved her company the most, and he meant it
like a bro.
Fucking Derrida. This was not what she meant. She wanted a best friend. She wanted to be let in on his quietest thoughts, to listen to his voice that could only be heard in whispers.
Or, perhaps, like in sisterhood, she was waiting to be asked too. Not because she would finally learn if she were or weren’t his number one. There was no triumph in the fact. Escaping the subjunctive mood wasn’t the point. But if he were to ask back, and this is the real reason she asked, she’d finally learn that he was tending the same kind of ache: the yearn for a confidante, a host for the unspeakable. Because is this not intimacy? A stripping rawer than undressing?
——
In one of the rarest conversations where they were on the same side, he mentioned how he could not fault people for not seeing what we saw. If a person had only known privilege, is it their fault that they could not see what was beyond its lacking? He meant what he meant: could you really fault a white man who was taught nothing but to feed its belly?
She said no, in agreement. She understood him like how she knew that if you pulled a trigger to make a bullet go, it would certainly go if it was meant to go off if a trigger was pulled. She knew tautology like how she knew he was thinking of machines and the redundancy of their existence: they were as how they were designed to be. Even a dog, bred to follow its nose, would follow a trail that led to a lion’s den.
Where she didn’t understand him, and this was clear on her end, was that a white man is not always a machine, not always an animal. To her, a man, though a man and is white, can rebel. She knew this in a way he either refused to or couldn’t understand: but honey, if a man is confined within his echo chamber and is only the kind of man he is inside it, what is the point of transcendence? There would be no man that was exactly who he was outside of himself.
But can’t a man die a thousand deaths in his lifetime? She thought out loud.
No, honey, I mean, if a man is himself (as in he sees what his privileges allows), then it follows that he wouldn’t be the man he was if he saw beyond his privileges. He simply wouldn’t be himself.
She knew tautology. She understood that if a ≡ a, then it follows a ≠ b. He was right, but this was not the man she believed in.
Afterall, can’t a man be both himself and not himself?
Logic wouldn’t have it; he wouldn’t have it. She knew that about him. He was truly a man of reason. Could you fault a smart man who couldn’t be foolish?
What she hoped he would understand was that her questioning wasn’t litigation at all. She wasn’t serious like that. She understood logic, but she wanted indulgence: Could you not be yourself? Could you contain contradictions? Could you be transcendent? Could you, armed by logic, strip down naked and daydream with me? Could you be my best friend?
——
She thought it.
She thought it and told him.
She thought it and told him, aren’t you curious about me? Don’t you want to know my mind?
He said, yes, of course, I am. He liked knowing if she was happy, if she was well. He meant it, and she knew it.
But why wouldn’t you ask me?
Ask you what?
If I were your best friend.
He told her she wasn’t his “best friend.” He never had one like hers. He didn’t feel the need to know someone’s deepest thoughts.
I talk to you and I think laissez-faire.
Fucking Derrida. She thought, free market? Scarcity and competition? Every man for himself? If she wanted to be heard, she thought he meant, she must outspeak him.
OH, COULD YOU BE LESS OF A MAN.
—No, honey.
He simply meant that there was no need for him to be in her head. If you want to say something, I’ll hear it. If it’s not ready, I’ll wait. If you want to talk but can’t, then I’ll talk. But I don’t need to know your innermost thoughts. You’re here, I’m here.
What is this intimacy? To be unnaked and not made raw by a lover’s undoing? Let the drapes hang on her shoulders; let her breasts be covered, her legs hidden, and yet be seen.
I did not mean that a white man can’t change. I just can’t fault them for malice for not seeing what is beyond their purview.
Why do we keep misunderstanding each other? She thought out loud.
I don’t think you can ever find someone who thinks exactly like you. But we try, we talk, we fail and try and try again.
I want you to ask me too.
I will.
That was it. We’re just too different people.
She thought it and told him. And just like that it became what it simply was, not a verdict, not a curse: a thought.
——
The night she told him of her thought, she held him as she slept. A habit, happily unburdened by guilt.
Before giving into sleep, before letting his mind fully wander, he reached for her hand and tucked it under his shirt. It was snowing outside. She must be well, she must be warm. That’s what she thought he would think. Could it really be? Before this nagging question turned into a demand, she stopped herself. With her hand on his chest, she was well. She felt happy.
——
Tomorrow, he would make his silly puns and she would make hers. He would text his silly jokes and she would text hers. He would sway his silly hips and she would sway hers. Her wit, her laughter, her dance—all remained hers as she gave them away.
Kath Gerobin has a degree in MA English, Creative Writing from UNB. Her works have appeared in Qwerty, Dalhousie Review, Global Youth Review, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere. She has worked for The Fiddlehead, Studies in Canadian Literature, and Critical Disability Discourses. Kath writes about home and unhomeliness.