Free Half a Life: A Memoir by Darin Strauss Page A

dimensions—was her. My accident explainedfrowns and, for better or worse, gave depth and chiaroscuro to smiles. It revealed everything about the personality I’d created for myself, starting from age eighteen. But it was not something you say to people. I was less fully developed than the chimps in that Amy Hempel story. I didn’t have access to a language of grief.
    So: hiding. For example, on dates when I traveled the city as a single man. Every new person you date is a freshly arrived celebrity on your radar: you have to learn her backstory, how she ended up on the studio lot, what roles she can play, if she’s funny, charming, angry, sensitive. At the restaurant or wherever, I’d be talking, just getting-to-know-you stuff. But I’d have to also wonder: When do I tell her? Can I tell her? The answers were nearly always “Never” and “No.”
    I did spill the story to a few women—often those who, judging by their own hesitations, seemed to have scraped through some trouble of their own. Women who’d faced something ambiguous or complex in their parents’ lives (we were that type of cohort). This came up a lot, small winces around the topic. Or maybe they’d had some wounding challenge (anorexia, depression, romances gone sadistic) during adolescence. I felt pulled by the lure of hard-won wisdom.
    And so I would find myself confessing to women out of some dull and indefinable obligation, as someone else might feel about a schizophrenic family member or a stint at juvie. You think you know who I am? Well, here’s the guy very much behind the social Darin.
    But then, I hated the reaction. They grew tender—they patted, deferred, nuzzled. They forgave . I saw them really begin to watch me. I felt the web of moments they cleared from certain interactions, that they wiped off the face of a conversation: Ah, he’s like this because of that . There was something gross about it. Even the truth had a lie’s sourness. This was the big problem of confessing, the problem of recognition. I had to do a mental squint just to see myself. And rather than turning life more difficult, as I thought it should, the declaration always got me to feel I’d used Celine’s death to obtain softer hours, gentler treatment.
    There had been one young woman who’d come out of a long and life-threatening sickness. When I’d owned up to her (I thought: This woman’s life has been so difficult, but now she’s in the clear. She must have the right thing to say), she simply, cheerfully, and forthrightly stepped out of the momentum of our relationship. What she now wanted from her newly healthy life couldn’t be guaranteed by me: a lucky passage, an easy, bright course. I understood. Whenever I visualize this non-relationship, I see myself grounded at a restaurant table (I told her in a gloomy bistro) and then her naturally migrating to a better, more livable climate. Her manner was a combination of supportive and adios . This seemed just. It seemed self-protective and—considering the eighty-odd years we’re given to find our best accommodations on the planet—right.
    Nevertheless, with others I acted it all out anyway, falling into my scripted role of assisted suppliant. And felt disgusted—with the unannounced caresses, with myselffor accepting them. For allowing myself to be pressed further into an artificial role. “Aw, everything’s okay,” said a huggy med student. Her name was Cindy, and her hands were ineffectual balms: poking bones, cold fingertips on my cheek. “Oh, sweetie honey,” said Felicia, a not-quite-love-match sitting on her studio apartment’s lumpy futon. A TV was glaring across the small dinner table. She reached for the remote, and whatever show had been on now lowered its voice, and I saw Mr. Zilke putting that coaster underneath my iced tea. (TV seemed, to Felicia, inappropriate background for the discussion.) No matter how stark the trauma, life—wet rings on wood, television’s surges and volume