Here I go again:
asking questions I already know the answers to and waiting to hear them anyway.
What do you want from me?
Well, of course--she wants honesty and compassion and some straight answers. Something different from my usual bob and weave. I consider this and realize that it both makes sense and is quite unlikely.
Why do you seem worried about “us”?
She mentions my habit of chatting up attractive women at the store (which is true, she has seen it and I own up to it). She mentions my addiction to the net and the ominous emails she sees me delete suddenly. OK, maybe I give her pause. She could have mentioned the way my gaze spins around toward leggy waitresses and the occasional roller blade girl It went unsaid.
Why do you stare at me in the morning sometimes when I first wake up?
She reminds me, again, that I talk in my sleep and even when she doesn’t catch all the content, she is able to grasp some of the subtext. It’s about
Passion and it’s not about her. She has told me this before and I guess I am evil enough to want to hear it repeated. Repeat it so I can hear it again and again and so it can sting her once more.
Why do you stay around if it’s that bad?
She grimaces and folds her arms-that’s a trick question and you know it, she pouts. It is a trick, of course, because it forces her to say aloud that she loves me despite all of this-which is what I want to hear -it’s the summary we always get to in these conversations. We discuss my faults and she fesses up to the fact that she loves me anyway.
Why do I ask questions I already know the answers to?
For the same reason you press repeat on your CD player.