HOW ARE YOU HAPPY

From the R.M. Dolin novel, "The Dangling Conversation," March 31, 2022. 
The short story that became the basis for the novel.

Chapter 3: How Are You Happy

KYLE: “I did in fact think about what you said and I’m not gonna lie, you’ve got no damn business being so damn dark. My question has nothing to do with that other than it’s a way for me to understand how you got here, or more important, why you keep coming back. I don’t get why you’re so offended, I didn’t ask if you’ve always been happy, that’s a false flag of foolishness; best anyone can hope for is bits and piece, although who can even say about that? What I’m asking is, “how are you happy?” Not how you become happy, but how you define it.

“Seems simple, right? Trust me it’s not, but no reason for drama; unless you’ve already realized my question at best can only tease at forging illusions of an honest response. That’s how I see it, but then again, no one’s booking me for corporate seminars. I’m not picking on you either, so stop saying that. I ask myself the exact same question; each time it pulls away from the careful confines of my unexamined life, which is where I choose to live. A man’s got a right to live where he feels most alive and for me it’s the space between everything that should have been, and my unwillingness to look under the hood of how things really are.

“You’re like me, at least that’s how I see it. So, offer up your answer, but before you do, keep in mind anything you say is already awash in a nuance of contradiction. I could’ve asked if you’re happy but didn’t. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just not interesting, at least not as much as how you measure those intangible portions of your soul; the mystical twenty-one grams, which by the way you pout in silence, is a far harder abstraction. It’s a fact we’re predisposed to be more or less happy; God and Darwin ensured us of that. It’s the absolute truth supporting the lie we allow ourselves to believe, a lie we’re so damn good at telling we no longer oblige ourselves to auger past its many bogus barriers.

“I dare you to define happiness. It’s okay if you don’t, most times I won’t. I set out to but this uber scary response roars back like echoing laughter of Coyote in the deep dark arroyo of all those things haunting the quiet solitude of sleepless nights. I’m wagering it’s the same for you, why else would you keep coming here of all places.

“I’m gonna say sorry up front for being no damn good at dealing with emotions; at least I remembered tissues, that’s gotta count for something. It’s a gift ya know, one God didn’t see the need to sprinkle on me. Right words do of course exist for this sort of thing, mine though, always get mangled up in delivery. Same thing happens with complements; I’m the only person on earth who consistently screws them up. I start out saying something nice, but then, for reasons I can’t comprehend, wind up digging a hole so deep I can’t recover.

“Should have brought more tissues, it’s a metaphor I suppose; what I brought is all I’m capable of providing, but at least it’s something. I know you feel alone but you’re not and it’s okay to cry, hell, we all cry; maybe not me so much anymore, somewhere along the way I just ran out of tears. I’m more resigned to acceptance than sadness, there’s a difference ya know; either way, ain’t jack I can do about it.

“There are moments when life lets me revert to the adolescent belief happiness is the absence of sadness; my journey to right now is littered with just that sort of foolish bullshit. Sorry for my language, but who the hell doesn’t swear when a nerve gets pinched? I mean if happiness is the absence of sadness, how do we step outside our grand illusion? That’s what all this is ya know, a dystopian illusion where hard boundaries prevent us from ever getting at what’s waiting on the other side, until of course we cross over, and I for one ain’t advocating that.

“What I’m getting at, Isabelle, is happiness is at least in part acceptance. Even you gotta concede that makes sense; then again, it can just as easily be the mindless rambling of randomly disconnected thoughts. I tend to ramble, especially when life closes in from all sides, but what the hell, you know all about that. There’s comfort in nonsense ya know; file that away as one of my rare insights. I like to think it’s my mindless nonsense that keeps you coming night after night cause it’s certainly not cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

“Truth be told, most mornings I wake up grateful not to be praying for death; that’s because happiness is in part the ability to embrace right now with all its worts in a sardonic appreciation that things can certainly be worse. I’m right, right? Its obvious life has you by the throat and it may be the last thing you wanna hear, but as bad as things are, there’s plenty of room for your shitstorm to head south; trust me, shitstorms are one of the few things I excel at. But that’s a form of surrender and if you and me are going to sit here night after night, me talking nonsense while you’re all emotional, we must agree on some set of metrics to put around the whole ugly mess.

“Have you ever considered how much of life is lived by design and how much is just a form of surrender? When I need to justify my dichotomy, I look at successful people knowing they can get whatever the hell they want, while it seems happy people only want what they have. Where my Euclidean logic goes to shit, is I don’t want jack, which must make me the happiest freaking person on the planet, and we both know that ain’t true.

“You think I’m full of shit, don’t you? Perhaps I am, then again as the philosopher, Thoreau, said, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” That’s our shared simpatico, we’re both swimming in this giant cesspool of shit; we may be at opposite ends, but it’s the same damn cesspool. And it’s by no means new to me, not by a long stretch; that’s where I was treading the day I met Nadia, or should I say re-met, since it had been twenty-three years, five months, and fourteen days since our first encounter. Have we covered Nadia? Sometimes I talk about her too much, other times she’s so integrated with my soul I can’t distinguish the blinding boundary between talking about her and talking to her. But I’m talking to you now and am pretty sure we haven’t covered Nadia.

“Twenty-three years, five months, and fourteen days, that’s a God awful lot of real estate in a man’s life; that’s how long it took Kismet to burst beyond its dormant stasis to fill that invisible blur between when Nadia walked in, then out of my life, until we reconnected, until my soul moved away from what’s possible into the realm of probable. You believe in Kismet, don’t you? I mean its laws are self-evident, at least to me; Kismet gives all of us hope that at any moment we might randomly turn up the aisle of a grocery store and come face to face with fate. That’s how my calculus started, my year of being happy.”

ISABELLE: “I’m not upset, you just-, well just took me somewhere I’d rather not go. If you force me to answer, I mean hold a loaded gun to my head and swear you’ll pull trigger, sure, I’ll say I believe in Kismet even though it’s never been fair. My Ex didn’t love me; not the way someone should. Maybe he did once but it was long ago and not forever. People shouldn’t talk about such things unless they intend on forever; how can you when such things don’t really exist? There’s only, what did you call it, “the grand illusion,” what you call happiness, misguided fools like me call love. I loved him, or at least tried to, even when I knew he didn’t love me. Does Kismet allow for the possibility that love is possible when the other person isn’t in love? If not, is love ever possible? It’s a circular argument but one I always come back to; if you need to know what brings me here night after night, that’s it.

“He had a charm, not a sweep you off your feet, make your heart skip beats, keep you constantly out of breath, charm, but a steady respectable kind; it’s an odd way to describe the person you once loved. There should be more, lovers should start their day longing for night when they can once more be in each other’s embrace. Isn’t that the basis of happiness, it’s certainly more than steady and respectable?

“He didn’t love me, or maybe I didn’t love him enough, at least not the way I was supposed to. I hide from the horrible truth love doesn’t exist. If it does, how can we know we’ve ever been in love? It’s impossible because it is not possible to ever know what’s in your lover’s heart. I loved him until he didn’t love me and maybe that was because I didn’t love him. It’s a circular possibility, that’s all I’m saying. He professed a profound and unconditional commitment to always be tender; and he was, until he wasn’t.

“All we can hope for is knowing one true love in life, and maybe, it’s not with the person we end up with. I’m starting to see that’s your Nadia story. I had someone before my Ex, so long ago if it didn’t seem like yesterday, I’d say it was part of a previous life. He was from Barcelona, well not really, but he always talked about how everyone has a Barcelona; a place where the illusive fantasy of love is real. I don’t know why things ended with Sergio or why we never found each other again, guess he wasn’t meant to be my Barcelona. You sit here talking about twenty-three years, five months, and fourteen days as if it’s nothing, but how does sorrow not consume you? I’m barely a year on my own and can’t see beyond this bench and if Nadia’s your Barcelona, what are you doing here?”

KYLE: “Nadia was, has always been, and still is, the one woman I never set aside, never forgot, never let go. She melded into my soul the instant we both tried to occupy the same small space on a crowded Paris metro during morning commute. I was young once, hard to imagine, but I was young, lost, and late for the paper I was presenting at a conference on managing uncertainty. She was hurrying to proctor an exam for her major professor as part of her graduate studies in scientific policy. I can’t describe her beauty any better than to say it intoxicated me with an intensity I’ve never experienced. She wasn’t plastic like the nightclub girls that glittered the metros and sidewalk cafés along the Left Bank, she was, I don’t know, like you. I could spend the rest of the night describing her, but in the end, it wouldn’t paint any better portrait than to say you remind me of her.

“Simple elegance, there’s no other way to encapsulate it; the way her causal clothes drape around her wire-frame body as comfortably as the worn backpack always slung around her left shoulder. It’s the calm way she takes all her morning challenges in stress-reduced stride, and the easy way she can open a conversation with strangers while simultaneously withdrawing to the timid security of being left alone. She exudes a quiet dignity, the kind that draws you in yet, there’s this panicked worry about her; as if she’s afraid of where things might lead should she permit herself to embrace the mysterious potential of what might be, afraid she might get lost in all that’s possible.

“That’s how I see you; you think you’re sad, you say life’s unfair, but really, it all comes down to being afraid of what might happen if you allow fate to find your tomorrow. Everything happens so fast in life it’s hard to say how half an hour later Nadia and I are sharing coffee at a café as she walks me through her unfinished dissertation. As I forget my conference and she her students, we while-away the afternoon, and if heartbeats are seconds, my pulse must have raced like a wild river all day because in the blur of a moment, we’re walking along the Siene, watching a bashful moon cast the Parisian skyline in subtle shades of serenity. She’s talking about dreams, but all I can think about is holding her hand, yet as wistfully as I wait for my opportunity, it never presents; nor does the opening for a goodnight kiss as she leaves me standing on her sidewalk stoop with only a faint hope, I’ll ever see her again.”

ISABELLE: “We never held hands, never took walks or talked over a slow glass of wine. It’s fair to ask what I was even doing with him, but you don’t get to ask in a tone that prejudges evidence yet to be introduced. If I knew the answer to such distorted questions, trust me, I’d be anywhere but here. Lawyers say you should never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to, which means I’m not even allowed to mount my own defense. He was kind at first and that matters. It’s not that he was ever unkind, not physically, but there’s a vast ocean between not kind and unkind; an ocean with waves so deep they swallow a person so completely no one ever hears their screams. That’s how it was; you ask why I stayed with him like you actually believe love has logic. I could just as easily ask how you’ve never let Nadia go, but we both know our answers get cobbled up in complications way too convoluted to unravel during casual conversations on a park bench.

“I don’t have to justify anything and have nothing to apologize for. I’m not guilty either. Somehow though, seems all I do is justify, apologize, and feel guilty. Sometimes I’m saying sorry for things that haven’t even happened. Guess when you’ve lived through the happy hell of love you get a sense for the stuff that’s coming even before the stuff knows it’s arrived. He didn’t love me, at least not the way someone needs to be loved. So, why is it on me to defend what happened, what’s already been done? It’s not like it’s anyone’s business anyway.

“He never did anything to make me feel even a little bit appreciated. Maybe I never earned it. The thing I can’t stop wondering about, is what I did to change the man he seemed to be into the person he always was; that’s the question holding me prisoner. I did all the things I was supposed to, but who decides on such a mystical list and how can anyone validate it’s even correct, or sufficient? Love needs feedback! If I paint half your house and you’re unsatisfied but say nothing, I’ll paint the other half with equally disappointing results. Is it your fault or mine that you don’t like that I did my best. In the end you’re dissatisfied and I’m unappreciated, how sad is it that this became our formula?

“You ask how I’m happy and all I can say is I don’t know. In the end, happiness is nothing more than a fresh coat of paint on the weathered surface of a stale life. Asking how I’m happy is like asking me to pick a pallet of colors blindfolded, maybe I get lucky enough to be the squirrel who occasionally finds an acorn, but realistically, I’ll more likely starve and disappear. That’s what I did ya know, starved for love, then disappeared. Even my reflection isn’t me; at least not to me. Someone once told me that love is being so lost in another it’s not possible to tell where one person ends and the other begins; two souls so integrated that when one person breathes, the other’s chest expands and contracts in syncopation. That’s way too poetic to be true, in fact, it’s the opposite of love; love is not being so lost to your lover that you in fact become lost. At least that’s how it seems from my end of the park bench, like I don’t exist, maybe it did once, but not anymore.”

KYLE: “I was lost for months after Paris, trying to think of anything but her, but no, some things the mind won’t banish. That someone can so quickly conquer every waking thought then return in dreams that are as real as reality causes me to question if anything is real. That’s how it seems whenever Nadia and I are together; a dream filled with fantastic moments weaving into an elaborate tapestry filled with unimaginable highs, like when she suddenly writes to announce she’s moving to America.

“For that fabric of thread that’s really maybe just the fragment of a dream, her major professor shifts the dissertation focus to an examination of how American science policy is influenced by research sponsors and government grants. I’m not much for politics, and neither is Nadia, but her findings, especially considering pandemics and the nefarious ways such crises are exploited for political power and pharmaceutical profits, seems to suggest a convincingly conceivable conclusion; the kind that gets a person killed, or least in a whole lot of trouble. But that’s just fodder for fools; fools using dreams to justify outcomes in their life until they’re devoid of passion, adventure, and the ability to distinguish the truth from all the lies we tell ourselves in order to survive.

“What I’m saying, is one moment the pain of loneliness is all consuming and the next she’s moving to Washington where, as if by the fair-minded friend I call fate, I happen to be stationed at the State Department researching green ways to exploit the new wealth being generated from rare earth minerals and its geopolitical impacts. That’s before the State Department turned into this surreal shit-show, but that’s a story for a different night.

“It takes less than a month of what we old school romantics call courtship to fulfill our desire to live together. Our apartment’s near the last stop along the Blue Line. Before Nadia, I commuted to work by bike, but now I’m riding the Metro to occupy the same small space with her each morning and evening; an extra forty minutes each way that’s a cherished gift. Months pass like magic moments made for memories; the kind with a never-ending supply of something to look forward to. Simple things like having a walk or going to the grocery store take on forms of glorious grandeur. It’s not possible to describe how I feel, which I suppose is further evidence it must be a dream; it’s like living in a contented state of complete relaxation while constantly feeling your body can’t contain escalating emotions.

“Nadia challenges me in ways no one ever has and yet, leaves no doubt it’s okay to be vulnerable and unsettled. I don’t have to pretend, which is perhaps the most elusive state of happiness; she’s content with plain old unvarnished me and that says more about her than anything I can add. I’m constantly trying to quantify all this in my calculus of love, but formalizations remain elusive. The purest form of happiness is being allowed to be plain old unvarnished you. Imagine what that means, for one thing, you and I wouldn’t be sitting in the deafening quiet of endless nights trying to sort through various forms of shit.

“Even forever’s not forever though, at least not when perfection’s your starting point. Something isn’t right between us, not the kind of thing you can point to or ever hope to correct; it never is. What I mean is, at some point we recognize, then later accept, that we’re not the person we set out to be. Some might argue that’s probably for the best but leaves others with a tragic loss of purpose; an unsettledness that manifests itself in unanticipated ways. I’m no different than Nadia in that regard. The only difference is I’ve stopped resisting and embrace the me I’ve become with all my worts; and that’s yet another form of happiness. Nadia’s different, she buries whatever demons torment her. We all have demons and snakes; the fact we’re on this park bench is proof of that. There’s nothing wrong with them, so long as they don’t control outcomes in our life; mark that down as another gem of wisdom.

“We’re all trying to either hide them or hide from them, but at the end of the day, neither is possible. Love has a way of floating around flaws and I did love her, so I guess I’m guilty of overlooking stuff; if this is my crime, why is the punishment so harsh, that’s what I want to know. It wasn’t like she lived in this constant state of torment, or that she was always anguished, just something I notice once in a while, like the way a certain kind of sunset causes her to withdraw, or how I catch her wiping away a tear that just appears without cause the way you sometimes do when I haven’t said anything to upset you.”

ISABELLE: “You’re quite full of yourself aren’t you, assuming you cause me to cry? You and your year of being happy, you have no idea how much people would pay to convert even moments of misery into happiness. You claim with a coward’s confidence that you’re happy, but you know what, to hell with you! You offer tissues as if that’s compassion, well I don’t need it. We sit here night after night, but do you ever demonstrate empathy? If you weren’t here, would I even notice, if I weren’t, would you even care? That’s what all this comes down to; I’m here, you’re here, but if either of us weren’t, would the other notice, and isn’t that the antithesis of happiness? I’ll admit I’d miss pieces of you, like your stories, and the way you kick out your legs and slouch against the bench, I envy your ability to relax, it’s like the gravity of regret slides off you without tarnishing pieces of your soul. What I’m awkwardly trying to say is I’d miss you if you weren’t here, you grouchy old bastard.

“That’s harsh and I’m sorry; you have a way of saying stuff that makes me mad as hell, while at the same time, exposes the way I hide from feelings. That’s how we started isn’t it? You wanting to know if I’m happy. Hell no, I’m not! You think I sit out here night after night for the sunshine and unicorns? Again, harsh, but damn it all to hell, can’t you just sit here in silence or tell me bullshit stories of what life was like back in the day? Instead, you talk about this mystical woman as if you expect me to understand, as if everyone has someone just like her; someone so freaking perfect she can’t possibly exist. You talk as if you never found fault; all men find fault, maybe it’s the way she walks, how she talks, the color of hair. No one’s perfect, at least not long term; or are you now going to tell me I don’t know because I’ve never been happy?”

KYLE: “Nadia’s far from perfect, but that doesn’t keep me from seeing her that way. You talk about love like someone wearing blinders. Nadia has this thing she does after making love; without getting out of bed or offering any sort of explanation, she slips on a nightgown as if it’s a protective shield against any extra measure of intimacy. It’s cute in a Puritan sort of way and yet foreshadows everything that happens. I remember our last night in DC like it was just moments ago, somewhere after slipping on her nightgown, I fall asleep and when I wake up she’s gone. No note, no explanation, just gone. It’s not knowing that makes forgetting impossible; knowing whatever the catalyst was could have been fixed if only given a chance. You mock me as if you’re the only one who’s ever known pain, but everyone has, of that there’s no escape; from the successful man who has everything all the way down to the happy man who only wants what he has.

“They say desire and suffering are two sides of the same coin, I think what they mean is that in order to find happiness, we must be willing to suffer. I don’t know, but twenty-three years, five months, and fourteen days is an awful long time to consider the implications. We all have someone from our past, someone who should’ve been, who maybe might still be; someone we catch glimpses of on a crowded Metro or pensively hope will sit down across the table from us each time we’re alone at a sidewalk café. The one who visits in dreams we don’t dare share with the person beside us; the person accepting us with the understanding they’re competing with a ghost. It’s then we realize the extent to which everything is nothing.”

ISABELLE: “I agree truth once exposed, renders everything else a lie. That’s what it all was you know; I mean the part of him saying he loved me, or maybe me telling him the same. Does it even matter who lied most? It’s not like the one who’s punished the most must be more guilty; that’s not how the end of love works. There are victims, and of course those who carry the consequences, but you can’t trace that back to the crime. He didn’t love me, or maybe I didn’t love him, at least not in the end. So, what is the greater crime, him not loving me when I loved him, or me finally deciding to let go of what was never meant to last forever; seems either way I wind up on this park bench.”

KYLE: “I was ready for forever; even knowing forever’s only possible in an ordered timeline where the past proceeds right now and the future is decided based on the moments that came before. But what if things are not so constrained; what if the love you lose was never really lost? What if the in-between is nothing more than a link connecting what was, to what will be; a cosmic kind of glue that binds two disconnected lines in a way that once joined, can never be pulled apart? This is the thread that connects Nadia to me; a thread running from when she left DC to right now when she’s returned, when my year of being happy begins.

“You’re still early in your journey to who you’re going to be so it’s hard to wrap your mind around the fact that love is not constrained to time, not to this moment, or the next, not to the distant past or the far-off future. What if being here means you’re really somewhere else, a place you can’t describe and don’t even know; perhaps what Sergio calls “Everybody’s Barcelona?” My path is this wobbly sort of circle that continually winds around to the start; yours is destined to cast you about for a bit in the dark shadows of loss that eventually leads you to the love Kismet has already prescribed. When you reach the moment, you’re able to look back with profoundness, that’s when you’re ready to lean forward into your next embrace. Your path won’t circle back, destiny has something else in store. You can’t know what it is, but if you’re lucky, you’ll recognize when it arrives; then, and only then, will you know how your happy.”