It's Not What I Am, It's Just What I Do

"I've been thinking of hitting you up for material," she says, as we sit at the bar sipping Bushmills.

It's San Antonio in mid-April; unusually hot for spring, even in Texas, and the air-conditioning feels good. So does the whiskey.

She's the editor-in-chief of an online magazine for skeptical women (and men, too, I suppose), and I'm just a guy who likes to play with words. I'm just a joker with a word processor, so immediately my head swells with pride. I achieve a level of self-satisfaction I haven't felt in a while, and it feels good for a moment. It feels good to at least be perceived as a viable voice.

But then I'm overcome with dread, as I realize that she really does want me to craft something for the magazine, and that means I have to actually produce. I have to write.

Hanging out in bars telling people I'm a writer is easy. The people I talk to may be impressed, but few, if any, ever ask to read something of mine. And if they do, I can always refer them to this blog with the caveat that it's merely a humor blog, and as such should be taken with a grain of salt; or tongue in cheek; or a grain of cheek; or with tongue in salt. (See, it's easy to distract people with goofiness.)

But the blog is an escape hatch. It's a convenient way to show that yes, I indeed write things, without revealing that I don't really have anything to say.

"Well, I'll scribble something up and send it to you," I say, and then quickly change the subject to something else; sex probably. It's a convenient subject, and everyone likes talking about sex, so I'm saved - for the moment.

The circumstances of our meeting in San Antonio are not important. Suffice to say that she's flown in from New England to fight the skeptical good fight, as it were, and though I've often been called a skeptic, I drove in from Houston simply to kill a weekend and have some fun. She and I have many similarities, but our reasons for being there should shine a bright light on our differences.

She has direction.

Me? Not so much.

We leave the bar, and we go out and do . . . things. Not important things. Not amazing things. And certainly not illegal things. Just things. Things that to my great delight help me achieve my goal of killing a weekend and having some fun. And she seems okay with that. After all, she's fighting the good fight, and even the best fighters of the toughest fights need a break now and again.

A river runs through the middle of town, providing shimmering reflections and smears of light and echoes of the parties that surge here and there along the walk. Music issues from the brass instruments and guitars of a trio, and delicious food and wonderful drinks are being served just about everywhere. It's a good break for any fighter, and the fun we have fits my bill just fine.

***

The weekend is winding down, and I walk her to the elevator in the lobby of her hotel. She wraps her arms around my neck and hugs me tight.

"It was great seeing you again," she says.

"You, too," I reply, and I really mean it. She and I are friends, and I love her as such, though I don't know if she's comfortable with me saying that.

"Well, I'm going up," she says. She has someone waiting in her room for her, and the time for small talk with me is over. She knows I understand.

"Okay," I say with a half wave, as I prepare to go to my hotel. "I'll see you again soon."

She steps into the elevator car, and as the doors close, she shouts, "Don't forget to send me something to publish."

Damn.

***

I drive back to Houston the next morning happy that I killed a weekend with a good friend, and I congratulate myself for setting goals and reaching them. My head doesn't even hurt. Bushmills is a fine product.

The next few hours and the following day, however, bring events that stagger me.

I won't go into the details. They aren't important anyway. It's enough to know that some skeptics I considered friends have done things that have hurt me tremendously. They've broken my heart, and have caused me to question many things I thought I had worked out to airtight conclusions in my youth. I'm rocked, as I'm suddenly unsure of so many things that I not only held to be true, but that I had taken for granted. If I ever had faith in the other humans with whom I share this planet, it is now shattered.

Even worse, the events that transpire involve her, too, and though I don't want her to have to know, I call her in New England to see if she is aware of them.

Sadly, she is.

We are both caught off-guard, and we are both hurt. How can people just like us, people that we know, ever hurt us? We're all on the same team. We all promote critical thinking and science. What the hell is going on?

I confess to her that I am unable to do anything but sit and stare at the walls. She expresses a similar anomaly, and we commiserate as best we can from so far apart.

I don't tell her that my part in the skeptical theater is now in question. I don't reveal that my drive to promote science is diminished, for I know that to do so will be to admit that I've suffered more from the staggering events than I care to consider.

We say good-bye and hang up.

The insecurities about being a viable voice are one thing, but any verve I possess for advancing critical thought has been robbed from me. How the hell am I going to write something for her magazine now?

***

In the morning, I call in sick and go to the park where I sit in the sunshine, and stare. There are a lot of things to stare at down at the park; things that are much more interesting than my walls.

Across the field from where I sit, a group of men and boys plays football --- not American football, but the game that actually involves the feet. I can't write. There are the familiar cries of competition, and gales of laughter coming from the game. Joy and Spanish radiate from them as the players run and run and kick and run. I loathe skeptics. Someone scores a goal.

There is a track around the golf course, and on it I see a young mother pushing a three-wheeled baby buggy as she jogs along the path. I don't have anything to say. She stops near me and lifts the cutest baby in the entire world out of the buggy, its plump little limbs twitching and waving. I'm sick of skeptics. With the twitching, waving baby adjusted in the seat, the young mother resumes her run, smiling at the cooing delight coming from the pram.

Two boys ride their bikes on the grass in front of me, each with a baseball glove dangling from his handlebars. I don't feel like writing anything. They heckle each other mercilessly as they pass me on their way to the diamonds near the tennis courts, and not being quite used to the word yet, they say "fuck" a lot. The skeptical movement is a joke. But "fuck" is a good word for young boys. All they need now is a pack of smokes and some men's magazine for after the game. I'm sure they have some Internet variation thereof waiting for them somewhere.

A man reaches under the bright white tennis skirt of his female opponent and squeezes her backside as they walk to the courts. He thinks no one sees him grope her, but he's mistaken. I am not an important voice. His technique is good, and very clandestine, even though I see. He has nothing to be ashamed of. Critical thinking doesn't lead to happiness. She swats at his hand and then gives him a kiss anyway. Perhaps she agrees about his technique.

And, as I sit with the sun threatening to burn my skin, various vignettes continue to unfold around me, until I'm done staring at things in the park. I think perhaps I'll go get a drink somewhere, but then I change my mind, because I'm alone. Dissecting life's minutia to find the truth is a tiresome, ugly compulsion. I don't like to drink alone if I'm happy because no one is around to pretend my jokes are funny, and I don't like to drink alone if I'm unhappy, because that's just pathetic. Skeptics are self-important assholes. I hold off on getting a drink. I decide to just go home.

***

I get home and stare at the walls some more.

But I discover my time sitting in the park has had an unusual effect on the walls. They have curiously lost their numbing, brood-enabling properties. Instead they have altered themselves somehow. They are no longer the barricades that lock my vision onto the wrongs committed against me. They are not merely the constructs from which I cannot turn away. They do not simply form the box in which I insist on feeling sorry for myself. They are opaque windows looking out onto the vast terrain of rationality.

These windows passively allow me to understand. Through them I see that it's not skeptics who have hurt my friend and me. It's not scientists who have betrayed our trust. It's not anyone with any particular label. It's just other human beings; all weak, fallible, and supremely capable of wounding their fellow man. Skepticism has nothing to do with their flaws.

The fog lifts, and I see clearly. I have done what I always do. I have reasoned through another piece of minutia to discover what is most probably the truth.

Damn it.

Is it a trick of the walls? Is it a power I was born with? Or is it a curse?

Today it feels like a curse. Oh, how I want to hate skeptics.

I reconsider having that drink, because though my thoughts are once more coherent, a dark cloud still hangs over my heart. The pain is still there, and it doesn't feel good.

Still, I rise to go out and resume my life, because I realize that despite the people causing me grief, whether they be skeptic or otherwise, regardless of the source of my emotional distress, I cannot stop thinking critically about the world around me. I cannot escape my curse.

A skeptic is not what I am, but skepticism is what I do.

God, I'm so fucking tired.