This morning, I was writing at a coffee shop when a woman approached me. “You’re Dan!” she said.
I looked up at her. Piercing eyes, pierced nose, cute elbows… but nothing that rang a bell. “Do I know you?” I asked.
“No, no…” she said. “But I know you.” She went back to the table where she’d been sitting, picked up her laptop computer, and carried it over to me. On the screen was Meditations on Meaning (this site). “You look just like your picture,” she said.
I smiled. “So you’re one of the three people who read it,” I said.
She blushed. “What I like about your writing is that it’s so real,” she said.
I cleared my throat. “Real?” I asked.
“I mean… you don’t hide anything. You say it like it is. And that gives me hope!”
“How do you know that I don’t hide anything?” I asked.
She paused, tilted her head, and squinted her eyes – as if, maybe, she could see something in me that she had missed before. “Well, your words seem so… honest.”
Her compliment was appreciated, but it didn’t feel fair. Perhaps because I’m not very good at accepting compliments. Or perhaps because I’d been thinking about honesty lately… and I’d decided that I didn’t like the word.
“There are some things you should probably know,” I said.
*****
“If I know a picture is being taken of me, I usually make a crooked half smile because I think it’s sexy. If a girl touches my arm, I tense it because I think she prefers harder muscles. And if people eat at my house, I don’t put too much mustard on my food, because I think they’d prefer to keep their appetite.”
“But…”
“That’s just the beginning,” I said. “When I write a blog entry, I’m typically only writing about the people and experiences that inspire a single sentence that moves me. For instance, in today’s post, that sentence is: “Honesty is a matter of degrees and perspectives.” The rest is just my attempt to bring that sentence to life… to show why it’s meaningful to me.”
“Can’t you see….”
“And when I want to kiss a girl for the first time, I pretend that I’m not nervous. I try to say funny or profound things like, “Isn’t it interesting that maple nuts grow on palm trees in the winter time.” But it doesn’t come out right because I don’t really want to be funny or profound. Not right then. I just want to kiss her. And I want to do it without shaking too much…”
“Dan, this is the kind of honesty that inspires me!”
“You’re missing the point. These are revelations… and they’re revealing the ruse. The sexy crooked smiles aren’t the smiles you see most often. And the blog posts rarely include the sentences that inspire them. And the girl doesn’t know that I want to kiss her, that I’m nervous because she’s so beautiful… and because I think she’s so special… and because…”
*****
“Who do you want to kiss?” she asked.
“That’s not the point,” I said.
“But I want to know,” she said.
“This is what I mean,” I said. “An honest person would just tell you. But I write stories about guys named Jay, and talking cats, and God only knows what will come next.”
“You’re Jay?” she asked.
“Shh… don’t tell,” I said.
“But won’t she know… now?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think she reads this blog.”
*****
We shared a long silence during which her gaze never left my eyes. Finally, she said, “I think I understand better why you give me hope.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because at some point the world forgot – or perhaps never knew – that honesty isn’t about whether we make sexy smiles for the camera, mask autobiographical blog posts by calling ourselves Jay, or try not to show our apprehension before a first kiss. Rather, honesty – revelation – is a matter of degrees and perspectives. And somebody recognizes that. And it gives me hope.”
I smiled. “And one other thing,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure Katie, if that’s her real name, will want to kiss you.”
