Ken

I wrote to Ken because I assumed he was my likeliest conduit for Holly, who is less likely to respond to invitations. (As evidence, I point to how little I saw her between the travesty with Dan Jurow and her entanglement with Ken, even though we live a town apart. If I were feeling especially industrious, I could bike to her.)

I do the same with Sarah T, as it is more likely she will respond than Chris. I assume these couples are a package deals, even when that turns out not to be the case.

There is a designated point person in a relationship. When people want to hang out with Amber, they do not contact her. That would be madness. They shoot me a message and I plan from there. We both feel a touch uneasy when the other is social without us, which probably isn't fatal codependency.

I have become accustomed to Amber working almost every Friday. I try to spend that evening anywhere but home. I've taken myself out to dinner at a local cafe a few times, because I work better when I feel judged by strangers and myself for not working. (As a side effect, I have remembered how little I like tuneless folk singers in enclosed spaces or neglecting to check the schedule so I could come prepared with earplugs.)

Ken responds to my request for dinner and agrees to my time and location.

I enter the pub on time and look around, knowing that Ken and Holly cut a distinctive pair, both having some version of unnaturally colored fauxhawks at this point. I begin to describe Holly ("thin, pretty, tall, glasses, likely in a long skirt"), but the maitre d' says that such a woman has not been here. There was, however, a man looking around for someone.

I pop out and there is Ken, leaning against a wall, unaccompanied.

I am on medication enough that this doesn't throw me. I am all about radical acceptance these days, and what is the harm with hanging out with a friend's partner without them, particularly a same gender one who is not remotely interested in getting in my pants? I need to try to bond with people more or I am a hypocrite for letting myself feel lonely.

We talk at first about Holly, our common point of reference. He gives me some details I didn't know of her, about which I was admittedly curious but never going to ask her. We talk about her ex and how Ken is aware that Dan meant we were especially suspicious of him (or forgiving, because at least he wasn't trying to rape children on the internet to the best of our knowledge).

I fill him in as to what I remember of Dan Jurow, what I felt comfortable writing at the time and what I wrote after he was arrested, how Amber and I never much liked him to the point where I resisted initial friendship with Holly because it came packaged with Dan. Maybe it was an animal instinct, but he was a few decibels too loud for the room, too nervous, too unself-aware, too hungry to have eyes on him. He was, in short, an uncomfortable amount of too much.

I don't know Ken's history, beyond what I cursorily put together once I had his last name and an internet connection. After Dan Jurow, I needed to do my necessary diligence, even more so once they were maybe-engaged. (I am still not exactly clear on their relationship status. I'm not sure they are either. They seem to like one another and living together. That is enough.)

By his implication, Ken lived a wild life prior to Holly, sowing wild oats and "try[ing] everything once." I don't ask for unnecessary details. Holly expressed something to that effect when first divulging this romance, that he had been with considerably more people than she had, or even that she thought was reasonable. However, he is content -- thrilled even -- to have settled down with Holly. For all his adventures, being with her seems the best one he has attempted. Though, again, I don't know the details of his deeds. It could get raunchy and picturesque, orgies at Machu Picchu or cocaine parties atop an active volcano in Hawaii. There are options but, no, Holly is better than what I could conjure in my imagination. I can see why he would favor her above all women.

Ken looks as though he might have been punk at some point, or maybe only acquired this after affiliating with Holly, who is not given to connection with any style but her own.

Ken comments on our Dutch waitress, how she is toothy in a good way, like the Dutch tend to be. He says he likes horse-faced women. This isn't a joke. I can see where he is coming from. I once had a friend taunt me that I like women with slight overbites. We all have our burdens.

We talk about our respective arts, which is a topic about with I am trying to find more comfort. Having put in far more than the allotted ten thousand hours for mastery, I have a bit to say about the topic of writing, but I don't often find the confidence or excuse to.

He asks if I would write a treatment for a short film for him. He then gives me the rough characters and the beginning of an idea but leaves the rest up to me. Since he gave me a genre, my mind begins spinning where I could take this. When he goes out to smoke, I pull out my Kindle and keyboard and write a few notes buzzing around my head about time dilation and drones for this coming of age quasi-romance.

I lent him a copy of Artificial Gods that was not in a condition where I could sell it. He references how entertained he was by my theories about sleep paralysis and alien abductions, which is less my theory as an established part of the skeptical ufology canon, but I am happy enough to have it credited to me. Given all my research, I might as well be the expert in the room.

I start to tell him how Melanie had given me advice for a chapter in Holidays with Bigfoot that needed work and, coming out on the other side, it ceased to be a recounting and became a story. He thinks the meat of the story is hilarious and asks if I would let him make a short film of it.

When I initially met Ken, I wasn't sure how much he said that he meant, and how much he said to get closer to me. I have since decided that he probably means most things he says, and I should trust that about him.

I run the story through a few times, remembering phrases and descriptions in my retelling, since I worked it over a few times recently. He has trouble keeping them all straight, as it is a farcical mystery without a satisfying conclusion. In the movie, when he makes it, the conclusion will be different. I don't mind. If my name is in the credits, I am happy. Ken's project sounds fun and probably won't require too much else from me than sending him the complete text. It would delight me to see one of my creations filmed.

I don't trust people who want me too much. Being keen on my friendship demonstrates some character flaw, because why would you want to do that except that you want something from me? It would be flattering to think he was buttering me up to try to get at my writing, though that isn't it. I would give that freely enough or would charge what I thought was fair. For a story I was already going to publish, to be used to make a movie, I am fine with that. That is good promotion, when it should happen.

He has the follow through, so this is not merely something he is saying to me. He has a class, thanks to Holly, and they can do the work of adapting it.

I am more upfront with him, bereft our partners. I do not spend much time with other men, because they make me anxious. This is an immature reaction.

Ken makes Holly happier than she's been in my length of knowing her. He notes that there is no one who dislikes Holly, which might be the case. I certainly haven't met the person who did.

I recall Ken saying how it took him a period of adjustment to understand that I speak this way all the time, that I am not putting on airs or being intentionally peculiar. Having delved so deeply into the literary and pop culture canons, I tend to find that the shortest distance between two ideas is often through a faint allusion or twisted wordplay. I could come off as pretentious, though I think I am less this now.

I do not always feel I have much to offer men and I am inclined to instinctively not trust them. With dear Daniel, this worked out because our romantic territories did not match up; he was not attracted to the woman I was and vice versa. I also left him alone when he needed to be left alone, so I could trust when we spent time together, it was because he meant to and not out of a social obligation. He had no agenda with me but enjoying my company.

I don't know Ken yet. Maybe he is just lonely here. I don't know much about his social life outside of Holly. I don't, at that, know that he has one here. He travels extensively for work, to film and edit for others, for porn studios and politicians (only one of which ends up on his CV), and has had experiences beyond which I could seriously dream.

Taken as himself, I might have befriended him if he were part of a pack. My reason for having done that in the past, especially with men, is that I felt otherwise isolated and wanted someone to broaden my horizons and give me an excuse to leave the house. It was rarely that they existed as people in whom I could confide. (I do not confide well, except when I do so in writing to a nameless and possibly tiny audience.)

I find it easy enough to speak with Ken. I must give some credit to modern psychopharmacopeia, without which this experience would have once made me so uneasy I would have been in physical pain. Perhaps more than that, I have spoken in front of crowds so often at this point that indulging just one person is easy. I just don't focus on the narrowness of my audience.

Without Holly, I would not have met Ken. He doesn't repel me, as some have. He is an all right enough sort, which is almost as good as it gets for someone with whom I am not instant fond. He'll suffice until I decide about him one way or other. If he breaks Holly's heart, I would find it easy enough to dust off my hands and forget he exists, at this point. This is sometimes the status of my friend's partners, which he still is in my head. He is not yet his own person, just Holly's partner.

I think he could last awhile. Their honeymoon, from his telling, is far from over. Having been in the position of rushing into domesticity with a partner too quickly for comfort, in a few senses, I am better capable of judging the wisdom of the action.

He seems nice in a genuine way. While I am occasionally given to a sardonic callousness when it comes to my day job and a blunt honesty otherwise (not meanness but telling people what I actually think about things either way because I think that is more respectful than dissembling), He, however and to my way of thinking at present, is nice. I have yet to hear him utter an unkind word, at least not for someone who wasn't also an abusive predator. Whereas I will be snarky because, even at thirty-eight, I persist in thinking it is funny. I gossip because these are stories and I do tend to like stories, occasionally more than I like the characters in them. I am in the right business for that vice. I am warm, involved, and personable, but I am not nice.

Niceness in an honest way is pleasant. Nice people are more trustworthy, except to me. I want to see the flaws up front. Niceness is deceptive. People can hide behind seeming niceness in a way they cannot when they are upfront admitting that they know they can be mentally ill jerks from time to time. If he came to me and said, "Hey, I am a depressed neurotic. I once attempted suicide. I escaped from a cult. My parents died when I was seven and I had to raise myself and my sisters on the streets of Mumbai by selling heroin to orphans" or something in that vein, I would understand him far better.

One of my favorite David Sedaris stories -- and there is stiff competition -- is "Repeat After Me," when he owns up that he has valued the telling of someone's story more than expressed compassion to what they are going through. I liked Sedaris before he wounded me with my reflection, then I loved him.

I am uncertain about Ken because I wonder if there is a flaw to him I haven't found yet, or he has yet to show me. In short, I haven't had that moment of epiphany to what makes him tick beyond a fondness for Holly. There is something more to him, but I don't yet know what it is and technically have no right to it. But I am a writer, so I am going to dig it up anyway. Just like the story he pitched me, he has given me just enough information to set my mind spinning. What I have sensed from him so far is that he would not object much to his inclusion here or would at least not tell me. I do not have an ill word to say about him. He cares for Holly and is more worth of her affection any anyone else whom she has liked romantically.

When Chris came into my life, it took me a little while to adjust to his seeming brusqueness until I realized he had the best of intentions but was homeschooled by two physics professors and he had wildly different experiences than my comedy of errors in public high school. I had to adjust to his language, after which I understood his warmth more.

I need a similar moment that will bring Ken into clarity. His pleasantness is worrisome to me.

We walk a little after dinner, but the rain is coming, and I decide I ought to get home. He is disappointed, but not by much, as we have found Holly by that point. I hug them both and leave them to their evening.

Soon in Xenology: Social Justice Wiccans. Jareth.

last watched: American Gods
reading: Aliens: The World's Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
listening: Damien Rice