Respect

Respect

          Nate Bierman’s mum had been born Japanese, in Kyoto; his dad had been born Kiwi – Samoan-Scottish-Maori-Jewish – in Te Kuiti; Nate had been born in Hamilton, the younger of two, and had lived his whole life there.

          His sister Sara was five years older than he was. She’d always made no secret of how much she resented him. For one thing, he’d been a cute little kid and had siphoned off entirely too much attention that rightfully should have been hers. Then, when she’d been twelve and he’d been seven, their mum had started working full-time and Nate had become Sara’s responsibility.

          She’d always bullied him shamelessly, treating him as if he’d been some toy insect that existed in order for her to torment when she felt like it, and when put in control of him she’d definitely taken control. Without having read any how-to manuals on the process, she had innately employed a wide range of techniques for psychological control – taunting, humiliating, setting unfair standards, threatening, guilt-tripping, fault-finding, belittling, and so on – embedding a foundation of fear, mistrust, and self-doubt at the core of Nate’s psyche.

          It had also been when he was seven that he and Bronnie had become attached to each other. They became childhood sweethearts, and married right after high school. Having money, if little time, their parents had supported them through uni, as they were both bright when it came to school stuff.

          It’s not surprising that as their minds had matured they’d gone in different directions, and at the age of forty-four, after twenty-six years of marriage, with Bronnie barely noticing his existence for about the last fifteen years of them, Nate found himself divorced.

          Bronnie had been the one with business savvy and an eye for a dollar. Nate’s head had never been far from the clouds. His mind rejoiced in mathematical problems; he liked to read philosophy. The political situation always captivated and dismayed him, but he lacked the self-confidence to try to do anything about it or, being seriously deficient in the way of social skills, to join a political grouping.

          He’d remained mired in a mid-level statistical-analysis position at Ruakura, which was okay with him. He didn’t need Bronnie’s well-earned money. Still, with his principled financial contributions to their son Jason, now at uni himself, he’d had little left in the way of discretionary income until right after the divorce went final, which was when a texting turd in control of a Daewoo had killed his parents, with them leaving him a bundle. A Wow!-that-much-really?-sized bundle. Even with Sara, by that time living in Queensland, getting half the loot, money was no longer any problem for him.

          His entire range of romantic experience having been with Bronnie, he had never in his life been on what people consider to be a date, and had no experience with flirting or reading subtextual signals.

          Sure, during his marriage with Bronnie women, mostly Bronnie’s friends, had unmistakably come on to him maybe eight or ten times, especially after the marriage had become one in name only, but he hadn’t been interested. When he’d married her he’d made some promises, and he felt that if he broke his promises to her he could break his promises to anybody. He didn’t want to be the sort of person who breaks promises, and he didn’t want the stress of deciding which promises to break and which to keep. Those women had only come on to him because he was married to Bronnie, anyway. A power trip. After the divorce they’d all made themselves scarce.

          He was lonely, of course, and was more or less surrounded by attractive women at Ruakura and at the gym where he exercised three times a week, but he had no idea at all about how to get on with connecting with any of them.

          Being in statistical analysis, he was glued to his computer screen at work, with few if any opportunities for casual chitchat leading to flirting, not that he’d know how to do that, anyway.

          When a woman smiled at him, was she just being polite? He had no way of knowing.

          The thought of obtrusively invading somebody else’s personal space uninvited horrified him. Impossible.

          The thought of placing himself – his self – in a position to be rejected as unworthy, or laughed at, terrified him, as he could still feel the pain of Sara’s vicious daily dismissals of his personal worth, so that deep down he knew without any doubt at all that he was indeed unworthy and ridiculous.

          The women had other things on their minds, anyway.

          He was too old.

          He couldn’t dance.

          He couldn’t fake self-confidence.

          Short, dark Sharon in admin, for example, both attracted and terrified him. She seemed to be awfully nice to him when they ran into each other, but when he saw her sitting by herself in the tea room during break he just couldn’t bring himself to go over and ask if she minded if he sat with her. He just couldn’t. He wanted to; he told himself that he was going to; he made firm resolutions to do so, but every time the situation presented itself he just couldn’t.

          Big, blond, muscular Toni at the gym seemed always to have a bit of a joke when they came across each other between apparatuses. He began to watch her to see if she was like that with all the blokes, but she wasn’t. He was following her, kinda, after the workout one evening when he observed her climbing into a new-looking BMW sports car and zooming off. That was it. He definitely wasn’t her type. He wasn’t a car person and couldn’t imagine becoming one. When his money had come in he hadn’t bought a flash new car. Shit, he hadn’t bought any new car at all.

          He decided to give online dating a go. At least that way he’d know that he wouldn’t be intruding.

          The number of New Zealand dating sites for people over 40 that Google coughed up for his perusal astonished him. He picked one more or less at random, filled out the profile information, and uploaded a year-old photo of himself. His requirements for a match were few: non-smoker, non-religious – oh!, and not into cars.

          He paid what they asked for with his Visa number and started scrolling through the profiles of those available. He was tired by that time of the evening and it felt too much like going to the Pak’n Save, so he went to bed.

          In the morning he had a message on the website from a woman named Jan, who said that she was in sales. Her profile was appropriately vague, and her photo was unremarkable, so he answered her and after messaging back and forth three times, revealing nothing about each other except a penchant for vagueness, they arranged to meet for drinks at the Easy Tiger – her suggestion – at seven the following evening.

          The day had been hot and the summer sun was still hanging in there when Nate got to the rendezvous establishment about five minutes early. He scanned the room, saw nobody resembling Jan’s photo, sat at the bar, ordered a tall glass of chardonnay and soda on ice, and waited.

          And waited.

          He watched the people in the bar, all of whom failed to fascinate him, and waited.

          He finished his drink and ordered another, and waited.

          A bit after seven thirty, his second drink by then little more than the melt from some ice cubes, he shrugged, figuring that he was no worse off than before, and headed out onto the footpath.

          He’d strolled just a few metres up the street when he heard a somewhat husky female voice call out his name.

          He turned around and, sure enough, there was Jan, just like in her photo, only wearing a shitload more make-up, which emphasised the creases in her facial skin more than it concealed them. This was a woman who’d enjoyed plenty of sunshine in her life.

          ‘Well Nate, standing me up, are you?’ Nice ice-breaker, that one.

          He took a deep breath and wondered how to respond to that bullshit semi-question. Direct was best. Don’t play the game.

          ‘Uh, Hello Jan. Good to meet you. I thought you were standing me up.’ He shrugged. ‘You did say seven o’clock.’

          ‘Oh, come off it, mate! You do know that when a lady says to meet her at seven she really means that she expects to arrive at seven-thirty.’

          He stared at her blankly for a moment.

          ‘No, I didn’t know that. If you expected to be here at seven-thirty, why didn’t you tell me?’

          ‘Because,’ she was explaining something obvious to a dim child, ‘if I’d told you seven-thirty I would’ve had to wait until eight to show up.’

          ‘So the whole point is to make me wait.’

          The child had seen the obvious: ‘Right!’ He was surprised that she didn’t add, Good boy! ‘It’s a lady’s prerogative, eh?’

          ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry, but I really didn’t know that …’

          ‘Well …’ Okay, her tone of voice said, she was getting ready to be magnanimous and forgive him. She reached out for his elbow and began to turn back toward the bar. ‘I suppose …’

          Nate wasn’t ready to be abjectly forgiven. ‘And I still don’t know it now.’

          She dropped her hand from his unmoving elbow. ‘Oh, come on! You’re not one of those tight-arsehole people who have to have everything on-the-dot-just-so, I hope.’

          He shook his head. ‘It just sounds like a load of misogynist bullshit to me.’

          ‘What the … ?’

          He was just getting going. This couldn’t be what dating was all about. ‘You’re telling me that all the billions of women in the world – every one of you – justify being dishonest – I mean deliberately lying – because it’s part of some sick power game? I don’t believe it.’

          She grabbed his elbow again. ‘Oh, grow up! Let’s go inside, good-looking, and I’ll let you buy me a drink.’

          He tugged his elbow free.

          ‘Sorry,’ he said, tension lines popping up between his eyes, ‘but I’m not gonna play any fucking power games.’

          ‘What the fuck are you on about?’

          He turned to walk away, throwing, ‘Maybe I’ll come back after eight to see if you’re still here,’ over his retreating shoulder.

          She called out, ‘Oh, boy! You don’t know what a good thing you’re walking away from!’ to his retreating back.

          Nate told himself that he had a good idea of what he’d be missing. She couldn’t be right, he told himself. They can’t all be like that. Can they?

          When he got home he booted up his desktop computer – the smart phone’s little keys and screen and such were too picky for him – and edited his profile on the website by adding, in the who-you’re-looking-for part, right beneath ‘non-smoker’ and ‘non-religious’ and ‘not into cars’: ‘Honesty and Consideration essential. Promptness appreciated.’

          Over the next few days he indicated an interest in a couple of date-seekers’ profiles to no response. Then he received a message from a woman named Lily, who did logistics with a trucking company. He’d seen her profile but hadn’t contacted her because she was only 32. A dozen years didn’t mean that much to her after all, apparently. Exchanging a few bland written messages, they agreed to meet for coffee at the Metropolis – her choice – promptly at three the next afternoon, a Saturday.

          Lily was short and thin and gamine-haired and on time. When he saw her he smiled and said, ‘You’re Lily? I’m Nate.’

          She looked him up and down and said, ‘Well, what d’you expect me to do – strip off my knickers and roll over on my back?’

          Nate had to think about this for a moment. It was obviously a question requiring no answer, as it was clearly not a request for information. Since such gratuitous attacks on his character having been a technique that Sara had often used to bully him, he knew that any response at all would be a bad idea.

          He said, ‘Uh, let’s just go order some coffee, eh?’

          ‘Oooo,’ she said, trembling her fingertips in mock something-or-other. ‘How masterful! Just flat-out telling me what we’re gonna do. I bet you think you’re God’s gift to women, eh? Men!’ Then she smiled.

          That was it, then. She’d sneer out some sarcastic but unfounded character assassination and then let him know with a look that she’s just kidding – caring and sharing, possums; only Dame Edna’s piss-takes had been funny, and they were funny because they were on target and their targets had high profiles. He shrugged without a word and headed for the ordering counter.

          ‘Lead the way, O alpha male,’ Lily sneered, smirking. She did troop along to the counter, though, perky as a person can be.

          The barista, a smiling subcontinental fellow with an unfortunate moustache, bestowed his usual professional greeting on them and cocked a professionally inquisitorial eyebrow.

          Nate nodded toward Lily to indicate deference to her in the order of ordering.

          ‘Ooo!’ she said with overdone sarcasm. ‘He’s gallantly allowing me to order first! What chivalry!’ Then she turned and said directly to Nate, ‘It’s going to take more than that to get into my knickers, mate.’

          The barista smiled blandly and said, also blandly, ‘Your order, please?’

          She looked the barista in the eye and said pleasantly, ‘A cappuccino, please. With chocolate sprinkles. I do adore chocolate, don’t you?’

          ‘Oh, yes. And you, sir?’

          ‘Uh, I’ll have a flat white with soy milk …’

          ‘Soy milk?’ Lily crowed derisively, triumphantly, at operatic volume, her face sparkling with delight at the opportunity to express full-on scorn. ‘SOY milk!’ Her voice this second time even louder and in more of a childhood-bully sing-song.

          For an instant her face morphed in Nate’s mind into Sara’s that time he’d come home from year-12 economics class full of intellectual stimulation and wanting to discuss Keynes with her, since she was at uni and all. ‘Keynes? John Maynard KEYNES!’ as if he’d said the Easter Bunny. Then her face morphed back to being Lily’s grinning visage.

          That did it, right there, but Nate just told the barista, ‘Just one flat white with soy milk, not three.’ He decided not to ask for a shot of Kahlua in it, which he enjoyed, as he reckoned that would have given her added ammunition.

          Lily was oblivious, soaring: ‘Oh, la-di-da! Aren’t you just better than us normal people! Everyday Waikato moo-juice isn’t good enough for you, is that it? Well, if you think you’re going to impress me into bed by ordering hoity-toity pretentious-twat milk you’re sadly mistaken, mate.’

          Ignoring her pointedly, partly to avoid seeing the smirking smile he was certain followed this, he took out his wallet, told the barista, ‘I’ll shout this round, I guess, eh?’ in an ordinary tone of voice and took out his eftpos card.

          Still in crow-loudly mode, Lily sneered, ‘Look at the big spender! What a hunk of hairy masculine traditionalism! Thinks he’s going to wow his way into my knickers by splashing out on a four-fifty cup of cappuccino!’

          Then she smiled her just-kidding smile again, but again Nate didn’t see it. Without turning his head or changing his tone or volume of voice, he told the barista, ‘Make that just for mine. We’ll each pay for our own.’

          The barista nodded and keyed in the sale. Nate swiped his card and keyed in his PIN.

          It took Lily a few moments for this to sink in. ‘Wow! What a cheapskate!’ she huffed. ‘I can’t believe it! You’ll never get into my …’ but Nate had already turned and started to walk back toward the front of the café. Without her intended audience Lily politely and smilingly paid the barista for her cappuccino.

          Confused, conflicted, and somehow serene, Nate almost floated to the front of the café, out the open doors, and to his favourite seat at his favourite footpath table. Lily emerged out of the front door a few moments later, still smiling.

          ‘Well, you’re really fucking considerate,’ she said, her face not quite achieving a look of anger. ‘You might’ve asked me where I wanted to sit, y’know. I don’t like sitting outside.’ She pointed back through the door. ‘There’s a table right there that’s just right, I reckon.’

          ‘Oh, by all means, take it, Lily. You should definitely sit where you want.’

          ‘Well, then, get off your arse and let’s take that table then.’

          ‘No, I’ll stay here.’

          Lily did a double-take. ‘What’s this shit?’

          ‘No, it’s not shit, Lily. You sit where you want to sit and I sit where I want to sit. Simple. Problem solved.’

          ‘Oh yeah – fine date that’d be!’

          ‘Listen, as far as I’m concerned this date ended a few minutes ago, back at the bar.’

          She sat down. Plomp. Right across from him. At the same outside table. ‘What?’

          ‘You went way past my abuse-tolerance level when I was ordering, that’s all.’

          ‘What? You got your knickers in a twist over a bit of good-natured banter? Can’t you take a joke?’

          He smiled. ‘Jokes are funny. You’re not.’

          ‘Here. Let me educate you. I don’t know what goes with you Chinese or whatever it is you are, but we Kiwis enjoy taking a bit of the piss out of each other.’

          He considered her for a moment, and decided that it wasn’t worth it to point out that he was half Japanese, not Chinese – after all, a racist is a racist. If anything he was pleased that her compulsion to be unpleasant had pre-empted her from centring her ice-breaker conversational direction on the shape of his eyes, as had been the case far too often when he first met people. He reckoned that he’d already explained his being a Kiwi named Bierman with epicanthic folds enough times for one lifetime. He also decided not to mention to Lily that he’d been a Kiwi for a dozen years longer than she had. Not worth it at all. He’d never seen her before and with any luck he’d never see her again.

          He decided further that it wasn’t worth mentioning that he’d rather dig a hole in the ground and stick his dick into that than get into her knickers.

          ‘You’d better grab your table before somebody else does,’ is what he ended up saying.

          She looked at him hard before wandering off, muttering something about snowflakes.

          When he got home he edited the bottom of his profile to read, ‘Honesty, Consideration, Respect, and Courtesy essential. Promptness appreciated.’

          A few days later he found a message on his website page from a Wintec business studies tutor named Oli.

          This time he made a point of exchanging a half a dozen messages before making the date. Oli seemed to be intelligent and educated, which was good, and she didn’t seem to be put off by his stressing of honesty, consideration, respect, and courtesy.

          When he asked her if she thought that his doing so was annoying or pretentious she wrote back that it was better than wanting to talk about the size of her tits, or what her preferred sexual practices were, which she claimed had been the focus of others with whom she’d come into contact online.

          Nate figured that this time, maybe, he was heading for an online date that might last the duration of at least one social beverage.

          They met at Good George at six-thirty, more or less on time. Oli was a jolly-looking soul – Jolly Oli – with round, red-apple cheeks, curly blond hair, tastefully feminine clothing that flattered her voluptuous physique without flaunting it, a prominent chin, and a strong, confident smile.

          All was courteous and warmish as they identified themselves and ordered their beers, both commenting on how silly and pretentious the current fad of having to choose from a long list of craft beers was, but agreeing that it was essentially harmless – or would be until the big corporations managed to take it over and run it into the ground. Oli taught marketing.

          So far so good.

          They sat.

          Then Oli leaned forward in a just-between-you-and-me manner and asked, ‘So tell me, Nate – where are you from?’

          Nate groaned inside.

          It was the dreaded ‘from’ question.

          It hadn’t occurred to him to check her out in advance for racism. Shit, she’d seen his photo on his profile page.

          He leaned back in his seat and took a deep breath.

          ‘Since you’ve seen my profile,’ he said slowly, ‘you know that I’m a local boy all the way, so I have to conclude that by “from” you’re referring to the shape of my eyes ...’

          ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Nate,’ she interrupted hastily, ‘I’m really fond of Asian people. I think you’re all exotically gorgeous!’

          And there it was, slotting him in as an ‘Asian’ person, plus the word ‘all’. He felt the walls of the pigeonhole closing in.

          ‘I’m sorry, but in this context – just meeting a new person, and all that – I’d really strongly prefer not to discuss anything prompted by the shape of my eyes.’

          She gaped at him for a moment.

          ‘Just treat it for now as one of my personal boundaries,’ he smiled. ‘Please respect it.’ He paused, then said hopefully, ‘So tell me, what specific sorts of marketing wisdom did you lay on our future business leaders today?’

          She wasn’t buying it. ‘Okay, just tell me your last name.’

          He felt like telling her, just to vex her, but he didn’t think she’d be buying ‘Bierman’ either, and he took no joy from vexing people – that was Sara shit. ‘I really would appreciate it if you’d respect my preference not to discuss anything that has to do with my ancestry right now.’

          Her smile took on an edge of annoyance. ‘Oh c’mon! Don’t be so bloody precious. Just tell me if you’re Chinese or Japanese or Korean or what. I think that curiosity about that’s reasonable “in this context”, as you put it.’ She allowed her smile to take on a look of self-satisfaction at throwing his words back at him.

          They stared each other down for a few moments.

          Finally Nate gulped down some beer, shrugged sadly, and said, ‘Well, there goes respect, right down the gurgler,’ and shook his head sadly. ‘I wonder which of the others will be next.’

          ‘Respect?’ Oli allowed a hint of outrage into her voice here, but her smile remained confident. ‘What about you respecting my right to get a civil answer to what I think is a reasonable question?’

          She sat back, a gotcha look on her soft, pudgy-cheeked face.

          Nate took a moment to decide that it wasn’t worth the trouble – the conflict – to argue the point; she was an intelligent, educated woman and the hole in her logic should have been obvious to her. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘such stunningly fallacious sophistry certainly does pre-empt any further discussion, doesn’t it?’

          ‘Check and mate,’ she grinned, with a brief victorious fist-pump.

          Assuming an attitude of defeat, he replied, ‘You certainly are a gritty competitor, Oli.’

          ‘I do like winning. So, tell me …’

          ‘I think that you deserve a prize for defeating me in a conversational competition,’ he said.

          ‘Oh, just tell me where you’re from and I’ll forgive you.’

          ‘No. You need a special prize.’ He stood up. ‘And your special prize is that you get to go fuck yourself.’

          That being an exit line if ever there was one, he turned and left.

          He walked north on Victoria Street. He knew that a sample of three was hardly definitive, but it occurred to him that maybe the problem wasn’t with the women, but with him. Maybe he was, in the nasty American pejorative Lily had used, a snowflake. Well, if that’s the way he was, he thought, then that’s the way he was.

          These women, along with Sharon in admin and Toni at the gym and probably every other single woman that he knew, were looking for somebody else, or at least something else, and he had neither the skills nor the desire to be somebody or something else. The first word on his list, after all, was honesty.

          Still, like most people, he supposed, he did crave love, or a reasonable facsimile of it. Warmth. Intimacy. Comfort. Validation. Something like that.

          Bronnie had taught him that it wouldn’t be forever, though. Jan, Lily, and Oli had shown him that the psychological and emotional cost in terms of his concept of integrity was likely to be higher than he was willing to pay.

          It then struck him like a falling brick that he had more than enough money and that monetary cost wasn’t an issue. He kept walking till he reached a well-signposted upstairs brothel in the northern part of Victoria Street.

          He imagined that here everything would be open and honest: money paid; service rendered. He also imagined that if he behaved respectfully and courteously toward the sex worker he hired she’d treat him with respect and courtesy in return. It’d just be good business, after all.

          He’d never been to a brothel before, but he’d watched movies, and thought that if he offered to pay the sex worker a bit extra in advance she might agree not to pretend to like him, or at least not to try to make conversation, thereby putting the kibosh on any potential game playing, plus preventing her from asking the ‘from’ question.

          For conversation he had his old friends on facebook, from time to time, if they weren’t busy, plus the rare invitation to a social event or two, although he often walked away from these with a sour taste in his mind.

          Yes, he believed that he’d find honesty, consideration, respect, and courtesy, as well as warm physical contact with another human being, for a price he could afford at the top of those stairs.

          So up the stairs he went with a pure heart.