WacoWas AnAccident
Ex-Bluelighter
“Hi Harry!”
Harry hates being recognized in public. If he is to be recognized, he prefers it be in a private environment where he can control the inflow and outflow of information, where he can change the lighting if it suits him and adjust the thermostat and pretend that he has important business in the bathroom if the situation demands it. But caught in the open, on a public street, he is helpless. He is impotent. To run and hide would betray his weakness, and to feign ignorance would offend the sensibilities of all civilized men. There is nothing for it but to turn and confront the threat and he does so, but not without contempt and resentment and a good deal of anxiety lancing through his body.
“Hello Mary.”
To Harry there are five layers of social familiarity. He has sat in his study many nights and thought the problem over, and he is sure that there are five. The first level is that of hasty recognition. This occurs when two people recognize each other in the most vague context. One may not even know the others name, may not even remember where they met or under what circumstances, but they recognize the outline of the others face and it tickles something in the memory. In most cases any decent person will hastily go about ignoring the other person. This is, of course, the proper course of action. A friendly nod may pass between them, but usually the interaction is swift and painless. Complications arise when one of the participants attempts to reconcile his vague notion of familiarity with the other party and the following awkward exchange occurs: “Tim…? Todd… Tom! Hello Tom, remember me from Dave Bollinbroke’s party? Yes, how are you Tom!” and such similar wastes of time. The exchange is typically uncomfortable for both parties, and is endured until the participants have been satisfied that the exchange was suitably polite at which point they say their goodbyes and never see each other again.
The second level is that of the vague acquaintance. This is usually a classmate or teacher, and all interactions on this level are predicated on pretense and form, and it is a very false form of connecting with people, a complex give and take between people who don’t really know each other but must maintain the illusion of form. For instance, a teacher speaking with her student may apologize for being three minutes late to the appointment and the teacher will of course expect the student to assure her that there is no need for an apology. If either one fails to play the part correctly, this precipitates great tension and difficulty in continuing the relationship. It is all rather transparent, and any person of substance will skip right past this step and go straight to the level of familiar acquaintance.
The familiar acquaintance can also be a classmate, but is more typically a friend of a friend, someone met through an intermediary who one is familiar with on a very basic level. They have a general idea about each other, what the other likes and doesn’t like and what he likes to spend his time doing on the weekends. The relationship is more relaxed than that of the vague acquaintance; form and pretext take a backseat to wit and inside jokes. These people see each other in very irregular intervals and each time the awkward tension between them is eased slightly until eventually the relationship graduates to friend status.
A friend is simply a friend and Harry feels it requires no elaboration.
The most personal level of social interaction is that of confidant. Very few people achieve this status, for it requires implicit trust on both sides and trust is a hard thing to come by in a world that changes a little more each day. Complete trust in another human being is one of life’s more sophisticated pleasures, but also a dangerous way of exposing vulnerabilities. Harry avoids confidants at all costs.
This five-tiered system makes social relations very simple and Harry is attracted to simplicity. But the system rapidly deteriorates when confronted in public, because the dynamic is strained. There are people all around, people watching and listening even if you don’t see them they become part of the equation, they are part of the system. The question of whether Mary is a vague or familiar acquaintance attains paramount importance in Harry’s mind. This is too sudden, too haphazard. He can’t decide. But he must know, because you must treat a vague acquaintance differently then you would a familiar acquaintance. And what if she believes them to me friends! She will reach out and extend her soul to him and he will fumble it awkwardly and drop it in the gutter. The entire system is collapsing.
“What are you doing down here Harry?”
“Oh just wandering,” Harry says but his mind is racing. “And you?”
“Shopping,” she says and Harry takes note of the soft curves of her face and her creamy skin and he remember the fraudulent lovers and in a moment of panic and stark terror he blurts out “are your eyebrows real?” and she giggles but her eyes betray her real feelings. She is suddenly a little frightened because the question is an odd one and she has no conception of the five-tiered social system or how Harry wraps his mind around things and therefore she doesn’t understand and the old cliché about people fearing what they don’t understand resonates with truth in the fading light of day.
“Well it was good seeing you Harry,” she says and the connection is cut.
Harry hates being recognized in public. If he is to be recognized, he prefers it be in a private environment where he can control the inflow and outflow of information, where he can change the lighting if it suits him and adjust the thermostat and pretend that he has important business in the bathroom if the situation demands it. But caught in the open, on a public street, he is helpless. He is impotent. To run and hide would betray his weakness, and to feign ignorance would offend the sensibilities of all civilized men. There is nothing for it but to turn and confront the threat and he does so, but not without contempt and resentment and a good deal of anxiety lancing through his body.
“Hello Mary.”
To Harry there are five layers of social familiarity. He has sat in his study many nights and thought the problem over, and he is sure that there are five. The first level is that of hasty recognition. This occurs when two people recognize each other in the most vague context. One may not even know the others name, may not even remember where they met or under what circumstances, but they recognize the outline of the others face and it tickles something in the memory. In most cases any decent person will hastily go about ignoring the other person. This is, of course, the proper course of action. A friendly nod may pass between them, but usually the interaction is swift and painless. Complications arise when one of the participants attempts to reconcile his vague notion of familiarity with the other party and the following awkward exchange occurs: “Tim…? Todd… Tom! Hello Tom, remember me from Dave Bollinbroke’s party? Yes, how are you Tom!” and such similar wastes of time. The exchange is typically uncomfortable for both parties, and is endured until the participants have been satisfied that the exchange was suitably polite at which point they say their goodbyes and never see each other again.
The second level is that of the vague acquaintance. This is usually a classmate or teacher, and all interactions on this level are predicated on pretense and form, and it is a very false form of connecting with people, a complex give and take between people who don’t really know each other but must maintain the illusion of form. For instance, a teacher speaking with her student may apologize for being three minutes late to the appointment and the teacher will of course expect the student to assure her that there is no need for an apology. If either one fails to play the part correctly, this precipitates great tension and difficulty in continuing the relationship. It is all rather transparent, and any person of substance will skip right past this step and go straight to the level of familiar acquaintance.
The familiar acquaintance can also be a classmate, but is more typically a friend of a friend, someone met through an intermediary who one is familiar with on a very basic level. They have a general idea about each other, what the other likes and doesn’t like and what he likes to spend his time doing on the weekends. The relationship is more relaxed than that of the vague acquaintance; form and pretext take a backseat to wit and inside jokes. These people see each other in very irregular intervals and each time the awkward tension between them is eased slightly until eventually the relationship graduates to friend status.
A friend is simply a friend and Harry feels it requires no elaboration.
The most personal level of social interaction is that of confidant. Very few people achieve this status, for it requires implicit trust on both sides and trust is a hard thing to come by in a world that changes a little more each day. Complete trust in another human being is one of life’s more sophisticated pleasures, but also a dangerous way of exposing vulnerabilities. Harry avoids confidants at all costs.
This five-tiered system makes social relations very simple and Harry is attracted to simplicity. But the system rapidly deteriorates when confronted in public, because the dynamic is strained. There are people all around, people watching and listening even if you don’t see them they become part of the equation, they are part of the system. The question of whether Mary is a vague or familiar acquaintance attains paramount importance in Harry’s mind. This is too sudden, too haphazard. He can’t decide. But he must know, because you must treat a vague acquaintance differently then you would a familiar acquaintance. And what if she believes them to me friends! She will reach out and extend her soul to him and he will fumble it awkwardly and drop it in the gutter. The entire system is collapsing.
“What are you doing down here Harry?”
“Oh just wandering,” Harry says but his mind is racing. “And you?”
“Shopping,” she says and Harry takes note of the soft curves of her face and her creamy skin and he remember the fraudulent lovers and in a moment of panic and stark terror he blurts out “are your eyebrows real?” and she giggles but her eyes betray her real feelings. She is suddenly a little frightened because the question is an odd one and she has no conception of the five-tiered social system or how Harry wraps his mind around things and therefore she doesn’t understand and the old cliché about people fearing what they don’t understand resonates with truth in the fading light of day.
“Well it was good seeing you Harry,” she says and the connection is cut.
