The Other Couple
About to enter the shower, I thought about the other couple and asked her about it. She didn’t know which couple I was talking about, and I said, you know, the older one, that hung out with Katie’s family. She told me they’re not really in communication anymore. It sounded serious, so I asked her why. They just lost contact. Katie isn’t going to the same daycare as their daughter anymore.
Going through my mirror moves while shaving and then starting my shower, I was thinking about them, how the two couples were just friends given the situation. As soon as the situation no longer existed, it becomes less convenient, I guess. It’s normal. What struck me about them just now is what my wife said while explaining. That older couple was like us a few years back, living in their own circle and not around a lot of friends. It was probably difficult for them to make the time or to even have the inclination. I knew all about that. My wife and I were in our own perfect world, largely uninterrupted, where we went to events and sought out friends, but only if we tried. It didn’t come natural to us either. And then our daughter came along, and we had to be social in order to bring her up in a healthy environment.
They must have had a hard time, and that could make you shun interaction with others. I remember talking to the husband, asking him what he did. I told him I was an art instructor and so immediately absolved myself of any further questions. But he was very honest about their position and the recent changes. They were both educated people from South Korea who actually met here in the US while they were students in Illinois. He wanted to further his education but there was some wrinkle that I can’t remember right now. She continued her education and was on the track for a PhD in I think it was City Planning — I could be wrong. Eventually, this was the field she would work in. In the meantime, they were both working in whatever job they could.
But it was him I kept thinking about. He had to work in a factory or warehouse. He was the only Korean in a warehouse full of immigrants from Latin America, and what made this stand out is that he worked there for ten years and he was the only person with a degree. He was in the garment industry, and as I recall now, that was how he put it. He told me he was in the garment industry for that span of time before going into house appraisal last year when he studied for a test and got his license. Now, he was going out to appraise houses. You could see the happiness on his face. It was plain to see, and I now wonder what he might have looked like when he was working in sweatshop conditions, and especially for as long as he did.
But they needed the money, and I understood that. They both did whatever they could to make it work out. But I also understood that the reason they might not have gotten out much was from having to talk about their occupational situations during those less stable years. Job insecurities don’t affect everyone the same, but if you have certain priorities, and if your pride steps in, and if having friends around was not as important as it used to be, then you are a perfect candidate for disappearing from the face of the planet.
I don’t know if this were their case, but the only reason I was reading it in the little I knew about them was because it is what I have been living with in my career. There were certain situations you inherently avoided when you were ashamed of what you did, and getting together with others was top on the list. I have been coasting by for about ten years on a part-time teaching position, where I make just enough money to pardon me of my vast amounts of extra time. When I tell people I am an art instructor, they don’t need to know if it’s full-time or part-time. They don’t need to know anything. They don’t ask. They nod their heads at the respectability of my position and let it go at that. His only option was to call his trade the garment industry if he were trying to be evasive, because it sounded general enough to almost include anything. Such delicate places in life can render a certain type of person antisocial.
I used to blame it on my yearning for more time in the painting studio. It was true that friends took a lot of time away; I remember avoiding friends (back when I had them) just to make my art. But in later years, when all my friends had dried up, an old friend in town for just a few days would reach out, and I would say I was too busy. I knew that talk about what I was doing now would inevitably come up, and I didn’t want to talk about my present situation until I found success in my field, which meant that if I couldn’t get more teaching work, I needed to make it as an artist. That has yet to happen, years have passed, and I still do not make new friends or contact my old ones. I think I still have the belief that if I find the success I want, I will open my doors again, like I would suddenly become a new person.
When I got out of the shower, I stopped thinking about it as I started our day by getting ready to go camping with the other couple, the couple we still knew, Katie’s family. And I was now thinking about him and how he looked happy, and that might have been his natural disposition in life or he was struck optimistically with the change. And I wonder about my wife’s comment. She knew them no better than I did, but she seemed to know something about that place where you don’t make friends easily, and it seems that though they have that new house and they both have their new positions, it may no longer come easy for them to open up to get-togethers unless it were placed on them as a duty.
But let’s say, maybe it does come easy. And they go out of their way to bring more people into their lives. Would it have the same vivacity as it did when you had fellow students around you in the university? When you were young and still interested in other people? Before you were a parent, when you were still you and not someone’s father?
— Rey Armenteros