I join the conversation at breakfast, especially when it's entertaining, distracting, provocative, or annoying, and, afterwards, I might feel soiled and wish for night, the end of any long day, when nothing is expected from me and I expect nothing and can lie in bed, on top of or under the sheets, surrounded by books and magazines, and ugly brown furniture, which I didn't choose, but which has become a sort of friend, or at least harmless, though I'm aware that some people couldn't tolerate this furniture and would request or demand another room or buy themselves other furniture, rather than adjust to its design and atmosphere, since an adjustment to these objects might impugn or indict them to themselves or in the eyes of others. The man who has a sodden smell, whose source I don't want to identify, especially when eating breakfast, though I believe it's vodka, and whose skin has large pores, usually wears jeans and a T-shirt, whatever the weather, though this morning his T-shirt is wordless, the way I wish he were. Gesticulating and scowling, he demands attention every morning and begins conversations from which I leave the breakfast room sullied, smelling sour to myself the way he does to me, and longing for night, that near future, which is one I can easily imagine.
When there are no sounds in the house where I sleep, except for the toilet flushing and the heat rising in the old pipes, I know I should apply cream to my face, but I usually don't, even though the polish woman will admonish me when I return to the cramped, dingy salon and will be disappointed in me because I have not listened to her. But I'm stubborn, my mother is stubborn, many people are, no one likes to apologize, no one likes to listen, no one wants to be wrong, yet everyone is and has been, but few people will admit they are wrong and will rarely admit their errors or their farts, in public or in private. People need to be protected from others, who may hurt them, as I need to he protected, but I don't listen to everyone, though I'm a good listener, and I'm curious, though curiosity killed the cat, my mother would say, but she had the cat killed. I listen to others more than most people, sometimes at my peril, though I hope to learn something, but often I don't or what I learn is of no consequence, though it might be to the person who spoke, yet many people tell the same stories again and again, which represent them best or are in some way significant and come to define them, but if they didn't repeat them, they wouldn't in any way define them, or matter, or be of any discernible consequence, since often it is what is not said that is of consequence. I try not to repeat myself, I attempt to be cognizant, not retell stories, I refrain often, but sometimes, when I'm bored by others' stories, I tell an old one, or if I feel I must enter the conversation, rather than withdraw from it or betray my impatience or brusqueness, my lack of concern for others, I trot out a tried but not necessarily true talc, sometimes just to entertain myself, and I don't care which it is. Many people think they are good listeners, many more than who actually listen, since someone has to be doing the talking, and most people will say they're good listeners before they'll say they're good talkers, though most aren't good talkers or listeners, but persons who tell stories that fill time, and many explain how they were hurt by others, because they are sensitive, but never admit they hurt others. People tell stories, often indignantly and without discrimination, including others' secrets, sometimes in minute detail, and then, later, when they have finished their orations, they admit, occasionally cross or with astonishment, that they don't understand why they went on like that. When it happens in my presence, even before those precise words are spoken, I see the formulation of the sentence and nearly say it too, but resist, guarding my tongue where words are dry and glued to the mucous membrane lining of my mouth, otherwise it would appear that I was mimicking or in some way trivializing their discovery. In this instance, as in others, I was merely being quiet, paying attention in an undivided manner, looking into their eyes, never wavering in my belief that she or he could tell me something I'd never heard before; because when a person really tells the story, the one he or she must tell, even to a stranger, and usually I am a stranger, then no matter what that story is, it is generally interesting if not illuminating or unique, though its manner of expression could be unique, and the story in some way special or different; for it must have been lived differently to have been articulated unusually or inventively, or that is my hope. On many occasions the story is dull and flat, and, like reading a bad book, since listening is similar to reading, you want to stop listening, especially if it is about a career failure or for that matter success or a monotonous love life, or the monotonous lack of a love life, or a deficient one, when the speaker is obsessed by a particular man or woman and needs to recite every pain or insult that person has inflicted, so then 1, and many others, become bored, almost outraged at the wanton disregard of themselves, the speaker's dinner companions. One night at dinner, a woman whom I had just met talked incessantly about a man she loved who had mistreated her repeatedly, and though I had just that night met her, a recent arrival who fortunately became another, quick departee, she consumed all of the dinner-table time, at which I usually hope to be drawn away from myself in an arresting manner, with ideas that quicken the mind or provide solace because they spring from mindful solitaries. Instead, she regaled me with episodes of unrelenting romantic agonies and expected instant counsel, which, to be polite, since for all I knew she night also turn out to be interested in someone other than herself, I reluctantly gave, until I couldn't, and reaching my limit, I rose from the table, after she thanked me for listening, and said, too evenly, I suppose you needed to talk. Then the stranger closed her mouth tightly, even murderously, and glared at me with the ferocity of my mad cat who had stalked and attacked me, and I was sorry not to have left the table sooner and wished I hadn't said a word, since it's often better not to say anything. The stranger metamorphosed into an insignificant enemy, when moments before she'd been revealing the most intimate parts of her life to me, also a stranger, but one she needed to listen to her. I wondered at her sanity. I wondered about the man she loved, whose every sentence to do with her she could recite, with his inflections, and whose every touch still scalded her like a hot stove, those were her words, and into whose hands she was only too happy to offer her febrile body, but he might have been the victim of her murderous glances, too, often enough that he needed to escape her as much as I did my deranged cat. I was also insensitive to her.