On Fridays we’d meet in the parking lot to argue about philosophy. Each of us would pull up in our chosen spot, jump out of our car, and nod firmly at everyone else. We’d then spend forty five minutes cutting loose on one another over our differing opinions on aesthetics, language, what it means to be good, the relationship between the body and mind, and so on. When we were done, our voices run ragged, we’d get back in our cars and return to our places of work, perfectly timed to match our allocated lunch breaks. That was how it went.
Outside of that Friday session, we made sure to avoid each other at all costs. If we saw one another at the supermarket, we would sprint out the door and down the street in opposite directions. If we pulled up next to one another at a red light, we would wind our windows up and blast our radios until we were able to drive away. If members of our families became friends, started dating or, as occurred on one unfortunate occasion, got married, we would avoid all family events, no matter the personal consequences.
Because these Fridays were too important. They were the only way we could completely leave behind our daily lives and relate to one another in the abstract. If we knew too much about one another we might begin to form relationships, and relationships were not what we were interested in. We were interested in rigorous debate, a fight club of the mind. This was the only place we could escape the real world in favour of one we could try to understand. We had fought too hard for these Fridays to give them up so easily.
This is why it was such a disaster when we discovered that two of us had been getting together in secret.
We first grew suspicious when their yelling matches in the parking lot seemed less heated than usual. We wondered why their usually detailed rhetoric had given way to something more tender. We wondered why they were sharing moments of understanding rather than screaming about the flaws in one another’s arguments.
These suspicions were confirmed when one of us discovered them in a local restaurant, sitting at a table with a single lit candle between them. The scene couldn’t have been more astonishing.
When confronted, they tried to protest.
‘You don’t understand,’ one of them said. ‘The possibility of love is something we’d never considered in all our time shouting at one another. We never meant for this to happen. We don’t even agree on whether or not we have free will.’
‘We fought it as much as we could,’ said the other, ‘but in the end, we couldn’t justify staying apart just to maintain a regular schedule of theoretical arguments. Not when this was right in front of us.’
Hearing about this encounter was horrifying. To think that our Friday mind brawl might be derailed by two of us connecting in a way some of us thought may not actually be possible was too much to bear.
For the first – and last – time, we all agreed on the right thing to do: we waited for them in the parking lot that Friday, and we chased them out of town.
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A Quick Recommendation
This story by Amber Sparks, ‘The Janitor in Space’, begins simply, then turns into a meditation on isolation and regret.
The janitor knows that being good is not the same as being clean. She, for instance, is very clean, but she is not very good. She is still traveling on her way toward that. She told her pastor that she was coming up here to be closer to God, but really she just wanted to get away from Earth. She was tired of waiting to be recognized, waiting for someone to hear her name and turn, eyes too big, full of questions and sideshow curiosity.
The full story is available in American Short Fiction.
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