One of my all time favorite pastimes is engaging in conversation, particularly with people I haven’t seen in a long time, or with complete strangers.
Two days ago, I drove to Chester, CT to spend New Year’s day with a friend of mine, Rob. I hadn’t seen Rob in a year or so, and he’d recently been dealing with a blood clot in his left calf. I had no idea what to expect from the visit – all I knew was I wanted to see him to make sure he was doing okay.
Pulling off the highway, I could see that his place was sort of tucked into the wilderness. Everything was covered with snow, the woods blanketed with delicate white. I’d always wanted to see what these places were like up close.
He lived in a modestly sized grey duplex, back yard (also the parking lot) right by a stream (it’s auspicious to live by running water in some cultures). I parked my car next to a black Volvo that had seen a quite a few seasons, careful not to scrape the snow-covered canoe that lay by the house, then walked up the steep wooden steps that led to the entrance.
When Rob greeted me at his doorway, the feeling of familiarity hit me pretty strong. A lot had changed about him in that year, even just physically. He’d grown a full beard, whitish-grey, and the power of his voice seemed diminished. But it was still Rob, no question.
He welcomed me into his home, and I immediately liked the vibe. An assortment of paraphernalia lay around the place, out in the open – a glasses case, quite a few empty beer cans, books on boating and fishing, maps, a bag of vials for blood thinner injections, packs of cigarettes and accompanying ashtrays…
The place looked lived in – that’s what I was most fond of.
After the obligatory quick tour, he took me into the basement to show me his latest project – he was restoring a 100-year-old canoe. The cedar wood he worked with was absolutely gorgeous, with streaks of pure white running through the deep red wood, and seeing the planks of wood bent in unison to form the frame of the canoe was awe-inspiring.
Afterwards, we walked back upstairs and to the second floor, shoes still on (Rob being, among other things, a woodworker, it’s pretty standard for there to be dust on the floor).
He led me to what is now one of my all-time favorite rooms.
If you took a casual glance at it, it’d probably appear to be nothing more than an office. But at one point or another, that room has been a photography studio, a music recording studio, and an incubator for incredible conversations. That room holds a hell of a lot of memories.
And if you strip it down to its essence, the setup is really just two chairs facing each other. Sure, there’s a sound system, a guitar, some recording equipment, a chest, a computer, a mirror, some paintings, some framed photos, and a bunch of other miscellaneous paraphernalia.
But at its heart it’s just two chairs facing each other.
For the rest of the day, we engaged in un-interrupted conversation. Don’t get me wrong – there were silences. Sometimes long periods of silence, or perhaps with music on. But silence is just as much a part of conversation as talk is.
Kicking back in those chairs, legs crossed, uncrossed, parted, whatever – mano a mano, we shot the shit. For hours.
I admit, I’d only known Rob for a few days prior to this meeting, and under very unusual circumstances. Some would say I took a stupid unnecessary risk in visiting him.
But sometimes you can feel like you know someone very well, even after just the briefest of encounters. Sometimes this hunch turns out right, and sometimes it turns out wrong. This time I trusted myself, and I was right.
We talked about just about everything. The beautiful thing about conversation is that (and this will sound familiar) you realize the universality of individual experience.
I’d guess Rob is at least 30 years older than me. We’re from completely different backgrounds. He grew up on a boat – he’s a “boat man.” He’s been an engineer, a boat captain (for longer than I've been alive), a tech writer, a professional photographer, and a woodworker, among other things. He’s been married, and he’s loved and lost.
I love nature and the outdoors, but I see myself as a city person. There’s an incredible energy I draw from being around tall buildings and masses of people that I can’t match anywhere else (I also draw an incredible almost transcendental energy from being alone in the wilderness, but it’s a very different quality of energy). I’ve been a lawn mower, a coffee shop barista, a mail courier, an EMT-B trainee, and briefly a tutor for Chicago youth, and I’ve just done my first photoshoot as a model in Boston. I’ve never been in a relationship.
You see how different we are? But we’re both self-taught men, and we both have a lot of life experience. And I firmly believe that as long as you make the most out of your life, and live life consciously and vigorously, paying attention to all that it has to teach you, the particulars don’t matter all that much.
I learned a lot from Rob (most of which I won’t put down here, because I’d see that as a violation of an important trust). I’m sure he learned a lot from me too.
I learned about what it’s like to deal with self-injections of blood thinners through the stomach, while constantly struggling to breathe from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – long-term from smoking and woodworking dust).
I learned about boating, about music, about modeling, about satisfying and unsatisfying jobs, about serendipity, about fishing. I learned that you can fly fish with the most intricate of “flies” made from duck feathers and animal hairs – it can take hours to create the perfect bait. I learned that with a little bit of work, you can make an $80 dollar guitar play and sound like an $800 Washburn.
I learned about loss – and how it’s possible to lose that which is most important to you, and still survive without remorse, if you do it properly.
I learned a lot from nonverbal cues too – intangibles, that I’ve stored in my memory, and that I’ll have with me forever to draw upon.
I learned about patience – as I observed his lifestyle, it hit me just how strong having to wait can make a man.
At times, our conversation would trigger powerful memories for him, and he’d briefly be taken away to another place, almost leaving me alone in the room, save perhaps a deep hearty laugh or a drawn out sigh.
At a certain point, some friends of his came over to visit – Jimmy and Jimmy’s son Adam – and we continued our conversation with company. Jimmy was one hell of a character, toothless (couldn’t afford the dentures) and free-spirit, with worn cap, lumberjack hoodie (grey chest hair poking out), dirty jeans, and scruffy shoes. Cigarette in one hand, and beer can in a cupholder in the other, he was a master storyteller, and he showed me a whole new world with his words.
A sampler of our conversation:
ON WOMEN AT BARS
“She was a real high-energy chick. Looked almost country western, with the big tits and ass, shaking it on top of a table. Oh, we enjoyed her. She was something to watch.”
ON CRITTERS
“What type of critters do you get in China?”
I told him about the tortoises we ate there, and how they were (rather gruesomely) prepared for a meal.
“We used to go after the snappers (a type of turtle) with a hatchet and a hammer. Those things will dig through anything to lay their eggs – even rocks. I’ve seen ‘em lay eggs, but I’ve still never seen ‘em hatch. I saw ‘em bite straight through an oar once. Those suckers will take out a toe, or a finger.”
In this last warning, I recognized the same delight my uncle in China took in giving this same warning to me. It seems warning the naïve is a pleasurable pastime for people of all races and backgrounds.
Then he told me how beavers will deliberately follow you and slap their tails against the water to splash you if you intrude on their turf.
ON THE DRUM CORPS
“Can’t play a whole set – I just wanna hit ‘em all. No, just give me one damn drum, I can work with that.”
“This one time, I was doing this drum corps gig with a bunch of guys, they were filming us for some parade or something. The director was an asshole. We’d be jamming when we got bored, and he couldn’t take that, started telling us to shut up. I told him if he really wanted us to shut up, he should go buy us some fucking beer. He did it, and we shut up real nice.”
By the end of our conversation, I felt a real camaraderie with these people – even though they’d been complete strangers just hours earlier. These were my kind of people – straight-shooters, with a passion for life, and a knack for storytelling.
Right before he left, Jimmy shook my hand and asked me, “You like floatin’ Dave?”
“What’s floatin’?”
“You know, being on a boat. Come this summer, you should come out here, and we’ll take you and show you some things you’ve never seen before.”
I cannot wait for this summer to swing around.
And I cannot wait to stumble my way into many many more interesting conversations in the future.
-David
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