The Argument

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He was a German student of philosophy and believed that arguments were good things, that they should be constructed carefully, developed, rehearsed, appreciated, and admired. Our first argument was about whether it was the individual copy of a book that mattered or the text that all the copies contained. This argument, and I almost wrote ‘fight’ because I’ve never been a student of philosophy, occurred in early February, at night, along the frozen lakeshore downtown.  That winter in Chicago had been especially cold and bleak, and waves from the lake kicked up by storms had frozen and refrozen over themselves, depositing sediments of ice that now formed berms more than six feet tall. This was our second date. I had said yes because I was thinking of killing myself basically all the time that winter and felt I could use the distraction and exercise. 

So our first argument: He had taken the position that it was the individual copy of the book that mattered. That copy, his copy, was the specific object that had taught him something or entertained him, or whatever the book had done for him. It had the notes from his first reading in the margins. It had scents specific to it. It was itself and it was his. 

I argued that the book was a vessel for the text and that one copy was as good as any other. For once I was not arguing for the sake of being contrary; it was obvious to me that the individual copies were interchangeable representatives of the fundamental, principal text.  Although I did not call books ‘texts’ yet. That was a tic I’d later pick up from him. I used simpler words, my more basic vocabulary giving my argument a folksy, commonsense appeal, all the while feeling deeply inferior that I did not use words like ‘texts,’ other than when doing things like sending him naked pictures of myself with my phone. But here’s the idea I was getting at with my more childlike vocabulary:  the text was the ‘true’ entity separate from its mass-produced physical embodiment. 

That was preposterous to him. (And to Walter Benjamin.) First, because we were physical beings who interacted with physical objects and couldn’t learn abstractions directly but had to do so through the senses, like the copy of a book.  Second, because my own behavior contradicted me. Why hold onto your books so tenderly, he asked. Why collect them in such great quantities with no intention to read them? Why kiss them when they are particularly beautiful or surprising to you? 

I showed you all of that in confidence, I said, regretting now that I had brought him home after our first date, to show him my books. And you drag that up just to win an argument? Besides, I’ll kiss one copy like I’ll kiss any other.

No you don’t. You don’t kiss any book. You kiss your book. 

I’ll kiss any book, I said, opening his bag to get one.

And so on: Another date, another fight, no, argument, this time about whether summer or winter was the truer state of things.  We both happened to live way up on the North Side, a few blocks from each other on the same street running parallel to Lake Michigan, and between our apartments (his was nicer) was a frail, small, wind-deformed tree that had become suddenly inflamed with white flowers in mid-April (earlier every year) every half-inch of every gray branch covered in fuzzy white pustules.  We had thought that whole winter that the tree was not asleep but dead, and had wondered when it would be cut down.  Now it had us questioning reality, and he quickly agreed that spring and fall were not real, being transitions, but thought the rest of the question was ridiculous.

So I argued against myself—already at that point in the relationship, I was arguing against myself—that summer was a sleazy carnival that jumped out of the dark, icy ground every so often. A fundamental characteristic of the universe is entropy, cold, dark, alone, still. (I was clapping with each word.) That is the baseline.

Nonetheless summer is still real, no? It helped his case that it was exceptionally warm that April day, our lips and armpits damp with sweat.  He then plucked one of the white confetti blossoms from the stunted tree and tucked it behind my ear, completing his refutation. No, I exaggerate too much; he never would have harmed a tree for the sake of a rhetorical flourish, trees being sacred to the German people, and Chicago moreover being a Germanic city, especially when he could so easily dismantle my position by gesturing to the warm air.  Instead he must have done something like delicately lift the snowy blossom bough up so I could pass under it, without risk of me damaging the tree, and then have said: Shall we have pasta primavera for dinner? 

Or: You should take your thoughts more seriously before sharing them.

I had many other thoughts to share. I had learned that arguments could be many things. An argument could come before a long poem and tell you what was inside of it. Arguments were ways of asking questions, of making a living, of moving through the world, and some were even born of mutual agreement, both of us struggling to understand why we agreed so that we might learn to be satisfied with our beliefs.

How does one tolerate small talk? By making it a game.

Why did my parents hate him? Because he was stealing their little boy away. 

Was Chicago like Paris? Not at all, beyond having a river down the middle.

Why ban guns? Because humans use the tools around them to solve their problems, and guns are the wrong tool for almost all problems.

What happens after you die? Someone carries away your stuff and then your soul dissolves. (That last conclusion was particularly satisfying, although it provides little comfort when someone else dies.)

Often an argument wouldn’t allow itself to resolve, given some error in formulating the question, or a lack in our powers of reason, or stubbornness. When it became clear that we wouldn’t get anywhere or ever exhaust the subject, the student of philosophy would say, Words, words, words, which was true, this all being chatter by another name. And we had more than the episodic, abstract arguments that I have described. There were also ongoing differences of opinion that flowed alongside our progress like an oily, garbage-strewn river. That I should not kill myself, for one. That he shouldn’t work so much.

The student of philosophy was alarmed to discover a note in my bag that said that I wanted to kill myself. I had been standing on the El platform downtown at 5:15 pm when the urge had grown so strong—understandably, I still think, given my surroundings—that I needed to write it down, bring it forth, which I did. I was so successful at expelling the idea that I had forgotten about the note and didn’t think of it later, at home, when he went through my bag to find a pen. 

You shouldn’t read so many things that upset you, I said. 

You have a point, he said. Generally speaking. But I still think we should talk about what I’m reading here. 

I don’t want to talk about texts right now. 

It’s scaring me. 

It’s nothing, and I took the note from him and threw it out.

Suicide doesn’t work, I said abruptly, months later, kind of apologizing. We were on the El platform in Boystown, changing trains on our way to have dinner with my parents. He had just told me a story about how, after the market crash in 2008, commuter rails in New York made announcements asking people to please not throw themselves in front of the trains because it was very upsetting for the conductors and caused delays. I laughed because he had structured the story like a joke: Why would someone about to be dead care? But he got upset, and I moodily walked to the edge of the platform and looked up the tracks, at the purple dusk, at the distant lamp of the Brown Line coming our way, and said: Suicide doesn’t work.

I think you’re right, he said, thinking about it.

It doesn’t solve the problem at hand, I said. It’s a non sequitur. 

I agree . . . .

I don’t know what I mean by any of this.

Me neither, but I still agree, I think. He was holding me from behind, which felt nice, although I resented that I wasn’t in the position to do any holding. But even if I had been well enough at the time, I’m not sure what relief I could’ve provided. The student of philosophy was a basically happy person, and the problems he did have seemed more intractable than mine. He didn’t get movies. He didn’t know what spring break was. He hated his mother. He wouldn’t eat fast food and was drawn to the radical sobriety of Hölderlin, never mind the poet’s schizophrenia, and as a result had quit drinking and was considering giving up coffee next. These were all errors beyond the reach of reason and persuasion, though movies I tried my hardest to explain. One evening we were on Hollywood Beach, twenty minutes after sunset and the sky a deep glowing blue and well on its way to night. I was lying in the sand, looking up at him as he looked around with contempt at the other men on the beach, his silent disembodied head against the blue screen, each dark thought passing across his face. I told him to lie down in the sand, which he did, reproachfully, and I sat up and told him to look at my face against the blue: Do you see? Look. I scowled at my surroundings, pretended to have deep thoughts, did what I could to burrow the image into him. He stared at me for a while, frowning. OK, he said. OK. 

.

I don’t think I like being the serious one of us, he said, having just reasoned through the latest inane question I had posed.

Nobody asked you to.

I’d like to be the unserious one.

I am serious, I said. Nobody has made you the custodian of seriousness. 

The student of philosophy laughed like a crow, a harsh, true sound that hurt my ears.  That is exactly what I am, he said. That is exactly what you’ve made me to be. 

But he had grown more unserious since meeting me. He shaved and showered less often now and had become a sloppy dresser, all of which suited him. He gave up on learning ancient Greek a few weeks after starting and now refused to write more than one philosophical text a year, no longer than five or six thousand words at that. Then on one of our walks he said: My first book will be about the philosophical implications of smell, anointed-ness, particles-in-atmosphere as communion, and so on, which have long been overlooked compared to sight and sound. He smirked at me, my body odor being a running joke between us, but of course I was pleased. I felt like Mme. Vallotton, in that very red painting at the Art Institute downtown, admiring her niece as she tore up a book at her feet. 

Meanwhile I was becoming like him, or like how he used to be. I had decided that I wasn’t going to kill myself.  Instead I was going to argue to make my money, to argue my way to the good life, like he was doing. I had gotten accepted at a prestigious university on the East Coast that would, people said, set me up with a job arguing for life.  But it raised a serious problem: his professional argument-training program was at a prestigious university here in Chicago, and he’d have to stay behind for many more years to finish it. 

Are you crying?  He asked me this while I was making macaroni and cheese in my not-as-nice apartment. 

No, I said.

Is it because the food you’re making is disgusting? 

It’s because I have to move. I stirred the orange cheese powder and butter into the bacillary noodles, melting the butter with my stirring.

That’s ridiculous, he said. 

I know. 

The university is so prestigious! 

It is. 

Do you feel better?

Yes. Can I be alone now? He left and I ate my meal straight from the pot over the stove, delicious. From that day we didn’t discuss the future all that much. We delayed deliberations, took a series of short trips, discussed the weather, which was frighteningly wrong so much of the time. But eventually the last argument, long postponed, came. I rehearsed it while away at school, marching around the East Coast’s irregularly arranged blocks: Now you see, there are only so many places where one could get a job doing what we do. 

Yes of course, he was going to say.

You’ll end up in one city, and I’ll almost certainly end up in another. Maybe hundreds or thousands of miles away.

This is a very real possibility. A probability even.

So you get my drift. We’ll have to find other people to build our lives with.

Yes, but we’ll always remain friends, he was going to say. Best friends.

Perhaps even with benefits. 

You dog, he was going to say. 

Then came the time for delivery. I was visiting him over the holidays after my first semester. It was winter again and Chicago had reassumed its true form. I was on his couch, and he looked up from an essay he was slowly working on about Blanchot, for his book to come. 

Sorry, I said.

What do you mean? 

I don’t think this is going to work anymore.

What do you mean? 

I just don’t see how we can make this work. 

What do you mean? What do you mean?

THE END