a million hours with a stranger

I was in Europe this summer for 2 months. My European friend here recommended that I go to her country, Belgium, and even to her city, Ghent. (City? Town? Standards are so different in Europe.) She even gave me a hookup: some friends who might be able to show me around town. They couldn't. But they gave me the email of another girl who was "into couchsurfing." (I don't think that's a euphemism for anything.)

We got beer--dark and rich Belgian beers--and had a nice chat before going to a Jazz club. We talked about music, and it seemed there were some points of convergence in our tastes: mostly Jazz and Blues.

Turns out, she was myopically passionate about African-inspired music, whether it be South African, Afro-Cuban, or African American. Me, I'm not into folk music per se but start to appreciate it more as it becomes more evolved, less visceral, more cerebral. Hence Jazz. Blues is not the most elevated of musical styles, and it certainly can wear out its welcome, but I think it's the sound, the Affect, that strikes a chord with me.

Somehow, I ended up in a car with this girl for several dozens of hours as we drove from Chicago to Memphis to New Orleans and finally to Austin. She was visiting the States, several months after we met in Belgium, came through Chicago and then wanted to explore the South. Somehow, I had never been. Really, the whole South, unexplored.

And the driving time gave us the time to explore our differences.

We started with music and moved on to life: she wanted kids with her boyfriend (a 48-year-old half Brazilian half Cameroon man living in Belgium, still living with his baby mamma) and projected that feeling on to every living being and possibly some inanimate objects as well. She's one of those women who would have children on her own if she had to. Which means that if she was preggers tomorrow and her man left her on Tuesday, she'd be just as happy raising the chilluns without him.

Having children was never really a goal of mine: more of an assumed eventuality. I somehow got over that feeling a couple of years ago. One would think we could just let our differences coexist, but I felt like I had to defend my lack of significant desire against her assumptions and projections.

I convinced her that it's a gender thing: men don't want children in the same visceral way that women do. In general. We may want progeny for a million other reasons, but we have reasons. The women who want little bundles of joy want them in the way that I want food when I'm hungry. I know this. I know that we all have our own path. But it took a lot of convincing for her to think like that.

And I think she just wanted to share her excitement with someone. Is that so wrong? I was not having it, and I feel a little bad, but I'm not about to fake it. So when she said that she had a couple weeks with her boyfriend in New York (before Chicago), I wasn't necessarily expecting: "I'm not going to drink very much...because I might be pregnant!" I should have just said, "That's great!" instead of "Oh. Really? First month off the pill?" That's not what people want to hear when they're excited about the possibility. At one point, frustrated by other things, I said something like: "Fine, get your hopes up." But really, what's the crime in that? I've learned not to get my hopes up (and I keep learning), but for her, she knows that, if she's not preggers now, she will be some day later. Mild disappointment assuaged by eternally springing hope.

And, deep down, secretly, maybe I didn't want her to be pregnant. It seemed like an unnecessary nuisance to deal with on the trip. (Such are children, albeit slightly necessary.) Also, maybe I was assessing her situation (never a good idea from the far outside of someone's situation) and judging this an inopportune time.

So, the big question--10,000 dollars--remains unanswered. She's back in Belgium; I'm back in Chicago. It's cold, and I'm hanging around the house trying to plot a course into the future (through conference with the past).