a fifty eighth story...'a serious man'

I am the serious man standing on the fringe of the drinks party with my back to the poster size black and white photograph of yellow taxis in Times Square, New York – you know the one.

I’m wearing a cream white cotton sweater, a collared white check shirt, grey chinos.  I have been losing my hair for a year now. 

At occasions such as these you are likely to find me on the edge of the crowd: embroiled in a stern conversation on say, medical ethics (I am a doctor), or nursing a half empty glass of wine, watching my wife move seamlessly among the throng, being effortlessly charming.

It’s in this environment I feel most alone – I haven’t my wife, my books, my work.  I’ll be gazing around someone’s living room, absorbing the garish patterned wallpaper, the gross Sony branded entertainment system, thinking to myself one of three things.  One: I don’t belong here, two: I don't want to belong here, three: everyone else thinks I don’t belong here.  I am sure, as far as any man can be, on the way home friends of my wife will wonder how on earth she ended up with me, how on earth I could possibly enrich her life.

Thing is I’m not much to look at, sports were never my thing; I don’t know many jokes, never had a memory for them; nor am I good at small talk, being unable to retain the seemingly endless and various details of other people’s lives long enough to regurgitate them in social situations.  I am serious man, an insular man.  I have my wife, I have my work.  That’s all.  I guess I don’t have time, or time enough, for other people, other things.

Before I met my wife I was an outsider, not even a particularly ambitious one; these days, in a sense, nothing has changed – she is my public face, voice, and she’s happy with that, and so am I, as long as I can remain the private I. 

Do I wish every now and again I could possess the social grace of my wife?  Of course.  But I have become an adult (or thought of as such), and change is beyond me, besides change of any great magnitude is often looked on as a sign of insecurity, of something being wrong, or worse a sign of madness when you reach my age. 

I am a serious man, and sanity, or perhaps sobriety, so to speak, is considered, and might as well be given me as my middle name.