[As it was overheard between him and the other:]
H—: ‘There's something intensely humiliating about going to the doctors.’
O—: ‘Don't disagree.’
H—: ‘Is it just a masculinity thing you think?’
O—: ‘What's that?’
H—: ‘You know, like how dads are more or less made to not go to the doctor and consequently die prematurely.’
O—: ‘That's a really grim view of fatherhood you're harboring buddy.’
H—: ‘Alright don't play dumb and paint me melodramatic as if there isn't some shared impression.'
O—: ‘Okay, I don't deny the impression of a trend. But “made?” Who's making them you figure? Is there a shared code among fathers? A long silent cold war waged by doctors and fathers that has them swearing off interaction en masse, albeit following of course the presumed initial hospital visit that in fact makes fathers fathers. Is the big symbolic Father in the room with us, looming, decrying? Has he cut diplomatic ties with the health profession altogether in perhaps a short-sighted move that will assuredly result in the loss of many men of his legion?’
H—: ‘You're an ass.’
O—: ‘Okay.’
‘...’
H—: ‘I think I meant more they were made like it seemed like they were programmed to; like it was like a baked-in bug.’
O—: ‘I feel, and please don't take this harshly. I am trying to come along here so this feeling is meant in the most generous way... I feel that your evoking the whole masculinity of it all has perhaps forgone the hardwired “approach."'
H—: ‘...’
O—: ‘I mean, at the very least, if you were hardwired, your recently going to the doctors, which I assume this whole thing is--in the most indirect way--"about", would be difficult to account for. At least in as much as you are in fact a man. … and haven’t “gone rouge” as it were.'
H—: ‘Well. I'm not a father.’
O—: ‘Are you implying that becoming a father totally bricks your wiring vis a vis prolonged living in the way of health maintenance? Is that the transformative occurrence?
H—: ‘No–
O—: ‘Cause if so you’d really be just like those insects that like basically self-destruct after screwing.’
H—: ‘This is an incredibly grim view of fatherhood.’
O—: ‘See! I have tried to come along!’
‘...’
H—: ‘Maybe what was, or what I suppose appeared to be, a sort of "hardwiring" has lost its sheen. It's... I don’t know force of appearing convincing, and has… rotted into this weird spectral impression.’
O—: ‘The ever ephemeral masculinity.’
H—: ‘It's like ghosts. They can never just do. Like they can't just exercise their will or various prerogatives how the living do. Invisibly.’ O—: ‘Visibly invisibly hmm–
H—: ‘They have to interrupt and be seen or shown as some… attesting to themselves as presence and that's how they do. By going “AAAH I’m here!”’
O—: ‘Uh.. huh..’
H—: ‘Well alright for one if we grant the previous premise–’ O—: ‘Your previous premise.’
H—: ‘–that dads are in fact like this. We can pretty well assume the degree to which they are in fact like this is one that as well precludes conversations like these.’
O—: ‘...’
H—: ‘If they didn't go to the doctor they didn't talk about how they didn't go to the doctor; It was more or less unsaid.’
O—: ‘And in that way invisible.’
H—: ‘In fact, I'd venture to say the image of the father we've developed is the kind who speaks of things little. As a rule.’
O—: ‘A pictures been painted.’
H—: ‘But when I'm at the doctors– Well for one I'm there at the doctors. But this impression, this embarrassment, it's in my face. It's somehow both ephemeral but also more obvious. As if precisely because it's ephemeral it has to be obvious.'
O—: ‘And but you go.’
H—: ‘Eventually you go.’
O—: ‘Couldn’t you say the whole point of a concept is to bring to presence what is more or less assumed to be invisibly at work? Like gravity didn't start when we had a name for it. It just then became conspicuous.’
H—: ‘Yes, exactly like that.’
O—: ‘And presumably in as much as the concept is now there it’s something that can be dealt with. Like okay now we get gravity, what else does that show us? Or with other stuff maybe we can get rid of it. Or like brush by it.’
H—: ‘That seems to be the idea of it.’
O—: ‘…’
H—: ‘So you could say: “This is dumb I'm at the doctor's because I should be, because my health matters, etc. And I'm not gonna be embarrassed.”’
O—: ‘Yes you can say that.”
H—: ‘Yes.’
O—: ‘But.’
H—: ‘Yeah.’
O—: ‘You're still embarrassed.’
H—: ‘You can hate gravity, but you're seeing it and hating doesn't do much.. So you're hardwired.. or maybe the ghosts are. And the ghosts are the ones that are on your ass.’
O—: ‘...’
H—: ‘Shouldn't the ghosts attest to the dumbness? Like: “Hey I'm a ghost! If you're stupid like me you'll be a ghost soon too!” ... But ghosts are kinda broken records. I mean the whole shtick is that they literally can't do anything but repeat. They're stuck in loops. But I think also we underestimate them.’
H—: ‘Like–
O—: ‘...’
H—: –you see the embarrassment, and you see that it's dumb, and you see that it's still happening to you, and you think that just because you see all this it doesn't matter much. Like it's just the queasy feeling that you can compartmentalize.’
O—: ‘That's the bulk of life I guess. Seeing that things suck and how it sucks to be in them, and putting that feeling in a box that you can walk around with.’
H—: ‘Yeah but it's not just that.’
O—: ‘What more is it?’
H—: ‘Well eventually you do go to the doctor’s right?'
O—: ‘Right.’
H—: ‘And you haven't been in a long time. And doctors mention that kinda thing, especially when things are amok, and conspicuous, and could have been conspicuous but handleable had you gone before.’
O—: ‘...’
H—: ‘You're supposed to go “regularly.” This is the universally agreed upon fact. But it’s only vaguely clear to me what regularly even means. I hadn't been in half a decade.’
O—: ‘...’ H—: ‘I used to think that you know when Grandpa dies. and then Dad dies. You know. All of something that could have been intervened on early. And easily rectified. I’d think well that was dumb. That that was the stupid old man bug that we enlightened people had done away with. That we like evolved out of. … But then. you know. It’s like there’s some letters that you get but you don't open. Even though you oughta and even though you kinda know what they already say. But because as long as you don't open them it's possible they aren't that. And if you do open them you lose the possibility of them being something different. They become what they definitely are and they're not ignorable anymore. They're just what they are. Like nothing in fact changes. Them being awash in possibility means fuck all. The letter means what it means whether you read it like an adult or kind of half ignore it and pretend you didn't see it. It says what it says.’
‘…’
H—: ‘It's the same kind of thing. You feel like shit in the same ways but it's like an illness is more or less in its diagnoses and as long as that diagnosis isn't.. had or is held off then… Well, you don't really have anything, and hell maybe if it clears up it won't be so anymore and you can go to the doctor and you'll be healthy and it won't be that you recovered but it just wasn't ever anything at all but an anomalous blip.’
O—: ‘...’
H—: ‘But that isn’t true at all. The stuff that really works works invisibly just as well if not even better than when conspicuous. It's the man behind the scenes. Like if Kissinger was in your guts. And so whatever. You do go to the doctor and you realize you thought it all dumb and that you'd be better, you'd be proactive and take care of yourself but in fact, you didn't. You didn't do the regular checkups and you didn't even realize you hadn’t done it, and then you're in the same spot as them now that you have gone, and now that it is in fact yeah probably too late for much to be done you've got to wonder: was it really that dumb old man hardwired stubbornness that got your dad or was it this oh so gentle epistemological lull. This tricking yourself that you're just as good at. That you’re so good at you didn’t even suspect. Not like I could ask him. Or if he’d even know if I could. And in fact, it really doesn't matter to anyone but you, and well as “you know now” that's just about as tenuous.’
[I don’t know how it goes from there. Or if I do I don’t remember it now. A watch alarm sounds, people shuffle, some leave, some go back in. What else is there?]