Power Lines

Last night, I went to my favorite bar and enjoyed a bottle of wine. They offer bottles at half price on Sunday nights, which made it even more enjoyable.

I sat next to a woman who, it became clear, was a regular, as she and the bartender addressed each other by name. As I took my stool, I folded my raincoat and was starting to put it down on the foot rail, when she said, "There are hooks under the bar." And so there were. I thanked her, and she added, "You don't want to put your coat on the floor." I like to turn things on their head, so I replied, "That wouldn't be very respectful of the floor, would it?"

A long conversation ensued. It was mostly about her, her business, its challenges. She asked a few polite questions about me, and I believe she was interested in the answers, but she remained the focus. I listened and learned. About her passions, her pain points, her dreams realized and unfulfilled. There was no strong connection between us, no bond, save for the interest I was sharing in her life. And that was enough to keep us going for three hours, without a single uncomfortable moment of silence.

As midnight rolled around and we started to shift on our stools (time to go), the bartender, who is also my friend, smiled as he handed me my check. "I hardly got to talk to you tonight."

"That's because she and I have been talking the whole time."

He nodded.

And the woman added, "It's nice to sit with a man who listens."

My first reaction was to take this as a compliment. On reflection this morning, I see it differently. It may be a pat on the back for me, but it's also a slap aimed at men in general. Yes, many men don't listen, perhaps because we're so intent on telling our own stories and wanting the women we're with to appreciate those stories, to find them interesting and in doing so, find us interesting. And sometimes, we don't listen because the person we're with is complaining, lamenting, wallowing, or just erupting with negativity. That's not a slap aimed at women. Men do the same thing, particularly if we've just gotten over a lousy relationship.

Coming back to this woman's words about listening: they constitute, for me, a power line, a sequence of words that establishes who gets to push the judgment button. And given where she is in her professional life, having just come out the winner in a huge, expensive, and necessary power struggle, I understand where she was coming from. But there's more.

As I retrieved my raincoat from its comfortable hook under the bar, I handed her my card - a personal card, not the business card from my current employer.

And she said, "I don't call boys."

I was taken aback. There had been nothing in my demeanor, not a single suggestion in our conversation that I had any romantic interest in this woman, or she in me, and it was clear that she was not looking for someone to date. I had given her my card merely to provide contact information and the option of continuing our conversation.

"It's not a proposition."

She nodded.

And I felt the second slap. Not the slap of rejection, of Diana the huntress raising her bow, placing a poisoned arrow in her quiver, and exclaiming, "I am the pursuer, not the pursued." But the slap of being called something less than a man.

I spent a fair amount of time this morning piecing together where what I see as her issues with men come from. And since she may read this, I will not go into that.

Reflecting on the experience, integrating it into my consciousness, getting in touch with my feelings about it, and turning it over until I found its meaning, enabled me to get past the power lines and tap into the undercurrent of what she was saying, to understand why she was saying it.

I stand under enormous power lines at the train station every morning. And we all experience power lines in our interactions with partners, family, colleagues, and friends. After you've been shocked by one of these, dazed momentarily by the lightning strike, take some time to recover and reflect. You don't have to have a smart comeback. You have to figure out why the person threw the bolt. Working through to the undercurrent will tell you that and let you know whether you want to come back for more and hope lightning strikes twice, or whether you want to bolt as fast as you can.

"I don't call boys."

Ironically, the card I gave her had no phone number.