Go Away Closer: Love's Rocky Road

It's all in the details.

When I first met my husband, I couldn't stand him and worse, we had to work together in the same publishing house. I remember interviewing with him and feeling at once attracted and repelled by what I perceived as an arrogance; here was someone who liked to "strut his brain" as one friend put it, and that was dead on the money.

He sat there, or we sat there, as the afternoon ended all about us and the sun angled lower in the sky, and we argued about Chechnya and the camps there. He argued for the sake of arguing and I, in my youth, argued out of a sense of outrage and righteousness. For two hours we did this, and I thought of the penguins who stare at each other for a period of time before they decide whether it’s okay to mate or not. That was us — two penguins, each of us wondering who would lose the eye contact first, who would lower or drop their gaze.

I remember I was wearing - a longish blue linen skirt and an ivory silk blouse and how in those days, I didn’t wear a bra because it never really occurred to me because I still felt like a kid. After a time at the office, I did begin wearing a bra when I noticed other people noticing. I ran to Saks during one lunch hour and bought myself a pair of espadrilles and a bra, both totally over-priced but the closest shop to the office and the easiest. I still have both to this day - the ankle-laced espadrilles with the rope bottoms and the peach colored bra with small flowers on it. Both were delicate and beautiful, and I put on both when I returned to the office and oddly, felt more confident.

For the whole of two weeks, I still looked for other jobs, despite the fact that I had already been hired. I worried that he and I would not be able to make it work and since he was a director and so was I, we would have to work together, and closely at that, which at the time struck me as pure hell. I even went to New York for a job interview at The Nation and thought seriously about taking it. But by the time the job was offered, I was beginning to make my peace with our editorial director, and I had grown to love my job as well and loved the high-ceilinged space we occupied with countless shelves covered in books both new and old, rare and dusty and smelling of paper and binding. I turned down the other job offers, and prayed I had not burnt any bridges.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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