Flipsides.
This is the story of a single stretch of sidewalk and two old men with New York accents who made their appearance about a year apart. They each decided, for whatever reason, that it would be appropriate for them to comment on my relationship, but their views couldn’t have been any more different.
In the summer of 2010 (I would say it was somewhere around mid-July), Dave and I were standing outside the coffee shop where he works. We were both smoking: he a cigarette, and I one of those clove cigars that Djarum offered clove-smokers as a consolation prize when flavored cigarettes were banned. Ambling up the street in a pack of sports-fan-looking tourists was a large, fat man, probably somewhere in his early sixties.
“Hey,” he shouted to us as he passed. Swaying a bit from drink, he broke off from his pack and headed toward us, glazed eyes fixed intently. As he got closer, he looked us up and down, finally pointedly addressing Dave.
“You let your girlfriend smoke cigars?!?” he spat in an incredulous, accusatory tone.
I immediately felt awkward. We were barely even dating at that point; I don’t remember if we’d even kissed yet, and if we had, it was super-recent. Still, I didn’t want to tell this vaguely threatening man that I wasn’t Dave’s girlfriend (yet).
I don’t remember exactly what Dave said to the man’s challenge; it was something perfectly smooth and reasonable…much better than I could have done.
“Ehhhh,” the man grumbled in response, clearly unimpressed. The wind of his discontented sighing brought the distinct odor of stale beer to my nose.
“Who’s the boss?” he said, his tone questioning Dave’s masculinity. When an answer didn’t come in a split-second, he repeated himself more forcefully. “Who’s the boss?!?”
“Tony Danza?” Dave quipped, and he and I both started giggling. The drunk man’s beery gaze, showing more open hostility now that we were obviously laughing at him, trained on Dave the best it could.
“Eh?” the man grunted, not getting the joke. “You are!” he roared, poking his finger in Dave’s face. “You’re the boss!”
We just kept laughing at him, and he grumbled again and turned to catch up with his friends. I was taken so far aback by the man’s anachronistic chauvinism that I hadn’t said a word the whole time, but Dave’s response was absolutely perfect. That snappy reply, coupled with the fat man’s lack of comprehension, has made “who’s the boss” an enduring inside joke in our household.
Today, we met the flipside of Mr. Boss Man.
Dave was crouched down, cramming his pre-shift cigarettes into his lungs, and I was sitting next to him. We were in the same spot we had been for that first encounter, which is the coffee-shop employees’ usual smoking area.
This man was older than the first one, maybe in his early seventies, with perfectly white hair and a heavy frame that he supported with a cane, tossing his weight from side to side as he made his way up the street. He wore dark sunglasses, and when he reached the spot where we where sitting, he paused and angled his face down to us. He gave us a sunny smile and commented on how frequently he’s seen us in that spot.
“You work in there,” he asked Dave, gesturing toward the entrance to the coffee shop.
“Yep,” said Dave, smiling politely.
“And you…you work in there, too?” he asked me.
“No, I just hang out here,” I replied, looking up to try to meet the man’s gaze through his sunglasses (to no avail).
“I see you out here all the time,” he said, and then to me, “you look more beautiful every time.”
“Aw, thanks,” I said, dropping my eyes shyly.
“You’re a lucky guy,” he said to Dave.
“Well, I’m lucky, too!” I volunteered with a grin.
“You are. You both are,” the man said, then paused, taking in a breath and looking thoughtful, with the smile that remained on his face going distracted-looking.
“My wife always used to tell me to tell women when I think they look beautiful,” he said. “She would tell me ‘Well, I know that you love me, but tell them anyway. It’ll make their day.’” He paused again.
“That’s sweet,” I said, not really knowing what else to say, having taken note of his use of the past tense in referring to his wife, and feeling kind of sorry for him.
“I met my wife when I was five years old,” he began. “Five years old, can you believe it? Living in New York City, and she moved from Ireland to right down the street from me. I rode my bike down the driveway and ran it straight into her. Twelve years later, I married her. Graduated high school on a Friday, and we were married Saturday morning. I was married to her for 47 years.”
“Wow,” I said, again at a loss for better words. If he had been speaking in the present, it would have been “congratulations”. His use of the past suggested that she’d probably died, yet he hadn’t said that she died, so I couldn’t offer condolences either. So, not at all awkwardly (haha), I said it again. “Wow.”
“I love this!” he brightened up, pointing back and forth to Dave and me, indicating our connection. “There are three rules. Let me tell you. One day when we were fifteen, my future wife and I went to Central Park with a bucket of chicken and two great, big Cokes, and she said ‘You’re gonna marry me’, and I said, ‘Oh? Isn’t the guy supposed to do the asking?’ and she said ‘Shush, listen. You’re gonna marry me, and there are three rules, OK?
“‘First, and this is the most important one, you never lie to me. And I’ll never lie to you. OK? Second, never go to bed mad at each other when we fight,’” he added an aside, “…because you will fight.
“‘Third, you never cheat on me, and I’ll never cheat on you’,” he quoted. Then he took a breath and said, “and I’ll add a fourth rule, something my father told me. He sat me down and said, ‘Look at your mother, with nine children, running the house. Remember that the woman is always right, because a happy wife makes a happy life.’”
I had been listening to his entire screed, mentally making notes of places where I agreed or objected, but pleasantly smiling and nodding the whole time. Never lie? Sure, OK, that is something to strive for, if perhaps a bit unrealistic. I think that there are always going to be at least a few tiny, white lies between any two people. Never go to bed mad? Well, I haven’t yet been truly mad at Dave, so I don’t know where to stand on that, don’t know what it feels like. Never cheat? Of course not. Abso-fuckin’-lutely not. It would be the stupidest thing in the universe.
But wait a minute. The woman is always right? Nah. Not always. One of the things that I love about Dave is that he is my equal, and we can disagree and engage in respectful debate. How dreadfully boring it would be if he always deferred to my opinion. I shot him a sidelong glance, only to catch him checking his watch. I realized that he’d probably less been actually listening to the story and more wondering when it was going to end so he could scoot into work without being late.
He made his excuses and extracted us from the conversation, and as we walked into the coffee shop, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye, smiled and said,
“Who’s the boss?”
Nobody is. Or, we each are our own bosses. And that’s just how I like it.
