Forty Minutes for Feelings

In which our Hero closes his eyes and looks out at his lady

Somehow, in passing, I mentioned that I was going to watch 40 minutes of a movie that night with Nocturne. Which I should have anticipated was grounds for questions. Why 40 minutes? Because she was very busy that night but we still wanted a break and so watching a bit of a movie seemed better than not watching anything. And how do you watch a movie with someone who isn’t in the same room? Well, you basically watch at the same time.

“But that’s not really watching together?”

It’s not, not in any literal sense. But you add the voice link connecting us and suddenly we can talk to each other during the program (or she can shush me for talking during the program). And I can hear her laugh, cry, groan, or mock as scenes play out, and she can hear me. Really, it’s like sitting in a movie theatre, and just being too shy to look over, to shy to touch hands. It’s very much together. As we watch, we are affected together, by the show and by the reactions of the other. As the show ends, we talk, or ask the question that we were dying to ask mid-show. Or look up that guy from that other thing, who was that?

The contact would be better. Sharing popcorn, or wrapping an arm around her would be more fun. no question. But those aren’t options.

“Isn’t it lonely?”

No. Not at all.

Sharing a soundspace is different from a phone call, or conference call at work. It’s not a conversation, it’s more of a fixture in the room. If she’s working, I hear her, typing or clicking. She’s there, with me. Instead of “I will call her” it’s “Hey Cutiebuttons, I just read an article on socioeconomics that reminds me how cute you are” or “I’m hungry, what should I eat?”

Which could also happen in a phone-call, sure, but the difference between dialing a number versus just saying things as they occur is subtle and important. It leaves room for impulse, beyond just conversation. It means that when one of us snorts at something we’ve read the other can ask,”what?” When one of us sneezes, the other can say, “Bless you.” When one of us sings to hisself, the other can say, “I didn’t even know you had a cat, why are you strangling it?”

It’s more than just a call, it’s persistent presence. It’s presence while Nocturne goes to the kitchen and I can hear her rattling pots and pans. She stirs in her sleep, and I hear the soft noise in her breathing and the sound of movement on fabric as she shifts. The magic of the internet joins us, across the world. And when one of us loses signal, our space is suddenly empty, and that too is amazing, for the sense of missing the person who was in the room a minute ago, and for the mild confusion that seems to take hold till a connection is reestablished.

A few years ago, I listened to a radio piece about a woman with an anxiety disorder that made it very hard for her to sleep at night. And so they ended up sleeping with a skype video chat going, so that they could spend their nights together.

Neither of us like video, a coincidence that still amuses me. But I do think about what would change if we were running cameras too. It’d be handy because she could show me some of the things she’s asked me questions about, like “is my broken power supply still safe?” or “Is this chicken done, you think?”

But aside from occasional pointed circumstances, I really believe we are better served, my Nocturne and I, by the lack of video. Video is a small arc of space slicing through our places. Sound is a broad stage that spans the room to the limit of the sensitivity of the microphone. I’d rather hear her in another room than watch her empty chair. The sound keeps her more present. The picture would emphasize absence.

It’s not the same as real time spent together. People remind me of that all the time, so that I don’t even really need to be aware of it myself. It’s not the same as actually being in the same room, actually standing and touching and all that wonderful human stuff. I know that. I really know that.

But there’s something very revealing in this quiet, still. The sounds of her laughter and her outrage. The pain of her stress and the overhead conversations and the little glimpses where she and I have forgotten that we’re on Candid Camera and are just… being.

She stirs again, and it’s late. Time for me to go to sleep beside my love from howevermany miles away.