re: #106 Slumbering Behemoth

And just to build on that for the younger ladies…

If you ask your man “What are you thinking”, and he says “Nothing”, let it go. He’s telling you the truth.

For me, “nothing” was often a lie, though. There are some things that are interesting only to me, not worth sharing, and certainly not a jumping-off point for delightful after-dinner conversation. Such is the mind of the introvert.

BUT you’re not allowed to say that. You can’t go, “well I’m thinking about something that I do find myself thinking about from time to time, but rest assured: it’s of no consequence, it wouldn’t interest you in the least, and it most likely wouldn’t make sense to you anyway.” Because what she hears is, I HAVE A SECRET THOUGHT and IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS and YOU’RE TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND IT.

In fact, what you were really thinking about was an imaginary petri dish full of little tube-creatures that all begin wiggling in a rhythmic, somewhat synchronized manner when exposed to vibrating columns of air. Through means that defy verbalization, this image conjured up other images of a disco dance floor, with the mirror ball and coked-up John Travolta wannabees, demonstrating their plumage in hopes of enticing other coked-up disco denizens to go back to some terrible apartment with a fake zebra skin rug where awkward and ultimately depressing undulations might take place. This in turn made you think of chaos theory and consider the possibility that a single act of depravity in a medieval torture chamber could very well have been *the* catalyzing event that eventually led to the invention of disco.

You’re not allowed to say things like that, so you just say you were thinking about “nothing”.