Red-pilled Blues

Chronicle of a mid-week dog walk

I’m cracking up, rewatching this Andrew Schulz video, slouched on the sofa with my laptop and coffee:

Mr. Miller hears me from the guest room, where he works from home. He pipes, “You okay?” Then, “Get a room.” So I text him the link, adding, share the joy.

A little later on the dog walk I ask, “Are you going to watch the clip I sent?”

“Probably not,” he says.

“Why not?”

“Because I can already tell I won’t think it’s funny.”

“Why?”

“Because of the caption.”

“Wouldn’t you want to know if you’re right though?”

He sighs, intimating that I am wearing him out. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Well what do you think it’s going to be?”

“A fake trans man or something.”

“It’s a real couple.”

“Oh okay.”

“You’re so prejudiced,” I say.

“You’re prejudiced,” he says.

“We’re talking about you.”

A few sidewalk squares later he looks at me.

I glare at him.

“What,” he says.

“It makes me so angry,” I say. “You dismiss everything I say.”

“I absolutely do not,” he says.

“Not everything, but a lot of things.”

“That’s not true at all. And that’s a grand sweeping pronouncement.”

“When it comes to politics,” I say.

He keeps denying it.

I say, “Well, let me make it more specific. You rarely, if ever, entertain any source I offer when it comes to politics.”

He nods, caught by the truth.

“This is a comedy clip.”

“You’re right.”

“It’s so insulting. I’m your wife. You wouldn’t do this if we were friends.”

“It’s true. I immediately…”

“Immediately what?”

“Bristle.”

It’s satisfying to hear this. It’s a good word. But I drill further. “You said two years ago you’d examine this reaction and nothing has changed. The result is the same.”

He denies it. Says he’s drastically changed. Yet we keep ending up here, where I am dismissed because of my inconvenient perspective and he acts as if we haven’t been married since the dawn of time, as if I’m some deluded rube who deserves nothing more than pity and a sneer. It makes me think about that clip of Jordan Peterson warning that men who continually put their wives down will eventually live to regret it, because they will unwittingly reap what they sow. That makes me wonder what will become of us when Miss Miller leaves us alone with each other in the fall, for the first time in twenty years.

“It’s a beautiful day,” I say a minute later. “Do you want to go around the block?”

“If you still want to be around me,” he says.

Ugh, the fucking violins, I think. “I’m game,” I say and we turn the corner.

The rest of our walk is mostly silent. When finally I ask him if he’s not talking because of our argument he says he’s stressed about work, not sleeping well, and won’t be good company for a while. Deflection. But maybe that’s better than the last time we fought during a sunny walk and I’d asked after a silent spell what he was thinking. “I’m thinking I just shouldn’t open my mouth,” he’d said.

It’s never completely gone, the animosity we have for each other, now that I’ve left the left. But if anyone has a chance of surviving this I think it’s us. We have a lot of good years behind us. And on so many other levels we share a mutual respect and admiration. I admire his stability, the way he prioritizes family, works at a job he doesn’t love in order to provide. He’s an excellent musician, clever and witty, cooks most nights and he takes care of me when I fall into a funk. He’s dependable, confident, unpretentious and handsome.

But, as it invariably does, politics sneaks into the conversation, and the bond between us frays and splits, twine pulled so tight it will surely snap. All because I got red-pilled.

What will it take to heal this divide?

❤️💙