I am becoming a conversationalist

I am on a plane. The plane is leaving from Dublin, it will fly to John F. Kennedy Airport. Seated next to me is a man in a grey suit. He is fifty, maybe sixty. Once we are in the air, he turns to me. His aftershave is strong enough to count as another garment. His razor has missed three white bristles beneath his left nostril. He asks, voice pill-thick:

“Do you fear death?”

I know I am in for an even longer flight than usual. Still, I have to reply. I steel myself to tumble down some rabbit hole of a conversation — or, more likely, Oxycontin hole. I brush my gaze over his unfocused eyes.

“Yes, I do.”

For a long time I talked to no one. This is not to say I never spoke. I was reticent, not mute.

If called on, I would speak. If addressed, I would as well. I would contribute to a conversation — rarely, briefly — if I believed I had something relevant to add. I didn’t have strong feelings about what I said, or what others said. I would speak in a low monotone. I have been accused of mumbling.

There weren’t any topics I enjoyed speaking about, even though I enjoyed the topics. Not American history. Not word problems. Not Spanish conjugation. Not Edgar Allan Poe. Not the food in front of me. Not girls’ breasts.

I was always compelled to speak, I never volunteered my opinions, not that I held many. I never asked other people questions. I never used more words than were needed. I had no confidants, only acquaintances. I spoke, but in my way, I was silent.

After nine years, I changed. For those nine years, I grew closer to no one. Beyond superficial details, even those I talked to every day were strangers.

A Conversation with Conrad

I board the crowded Connecticut-bound train on Good Friday holding a marbled cookie. I have gotten into the habit of buying a large cookie from the Zaro’s Bakery in Grand Central Terminal before each journey home. This habit started when I was visiting the city for job interviews. After a full day or full night, I was either exhausted, hungover, or both. I was always hungry. A cookie was the nearest cure. It was just enough to keep me going for a two and a half hour train ride. This became a ritual. I began to associate the comfort of the cookie with the feeling of triumphant failure one has when returning home by train.

I took the first spare seat. The man or boy sitting there had to move his things. I asked politely, he responded casually. I think he just said, “Sure, lemme get that out of your way,” but I don’t have a good memory for conversation.

I would later learn his name was Conrad. My cursory impression of him as I took my seat was that he was a hippyish student, or a backpacker. After taking my seat and picking off a piece of my underwhelming cookie, my impression changed. He did not have enough with him to be a backpacker, and his clothes seemed too neglected and old to even belong to the most Bohemian liberal arts student. He seemed addicted to something. He had the face of a debauched Boy Scout. His facial hair was sparse, his skin irritated. He was finishing an exchange with the passenger in front of him as I made myself comfortable. A minute passed.

“It’s my birthday. I can’t wait to get home and start drinking.”

I knew, from those first words, I could only let myself be sucked in. It was a sentence that squeaked like the spring of a trap.

“Oh, hey, happy birthday. You should have gotten a few from that cart on the platform.”

There was no point in being coy. Best to begin all at once. He was too anxious to share, I too unable to abide awkward silence. Maybe I would learn something. If I didn’t try, wouldn’t conversation only become more painful, more exhausting?

It was Conrad’s birthday. He was ready to get drunk.

“It was real nice though. My lady met me in the city. We had lunch. I had to go to the courthouse. That’s why I was in the city. It sucks waiting there for hours for nothing, I still have to come back. My license expired, so even though I had my birth certificate, I still have to go back to the DMV and get a new one. Then I have to come back.”

I ask him what he was doing at the courthouse.

“Oh, getting a copy of a marriage license. Me and my lady just got engaged.”

I congratulate him.

“Yeah, thanks man, it was real nice of her to come visit me. I had to leave at six this morning. She bought me lunch. I had a lobster roll. Damn, shit’s expensive in Manhattan. Lobster roll cost almost sixteen dollars. I don’t care though, it’s my birthday, and she owes me.”

I ask him about his future wife. She’s from Ukraine. I ask how they met.

“Well, you see, now don’t tell anyone, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but, you see, now, I trust you, but don’t tell anyone: We met online. It’s a green card marriage. We just have to be married for three years, then she can get one. She pays me $3,500 up front, then the same once we’re divorced. Still, I’m risking a lot. If I get caught I could have to pay $30,000. I’m putting myself out there for her. She could do a bit more, if you know what I mean.”

He laughs.

“She could at least help me out a bit. It’s not like, you know, I get that out of it — she sleeps somewhere else. I’m taking on a lot of risk. She’s been square with me, she’s good for the money, she’s cool. Still, I was unemployed for a year. If she would just let me take a few pictures of her, or a video, I mean that’s good money right there. It’s the least she could do, I’m taking on a lot of risk.”

I tell him I’m unemployed. He talks about being unemployed.

“You like video games? I like video games. My favorites? Definitely Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy XIII is the best one. While I wasn’t working, I played that game for over eighty hours. I got everything. It took me four hours to beat the final, secret boss. Before that I fought him for three and a half hours, but just as I was about to win, he got me. I had to start all over. Sometimes you just get real close, only to start over. I beat it, though. 100 percent. It was a major accomplishment.”

“I’ve got a good job now, though. I work for a wedding caterer, I’m a banquet server. I get shifts six days a week, $20 per hour plus tips. They like me too, because I’m a professional. I’ve got lots of customer service experience. I don’t steal stuff.”

“I’ve been accused. We were serving at this big fancy hotel. My table was a bunch of older guys. They left to smoke cigars, and when they came back, one guy couldn’t find his iPhone. He accused me of taking it. I said I’d be happy to stay right there if he wanted to call the cops. I had nothing to hide, they can go ahead and search me. That calmed him down. He was using a mobile locate app on his friend’s phone. He knew it was somewhere in the building. We got the security guy in, and he found it in some other girl’s locker. The guy apologized, too.”

“I believe in karma, though. The next night, I got a $100 tip. Some people would just hold onto that. Not me, though. After, I told one of the guys I was working with, ‘Hey, that guy just left $100. I’m going to share it with everyone else working. We’ll each get $20.’ He was so surprised. ‘Damn, I’d never do that,’ he said, ‘but since you just did, when I get a tip, I’m going to share it with you.’ It makes a difference, just being open about things. Good comes to you.”

“Now if it’s a shitty job, then I will steal. When I worked at Walmart, I was in the electronics section. When you’re a manager, you go through all the inventory when it comes in, and record what goes out. No one checks, as long as someone signs for you, you can get away with it. I was leaving with $800 of games in my backpack every night. Probably stole like $20,000 worth, eventually. I was doing the same for another girl, but she got caught and we both got fired.”

I asked him about his other jobs.

“I worked at Dunkin’. I made the best coffees. You know how to make the perfect sweet and light coffee? You make it with one-sixth whole milk, one-sixth cream, and six sugars. No one puts enough sugars in it, they just do one or two. You have to do six. I had people coming in to that Dunkin’ Donuts just so I could make them a sweet and light. You know how to make an Almond Joy coffee? Like, the candy. Two pumps of mocha, one pump of coconut, one pump of almond. I gave that to a guy once, and he shouted, “That tastes just like a motherfucking Almond Joy. I can’t believe it. You made an Almond Joy!” You can make a tropical punch Coolatta too. You mix together all the flavors, and it tastes like tropical punch.”

“My manager there was a real bitch. She suspended me, said I was stealing because I gave free coffees to cops and took money out of the register to give to the homeless guy out front. She made it so I couldn’t work for two months while she tried to get me fired, so that I wouldn’t get unemployment. Then she had to bring me back, because she needed somebody over the holidays. Then she did the same thing again. I was going to have some sketchy Dominican guys I know rob the place, because I knew where all the money was and how it worked. Then, she slips on some and ice and breaks her wrist. Then, she gets fired by corporate for stealing. She was the guilty one. All my charges got dropped, and I got my unemployment. Now that is karma.”

I ask him about other jobs he’s had.

“I started working retail because I had to quit my job as a vet’s assistant. I couldn’t hack it. I love animals, all animals. But when you’re a vet’s assistant, most of your job is holding animals as they die.”

“See these scars, between my knuckles? That’s from a cat. Biggest tabby I’ve ever seen. Some half-wild stray. It took three big guys to bring this cat to the table. I’ve got its head and paws locked up, like you’re supposed to. The vet grabs the injection, and the cat knows. It’s so strong, it manages to get a bit free and bite my hand, putting its claws right through my arm. I keep hold on it, though. It takes three injections and forty minutes before it goes down. We had to break its jaw to get it to let go of my hand. Afterwards, we had to dip my arm in iodine. You ever put Bactine on a cut? Hurts, right? Well iodine is ten times worse. And they had to do it up my whole arm.”

“That wasn’t what made me quit, though. No. You see, when I was a kid, I had this dog. She came with me to my first foster home. She was a golden retriever, her name was Lady. Lady got cancer, and while I was at school, my foster parents put her down. That dog was my friend. When I got home that day, she wasn’t there.”

“So they bring this dog in off the back of a pickup truck. It takes three guys to carry her. She weighs over 200 pounds, her body is so full of tumors. She’s a golden retriever, like Lady. I held that dog in my arms as it died. It was like losing my dog a second time. I got home, and then I laid down on the railroad tracks, waiting to hear that whistle in the distance.”

“The next I called in and told them I wasn’t coming back.”

It turns out this vet’s office was only a short drive from my home. We’d taken our dog there. I knew the tracks he had lain on. They ran behind my home as well.

When he got off at his stop, he shook my hand, and we introduced ourselves. When I stood up to let him out into the aisle, I noticed a smear of sweat on my seat. My back and legs were soaked, as if I’d traveled a great distance.

The Rest of the Conversation on the Plane

It was as strange as one might imagine, though more anticlimactic. I told him I feared death. He told me he did as well. He told me I shouldn’t, because I was young, and that should come later. I told him I couldn’t help it, I had grown accustomed to living. In what quickly became a pattern, he looked out the window, looked looked back at me, smacked his lips, and began a completely new conversation.

“Do you believe in God?”

“Have you made love to a woman?”

“How old are you?”

“Are you happy?”

“When will we land?”

I do not recall my answers, sadly. I think that if he had formulated a coherent reply to any of them, perhaps I would remember them better. He told me he had been raised Catholic. That all women want to be married, whether they say so or not. That when he was my age, he’d had a lot of women. That he’d received oral sex from a woman in Ireland and, I quote, “The stuff wouldn’t stop coming out.” That he feared death. That he wasn’t sure he believed in God. That I was a good man. He mumbled a great deal, and flirted with the flight attendants (with some success, amazingly). After the drink trolley came around, he offered to buy me a beer, then quickly became suspicious that I was underage (I wasn’t). Then he passed out for the remainder of the flight, and awoke upon landing without any memory of his previous four conscious hours.

Conversation does not come easily to me. It always takes from me, as if it was a physical labor. I don’t normally seek it out, though it does sometimes find me. Now, I am paid to do it. Or, at least, it is one of the things I am paid to do. I talk to people on the phone from near and far. I write down what they say. At its best it feels like a game. I become an actor. I act chatty and affable. I make little parcels of words, then see how they unwrap them. It does not come naturally, and it took practice, but I believe I do it well enough to merit being paid for it. Talking to strangers in public, however, still poses difficulties.

The trick is to immediately build a bridge between oneself and one’s counterpart. On the phone, in a professional capacity, this is easier. All you need is a good command of clichés. Before I knew more about conversation, I worried my conversation was boring. I still do, but I have since learned that much of the best conversation is boring. Or, perhaps a better word is “commonplace”. Asking about the weather has been a cliché since there were words and weather for a reason. It is not the most scintillating conversation, but it is a necessary warm up exercise. Despite what we are taught by surprise-hit comedies about preciously precocious individuals, making unsolicited, unusual and unexpected conversation with strangers is only a great way to get a lot of people to ignore you. The old saws work because they are easy, they begin the “we are interacting socially” process without requiring any effort. They are the fuel whose combustion launches a conversation towards more interesting places. They give your counterpart just enough of a window into your life so they can remember that you are human, too.

To be a true conversationalist, you have to become a selfless voyeur. You are not engaging in a lively debate, it is not your job to tell the other person every detail of your life or thought you’ve had on a topic. You are there to hear about them. You should only contribute as much as is needed to sustain rapport and interest from the other party. You shouldn’t have to say more than a sentence or two. The rest of your time is spent listening. The sweet sound of your own voice has to become grating to your ears.

The hardest part of conversation is forming that initial connection. We, human beings on planet earth, hate silences. We try to fill them wherever we find them. But without that first connection, there is no conversation, only statements made in close proximity to one another. A human connection is the only thing that gives form to a conversation.

Your opening gambit will inevitably fail with some strangers. Most don’t like to talk with people they don’t know. It’s instinct; the human race has prospered and flourished on a hearty foundation of suspicion and fear. Trying and failing to form a connection, watching an interaction decay into awkwardness — shuffling feet, strained silence — is an unbearable outcome and a strong deterrent. It makes one feel guilty, uninteresting, unwanted and unwantable. I hate it.

However, it’s the only way into other people’s lives. Most of us will naturally accumulate a web of acquaintances through our circumstances. Work, hobbies, friends-of-friends. These people will always be easier to talk to than strangers. We trust them more, they are “our people”. But they are limited. We know them because they have — in one or many ways — a life like ours. To speak with strangers, to make fewer strangers, is an unnatural and noble pursuit. I find anyone who does so to be deeply admirable. I will continue to try to follow their example. It is the only way to be reminded that, despite the ticket we’ve received and the small, cramped car we’re stuck in, the tracks beneath us pass by every house that has been and ever will be, and that we’re all getting off at the same stop.