Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

Which was partly true. “I mean, not about her being investigated— I can deal with that. About having to reassess my relationship with her.”
    “You know what? I get the feeling it’s not that simple.”
    “That’s not complicated enough?”
    “I’ve been thinking about our conversation Friday. I realize a lot of your beliefs are being called into question.”
    “My beliefs? Wait a minute, Chris is—”
    He held up a hand. “Hold it, hold it. Let me explain. You think everything can be explained in rational terms, right?”
    I was puzzled. “Of course.”
    “And this thing of Chris’s— I mean, having the nerve to be psychic when everybody knows there’s no such thing— it just can’t be explained that way. So to believe it, you have to uproot everything you ever thought.”
    “No, I don’t. Psychic could be scientific. I mean, what if our brains emit waves, like radio waves…”
    “Sure, sure, sure. It
could
be science, but science doesn’t recognize it. And nothing in this culture’s worth a dime if science doesn’t recognize it.”
    “Well, you’re a scientist. What’s wrong with that?”
    “What’s wrong with that is it’s bullshit.”
    The room spun around me, exactly as if I was about to lose consciousness. If Chris’s defection from the world of reason had been a blow, what was this?
    Et tu, Julio? Tell me I’m not alone out here.
    He said, “Have you ever met someone and disliked him or her on sight? Even down to a prickling at the back of your neck?”
    “You think that’s psychic?”
    “I think you’re taking in information in a nonrational way. Call it vibes or energy.…”
    I mimed gagging.
    “Oh, don’t be so closed-minded.” Which was more or less what Chris had said. “What’s so great about the intellect, anyway?”
    “What?” Had he gone mad? Had the world?
    “I mean, what’s it done for us? It hasn’t kept us from making a hole in the ozone; turning the air to poison; destroying the rain forests.”
    I might have said something about antibiotics and plumbing, but I was too astonished.
    I said, “What would you put above the intellect?”
    “Nothing. But there are sure as hell some things I’d give equal weight to. The heart, for instance— how we feel.”
    That part made me go weak in the knees— Rob Burns would never have said a thing like that.
    “And the body. In a lot of ways it knows as much as the mind. The intuition— that’s what Chris is using. Why has it lost caché in this culture? Why isn’t it important?”
    “Because it’s not reliable, and you know it.”
    “Oh, come on. Modern medicine is ‘scientific,’ right? Certainly rational. Remember how it used to be healthy to eat steak, and now it’ll kill you? They used to bleed you and use leeches on you, and then all that stuff was primitive, and now they’re doing it again. You want reliable, don’t depend on science.”
    “Julio, this is crazy! You sound like somebody who lives in Berkeley.”
    “Well, I’m somebody who spends a lot of my time underwater, and let me tell you, it’ll make a believer out of you, Babe.”
    “A believer in what? God? Is that what you’re saying?”
    “Not the bearded dude on the mountain. I mean, I guess I’m a Catholic, I don’t even know. But not that. Something else. Something primal. Something about nature itself.”
    “Nature? ” I don’t know why I was so surprised— I was talking to a man whose career was fish. “Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it, Julio. You’re not from Berkeley, you’re straight out of Robert Bly. Next you’re going to tell me you came to this realization by painting your face and beating a drum out in the woods.”
    He gave me a smile that could have made him a zillion dollars in Hollywood. “What’s wrong with that?”
    “What’s wrong with that? It’s stupid, that’s what’s wrong with it.”
    “What’s stupid about it?”
    “Stupid people do it. Airheads.”
    “You mean people who don’t think ‘rational’ is synonymous with pure and decent.”
    “Like I said, stupid people.” I think I should say here that there was an element of joking in this— I was getting punchy by this time— but there was also a big part of me that truly believed this, and Julio knew it. “Well, that’s me, then.”
    “Oh, come on.”
    “I mean it.”
    “Are you telling me you’d go on a men’s weekend? That I’d like to see.” (Actually, I would have liked to see him naked except for a few