After parting from Hunter Matthews, Bryce checked his watch. It was 6:16. He was supposed to have Damon’s latest delight for dinner, then meet Marc Rimbault at the fraternity house for a serious discussion, although he did not know what the discussion would be about. He’d never make it. There was just not time. And, considering how much his culinary efforts meant to Damon, he was not about to disappoint his partner by refusing his offering or rushing through the meal. With this in mind, Bryce punched in Marc’s cell number as he walked rapidly from campus to the apartment.
“Hello, Bryce,” Marc’s voice greeted him. His caller identification was obviously working.
“Hi. Listen, I’ve got a problem. I running behind, and I don’t see how I can make it by seven. I really am not trying to put you off, but ....”
At that point Bryce stopped, because Marc was laughing so heartily on the other end. He was not sure he had ever heard Marc laugh before, and it sounded good, but confusing.
“What’s so funny?” Bryce asked.
“Here, let the master planner tell you,” Marc replied.
Then, to Bryce’s great surprise, Damon’s voice came over the instrument. “Get your sorry ass over here. I have concocted a feast fit for a king, and we’re waiting for you, but we won’t wait long. If you’re more than 15 minutes more, it may all be gone when you get here.”
With that, Damon signed off and the phone went silent. Shaking his head, and wondering what his partner had been up to, Bryce increased the tempo of his walking. He was already nearly half way there, so there was no question about him making it in less than 15 minutes. Reaching the Caldwell House, Bryce let himself in the side door and bounded up the stairs. Sure enough, as he burst into the apartment, there was Marc helping Damon set things on the table.
“What’s going on?” Bryce panted, winded from his haste in taking the stairs.
“Sounds like somebody’s hungry,” Marc commented.
Damon less politely said, “I thought I heard an elephant on the stairs.”
“What’s going on?” Bryce repeated.
“Dinner, in just a few minutes. Now get yourself in the bathroom and wash your hands,” Damon imperiously commanded.
“Yes, Mom,” Bryce gave in, and departed the kitchen, dropping his book bag in the library on the way to the bathroom, where he dutifully washed his hands before returning to the kitchen, led by the inviting smell of Damon’s offering for the evening.
Damon had actually prepared a pot roast with all the trimmings, including new potatoes, green beans, and carrots. To accompany this repast, a bottle of Bordeaux was breathing on the table. It was quite a feast, and Damon was justly proud of his accomplishment.
“Damon, that looks and smells wonderful,” Bryce complimented him, as they sat down and took the first bite.
Damon puffed up a bit at the praise. “I did it all myself. Of course, in the service of truth, I must admit I had Caroline on the phone a few times.”
“And how is it that I find Marc here?” Bryce enquired.
“Oh, I just noticed that I had prepared more than enough, so I pulled his number out of a hat and invited him to join us,” Damon replied, as Marc laughed at the banter between the two. “Seriously, though, once I thought about it, I realized you could never meet Hunter at six and then meet Marc at seven and still appreciate what I had in mind preparing for dinner, so I called and invited him. And you can forget the Sigma Alpha Tau house. I promise not to drop any eaves while you two are talking in the library after dinner.”
“I just thought ... I didn’t want ... Well ...,” Bryce tried, but then just gave up. “You’re wonderful,” he said, and kissed Damon.
“You have a nice place here,” Marc complimented them over dinner.
Bryce replied, “Yeah, we were really fortunate. Back in August, after we decided to look for a place off campus, we were just about to give up when Dr. Dickinson recommended this place. Seems he and the owner, Dr. Caldwell, are friends from the days when Dr. Caldwell was a member of the History Department.”
“Oh, so Annette had nothing to do with you being here?” Marc asked.
“No. I didn’t know she was here until one day shortly after we moved in I encountered her and Ken on the stairs,” Bryce informed him.
Marc laughed. “I’ll get my sister next time I see her. She’s been claiming she was responsible for you and Damon getting this place.”
“If she had anything to do with it, that’s news to me,” Bryce assured him.
The delightful meal over, and everything cleared away or washed up, Damon settled in front of the television set and ostentatiously ignored the library. Bryce led the way into that room, and offered his guest a Bourbon, fixing one for himself. Settling down for a discussion, he opened. “By the way, it’s nice to hear you laugh. When you laughed over the phone earlier, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh. I hope Damon’s dinner had something to do with that.”
“The dinner was part of it, but basically it’s Damon. You are so lucky to have a partner like him,” Marc replied, “and, I guess, this touches on what I wanted to talk about.”
“Believe me, I am aware of my good fortune in having linked up with Damon. I thank God every day for him,” Bryce said with great sincerity.
Marc looked conflicted. “That, too. But can we leave God out of it for now. I’m not ready for that just yet.”
Bryce put on an act. “What! Me leave God out! Impossible! You know I’m some kind of Jesus freak, don’t you?”
Marc just looked at him with his mouth hanging open for a good two minutes, then he burst out laughing. “Okay, you got me. I admit that’s the way I thought of you for a while. But you keep surprising me. I don’t understand you. And right now I envy you.”
“Damon ... “Bryce began.
“Yes, Damon, but I had something else in mind when I said that,” Marc interrupted. “I don’t think I can make fun of myself like that.”
Bryce blushed at the compliment. “I find it’s a way to keep myself from becoming the caricature I could be,” he confessed. “It helps keep me in touch with reality.”
“Okay, that’s a good introduction to what I want to talk about,” Marc got back to his reason for the meeting. “You talk about keeping in touch with reality. How do you know what’s real? I thought I knew. I thought I had everything figured out. I was being entirely rational, and the world looked like a can of worms, and everyone was either out for himself or else a damn fool. But it doesn’t compute. Some things just don’t fit into that picture, and you’re one of them. That’s what I want to talk about.”
Bryce paused before responding. “I’m not sure how to answer that, Marc. Let me at least begin by saying, despite the attitude I may sometimes project, I do not think I have all the answers. Reality is a hard nut to crack. I think I have at least a glimmering of reality, and that includes God, but I’ll try not to let him intrude if you insist. But you leave me entirely unprepared as to how to even begin a conversation. Why not you start, since you asked for the meeting?”
“Okay. Let’s try a few things. Do you remember last spring, when we were discussing the Marquis de Sade in French class?” Marc probed.
“Yeah. As I recall, you claimed some kinship with at least part of his outlook,” Bryce recalled. “Something about self-fulfillment and pleasure being the criterion for reality, wasn’t it?”
“Not quite, but that’s a good place to start. As I think I told you then, I gave up believing in anything back in high school. I accepted only what I could see and feel and experience for myself. And sex was a big part of that. That was something real, something I could enjoy, something I could actually feel,” Marc proclaimed. Then he kind of backed off. “But it still left me unfulfilled.”
“Do you have a partner? Someone like Damon?” Bryce asked.
“No. I’ve had many partners, in the sense of someone with whom I’ve had sex, but no one over any period of time. No one I actually wanted to live with,” Marc said. “I guess I never found anyone with whom I could get along when we weren’t having sex. Some of the sex was great, but there are other times ....” He drifted off.
“So,” Bryce suggested, “maybe sex, or the pleasure of sex, is not all of reality.”
“No. I’m sure now it’s not. Like I said, I’ve had plenty of sex, and it leaves me unfulfilled. There’s that other part of what we talked about, the self-fulfillment part, and I can’t seem to get a hook on that,” Marc wondered.
“You’re not the first person to find that all the promises of the glittering world still leave you dissatisfied,” Bryce commented. “It’s almost a cliché. It’s almost like some kind of con game. What you get is never quite what you expected.”
“I’ve noticed that more and more,” Marc agreed. “But I’m not ready to fall on my knees and start praying. That wouldn’t be real either.”
“No. I don’t think that’s what you need right now. I know there’s an old saying, ‘fake it until you make it,’ but I don’t think that applies in your case, anyway,” Bryce went along with his guest.
“I thought I was being rational. I thought that was the only way to achieve that self-fulfillment I was looking for. But it hasn’t worked. Your comment about laughing is very much on the mark. I have not been very happy with my rationalizations of late. And you keep surprising me by appealing to reason when I expect an appeal to religion, and that only confuses me more. So, let me ask you a question. Are you a rationalist or a believer, Bryce?”
“I cannot answer that question, Marc. That’s like the old conundrum, ‘have you stopped beating your wife?’ You’re assuming that it has to be one or the other, and I don’t accept that.”
Marc actually looked pained. “That was my experience, Bryce. When I was in high school, and tried to figure out things rationally, I kept being told to just accept it. There were some things I just could not accept. There was stark reality there which kept running smack dab into the beliefs they wanted me to just accept. One of those things was my sexual orientation.”
“I’m sorry you had such a negative experience. I guess mine was not as severe or something, although there were some bad moments back there, especially junior year,” Bryce admitted.
“So, tell me, how can you claim to be rational and still accept ... no, I won’t say what was on the tip of my tongue. I don’t want to tick you off. At least, not before hearing what you have to say,” Marc backed off.
Bryce look serious. He was faced with someone in pain. Not so much physical pain as mental pain. Pain caused by confusion and conflict and uncertainty. No wonder Marc seldom laughed. He knew he had to go slow in order not to alienate Marc before he had a chance to make his point.
“I do rely on reason, Marc. I have been fascinated by the process of reasoning ever since I had a course on logic in my sophomore year in high school. As it happened, or maybe it was designed that way, I’m not sure, anyway, I had geometry at the same time. They are two sides of the same thing, Marc,” Bryce cautiously began.
“A course on logic? No, I don’t remember anything along those lines,” Marc responded. “And geometry? I sort of remember having to memorize a lot of things about parallel lines and parabolas and the like.”
“As I recall, there are a lot of things we might call starting points, but I don’t recall just memorizing,” Bryce recalled his own experiences. “We had some fun with some of those rules of logic, especially logical fallacies.”
“Logical fallacies?” Marc asked.
“Yeah. Things like the undistributed middle. We had a teacher who had quite a belly on him, so that the constant reference to an undistributed middle in my class. And there’s the argumentum ad hominum,” Bryce continued.
“Whoa! You’re getting into Latin phrases which I don’t understand, and, frankly, that evokes bad vibes. That’s what the brothers did in school whenever I had questions. The answer was always something in Latin,” Marc objected.
“Sorry. Personally, I love Latin, but if it causes problems, I can put it aside. The phrase I used just means the logically fallacy of thinking you have refuted an argument when you have attacked the person making it,” Bryce explained. “Just because John Doe is an idiot doesn’t mean everything he says is idiocy. It’s necessary to separate the argument from the person making it. And just because you can find dirt on someone, does not mean what he says is necessarily wrong.”
“I sure ran into that often enough. To use your example, ‘John Doe is a sinner, therefore nothing he says can be valid,’” Marc mused.
“I don’t know who said things like that to you, Marc, but that’s bad logic no matter who says it. And there’s another very popular fallacy. I’ll skip the Latin tag, but essentially it’s taking things to an extreme. Mother’s are particularly fond of that one. ‘What if everyone did it?’ Just because the extreme is impossible does not mean the moderate application is false. Kind of like, just because getting puking drunk can lead to all kinds of disasters, from a splitting headache to vehicular homicide, does not mean there’s anything wrong with that wine Damon conjured up for dinner,” Bryce went on.
Marc actually smiled. “Okay, drop it on me. What’s that in Latin?”
Bryce grinned. “Argumentum ad absurdum,” he produced.
“These little tricks are interesting, but do they really help when it comes to finding that reality we started talking about?” Marc jerked them back to the purpose of his visit.
“I think they do, but they’re not magic, producing automatic results every time,” Bryce replied.
“Explain,” Marc demanded.
“I made the connection between logic and geometry before. Logic is the tool of reason. In both cases, we are dealing with a process, at least if it’s done properly. We avoid the fallacies, and end up with a result. Major premise, minor premise, conclusion. A perfect syllogism. Example: All mammals breathe oxygen, I am a mammal, therefore I breathe oxygen.”
“That sounds fine, but not everything is that simple,” Marc protested.
“True. That was a simple example. There are examples of fallacies as well. Example: Horses breathe oxygen, I breathe oxygen, therefore I am a horse. Undistributed middle,” Bryce proclaimed.
“Or maybe horse’s ass,” Marc could not help but stick in.
Bryce grinned. “If I accept an argument like that, no doubt. Of course, as you say, these are very simple examples, and you can see right away that something is right or wrong. Dealing with serious problems involves much more complex reasoning, but you have to start with the basics, with correct logic.”
“But people who seem to be logical, or reasonable, keep coming up with conflicting answers,” Marc objected. “Isn’t that the basis for this philosophy which says there are no objectively right answers, just answers that are right for me?”
“I suppose,” Bryce conceded. “But there are a few additional things to keep in mind. Logic, like geometry, is a process, not a conclusion. Even if you avoid all the logical fallacies, there are still those assumptions at the beginning, the major and minor premises. In geometry, they’re called axioms. They’re the things you begin with, and don’t think you have to prove because they’re so obvious. But, if your assumptions, your axioms, are false, no matter how good your logic, you will still end up with a false conclusion. Example: All Orientals are sly and untrustworthy, John is an Oriental, therefore John is sly and untrustworthy. There is nothing wrong with the logic in that syllogism, but the major premise is obviously not acceptable. I use this simple example, like the earlier ones, just to show how this works, but in real life the assumptions are usually more subtle. They sneak up on you, rather than hit you in the face like my example.”
“So, what do we do about our axioms?” Marc questioned.
“We keep checking against experience,” Bryce replied. “To take my example, if we find that there are Orientals who are not sly and untrustworthy, then we know that the major premise is false, and therefore the whole argument collapses. Let’s consider something you raised earlier. Self-fulfillment. The popular media pound into us that self-fulfillment is achieved by fucking as many partners as possible, and acquiring as much stuff as possible. Does that jive with experience?”
“Not with my experience,” Marc ruefully admitted. “I’ve had my share of sexual encounters, and, while we’re not filthy rich, my family is pretty well off. I never was denied any reasonable request as I was growing up. I had all the latest gadgets, and all the latest labels on my clothing. And I won’t deny that I had some good times, and some good sex ...”
Bryce laughed. “No one is going to deny that sex is pleasurable. The only people I’ve ever encountered who tried were nuns and priests, who presumably were not basing their statements on experience. No, wait. There was a girl I knew who was raped. She said she would never have sex again. But I don’t think that’s a valid experience of sex. Rape is not about sex, it’s about power and control. But, back to the point, you agree that sex by itself does not bring that satisfaction you’re looking for, that fulfillment?”
“Yes, I agree. I have no intention of giving up sex,” Marc said with a grin, “but I no longer expect it to bring that total fulfillment I once thought would come if I only got enough sex, or got the technique right, or found the right partner.”
“Finding the right partner might be a start,” Bryce considered.
“By ‘finding the right partner’ what I had in mind was someone who could give me a new thrill. Someone who could show me a different kind of sexual experience,” Marc elucidated.
“No. That won’t do,” Bryce agreed. “By ‘finding the right partner’ I had in mind someone with whom you could relate on many levels, and someone about whom you cared, and who cared for you, even apart from the sex.”
“Big difference,” Marc noted. “And, just to complete your argument for you, all the gadgets and all the designer clothing is fine, but they don’t bring that satisfaction, that fulfillment, either.”
“I keep coming back to Damon,” Bryce said. “Like you, I had a pretty cushy beginning, but he did not. I think the only gadgets he owns are one’s I’ve given him, and the only designer clothing he has are also gifts from me, but there is a strong personality, with confidence in himself, which comes through entirely independently of any of that stuff, and was there before we ever met.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Marc mused. “It’s not the stuff, but what you bring to it, or how you use it. Kind of like your example with the drunk versus the dinner wine. It’s what you do with it.”
“Exactly.” Bryce went on, “We agreed to leave God out of this, but we did involve the Greeks ...”
“We did?”
“Sure. Logic. The first person to lay out the rules of logic was Aristotle. Not that no one thought before him, but he thought about thinking, and discovered those rule or guidelines, and those fallacies to be avoided,” Bryce informed his guest. “Anyway, one guideline which was very important to the Greeks, and especially to Aristotle, was moderation in all things. Aristotle called it the golden mean. It’s also called balance. My point, and I think yours as well, is that there’s nothing wrong with electronic gadgets, as long as you don’t let them dominate your life and take the place of real relationships with people in the flesh. And there’s nothing wrong with designer clothing, as long as you don’t think having them makes you superior to someone who doesn’t. Moderation. Or, to torment you with some more Latin, via media - the middle way.”
“So, you’re saying that we need to check our assumptions against experience, and one criterion in that process is avoiding extremes,” Marc summed up.
“Exactly,” Bryce agreed. “And, to bring it down to a very personal example to which you alluded earlier, let’s consider the case of homosexual behavior. In the past, from as far back as records go, it was assumed in Western thought that all persons were naturally heterosexual. Just seemed obvious. If that’s true, then the conclusion that homosexual activity is unnatural is clearly valid. However, I think there are more than sufficient reasons to question that major premise. It was tested against experience with the testimony of self-identified homosexuals, and it was tested against experience by biologists and psychologists, who simply did not find it valid. Hence, the conclusion that homosexual activity is unnatural is not rational, not logically sound.”
“But your bishops ...” Marc began.
Bryce interrupted, “You insisted at the beginning that we leave God out of our discussion. To me, that also means leaving out religion. I will not defend the position of the bishops, as I think it’s clearly illogical, but I don’t want to get into that at this time, if you don’t mind.”
Marc hesitated, took a breath, then nodded. “Okay. Valid point. I did ask that we leave God out of the discussion. This time. Maybe there can be other discussions.”
“I’d like that, Marc. There is no way we can touch on everything in one evening, and I, at least, need some time to let things settle before going on to the next step. I especially like the idea of more meetings if we can get Damon to provide the sustenance,” Bryce added.
“Yes, that was definitely a great help. Not only did the meal itself hit the spot, but Damon is a real delight. I’m glad I had the opportunity to get to know him better,” Marc said.
“The more I think about it, the more I am impressed with my partner,” Bryce declared. “He had a really rough beginning.”
“Like I said, you are one lucky bastard,” Marc proclaimed.
“Luck had nothing to do with it. I simply chose the right partner,” Bryce declared.
Marc looked at him questioningly. There was that arrogance he had detected in some earlier encounters. Then he noticed that Bryce’s lips were quivering, and his eyes lacked any sign of arrogance. “Is this like you proclaiming yourself a Jesus freak?” he asked.
Bryce laughed. “Congratulations. Got it first time. Now, if I may quote Jesus, ‘go and do likewise.’”
“You’re telling me I need to be able to laugh at myself, aren’t you?” Marc deduced.
“Got it again. You’re getting good at this. I predict that when you reach the point when you can laugh at yourself, you will find some of that fulfillment you’re looking for,” Bryce told his friend. For, after this discussion, he did think of Marc as a friend.
“That’s all I can absorb in one sitting,” Marc decided.
“Then, let’s join Damon, and see what he’s been doing to cause those little pings I hear in the background,” Bryce suggested.
“I’m pretty good at video games,” Marc declared.
“Then you challenge Damon. I’m lousy, and he gave up on me a long time ago,” Bryce admitted.
So, companionship, mutual interest, assisted by some Bourbon, resulted in a pleasant end to the evening.