I Have Nothing to Say / and I Am Saying It

Winner of the 2019 Prairie Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest, selected by judge Melissa Febos

(Runners-up: Jeremy Faro, "Placelessness," and Sarah Rosenblum, "How to Be")

I, II, III: How It Begins

Avant-garde composer and music theorist John Cage was obsessed with the idea of silence, says the classical pianist I met on Tinder.

"He wrote '4:33' to illustrate how it doesn't exist," she texts me one night, after sending me a comic called Hands According to Composers. Chopin's hands are whisks. Beethoven's are hammers. Rachmaninoff's are octopus tentacles. Debussy's are feathers. Cage's are not there.

"Like, even when you're in a concert hall with an audience, there's always rustling or background noise," she explains. "'4:33' is four and a half minutes of the performer sitting at a piano on stage, not playing anything."

Usually, our texting adheres to a strict formula: Wait several hours, then fire off a dozen that are so long our phones convert them to multimedia messages. Queer online dating is all "What's your dog's name?" and "What's your sign?" but she asks me questions like "What song were you playing when you quit piano?" and "What are you over-listening to these days?" and "What do you think of the electronic version of 'Both Hands' or actually I guess covers in general?"—questions with infinite answers, questions that threaten to reveal everything about everything.

"'Obsessed with silence' sounds very sinister," I reply, but I watch a video of "4:33" on YouTube, and I wish I could take it back.

Q: How does it begin? Q: How does it end? Q: What does it mean?

A: When the leader of theempathy workshop asks us topair up, I turn to the classicalpianist and ask in a whisper:"Do you want to be mypartner?"

        Without fully turning herhead, she meets my eyes withjust the corners of hers andresponds, through a slantedsmile, "Yeah, I do."

        It could be her jauntyexpression, that oblong breed ofeye contact, it could the resonantalto of her voice dropped lower,quieter, the weary button-up shelikes because it makes her feellike Bob Dylan, or it could bethe implication of a secret,something exchanged that noone else notices. Or it couldsimply be how close I'vebrought my face to hers in orderto ask my question audibly,simply the nerves, the mutedcandlelight, the bread and thecheese and the dried, crumpledfruit in place of a full meal.

        Whatever it is, myweight, propped back on bothmy arms, decides to shift whenmy right hand decides to reachfor the side of her face I can'tsee, take gentle hold of thenaked plane behind her ear, turnher head on its axis so that mymouth can catch her half smile,suspend us both in a temporarycapture.

        We didn't know eachother yet when we shaved our heads the same exact week:sometime during the suffocatingmiddle of June, each day oozinginto the next, repulsive andstagnant like the stink of thedumpster the day before thegarbage truck is due. We did itafter Ani played the Pageant butbefore Pride roped off the Groveto launch glow wands fromroofs and make cotton-candyfoam out of the concrete. We didit with battery-powered beardtrimmers on the bathroom floor.We did it alone, in a moment ofrage, one we buried beneath thesame breezy lie, after: "Oh,yeah—it was just so hot."

        It's been years since Iheard myself talk so much. It'sbeen years since I was emptiedout by eye contact, since a kisswas rooted in something realerthan a vodka soda, but oneeventuality is not moremeaningful than another simplybecause it is less likely tohappen. Things happenconstantly, and most of themdon't mean anything at all.

        What I mean is...