I picked him at random from a line of men outside the airport.

His eyes were clear. His brow didn’t protrude past his cheekbones. Having never accepted a ride from a stranger, I trusted my intuition to select the man who seemed least likely to bury me near a developing suburb. The bearish man put my suitcase in the trunk. He introduced himself as John. I told him my name. Our abbreviated life histories would come out during the ride on a wet Tuesday night in Dallas. It’s not unusual for a chauffer to get chatty with a business traveler in his back seat.

As we drove east through the dark along Highway 114, I asked him for his story. He was a Dallas native who started his own limo service because he wanted to work for himself and because he was interested in people. Then he asked what I was doing in town. I told him in an abstract. I’d been unemployed six months and was called back by a former project manager to the company that laid me off in the first place. The same company that hired me three months after I got out of college and gave me my first real job. Perhaps I mentioned that I didn’t mind returning to familiar territory, the long days and deadlines of a consulting firm.

The exit signs became more frequent and the lights brighter the closer we got to the middle of the city. Dallas thrust up in concrete and steel, an exoskeleton covering whatever survived there without the color green. The downtown skyline looked like a village of electric ziggurats. John dropped me off at the Sheraton on Stemmons Freeway. He gave me a business card for his one-man limousine service and took my suitcase out of the trunk. I gave him a good tip. I told him I was only supposed to be in town for two weeks, but I’d share his name with the guys on my team. I would never see John again. I would spend five months of 1996 in Dallas.

In my suite, I hung up my jacket and ironed a shirt for the next day. The last time I’d spent the night alone in a hotel, I was in New England at the consulting firm’s headquarters for a software training. I’d been with the company more than a year at that point. I wasn’t angry at myself yet that I hadn’t found a job in my major—technically, journalism; officially, communications—or one with a nonprofit serving a social good. Besides, I was still challenged by keeping twenty male consultants happy with presentations ready on deadline, laptops that worked, and immediate coaching on software they were still learning. I didn’t mind that I’d developed the affectionate reputation of being a ball breaker. But by the time the project ended after two and a half years, I thought I was ready to move on to something else.

During the six months I was unemployed, I had intermittent waves of interviews and rejections and no interviews at all. Then, based on gut instinct alone, I turned down the one offer I received because the salary was half of what I had earned at my prior job. Similar work for a small environmental consulting firm. I couldn’t do it. Then days later, my former project manager Matthew called to offer a two-week gig in Dallas. I accepted. This despite the promise I’d made to myself that my next job would be in communications. I took the assignment because I needed the money, but that’s only part of the truth. Actually, I was sick of myself and wanted something constructive to do. I hadn’t worked on the novel I’d started three years earlier, I didn’t exercise even though I had the time, and I wasn’t challenged by housework.

There was something else, though. I took the project because the transition would be easy—work I did well, in the familiar company of men.

* * * * *

The revelation is right there in my journal, a simple admission about how I filled hours by myself. I was an eavesdropper. Not on everyone, though. Just men. I was a Margaret Mead among those in their modern habitat—airports, rental car desks, multi-million dollar corporate offices, hotel lobbies on weekdays. Avoiding notice wasn’t hard to do. I carried similar tools and wore similar costumes: a rolling carry-on suitcase, a briefcase, a navy blue jacket, khaki slacks. I used my flaws as camouflage. I was twenty-five pounds overweight, had a lousy haircut, and moved in my clothes as if I were trying to molt. I kept my mouth shut and shifted only my eyes. I was grateful for keen hearing.

I became a distant observer for two reasons. First, months of existential questioning left me with little energy for other people. Second, I thought I might learn something different about men if I didn’t interact with them. With my former team, I made an effort to be part of their world. I joined conversations, watched them get plastered and sing karaoke at team events in New Orleans, and played practical jokes to see how they’d react. But I was a control. Their responses were altered because they knew I was watching and interacting.

I knew I wouldn’t see real behavior unless my subjects didn’t notice they were being observed. This was easiest to do in public. The rules of interaction are different. Most people either don’t realize or don’t care that strangers overhear their conversations, especially on airplanes. I had a predictable strategy to avoid talking: open book or magazine, headphones over ears. Because I took an early flight out of town, a majority of the passengers was men, other business travelers. They rarely fell asleep on the plane, but they also rarely talked. Most of them tapped on laptops or shuffled through reports.

One morning, I sat on the same aisle as an advertising salesman and a charter pilot. For nearly an hour, they talked about their jobs and families. I kept my Walkman off and flipped pages as if I were reading. From the guys I once worked with, I learned that many men will discuss their children with an honesty that women rarely do. To these men, their children are fallible, even flawed. The pilot said that his son, who would soon graduate as a physical therapist, wasn’t the type to apply himself in medical school. His tone wasn’t edgy or angry. His son was just a notch above slacker, and he knew it. I imagined that the boy’s mother would mention her child’s aspiration to go to medical school without questioning his chance of success. Then the men began to talk about their wives, women who got advanced degrees after they were married. I listened as the ad man and the pilot one-upped each other with details. My wife had young two children in the house. My wife studied economics. My wife got a law degree.

I would not get so lucky to hear something like that again. My observations in public were limited to still shots from then on. The blond man in his early thirties—every Monday morning—who could have doubled for a young Paul Newman. A father whose two teen daughters cried and laughed as they told their Italian-speaking friend goodbye and who was welcomed to stand right between them at the window as they watched the plane take off. The beer-bellied man in his sixties who wore a baseball cap covered in fake seagull crap advertising Galveston Beach. The forty-something man wearing a white shirt and red tie approaching third base in a car with a blond woman in the hotel parking lot.

* * * * *

By my second month in Dallas, the project added more consultants. I had an exponential increase in my workload, but I liked the purposeful bustle in and out of my office. Then, within a couple of weeks, the inevitable happened. I identified a favorite among them. Dan was a Southerner who drawled loudly, liked his liquor, and had a sizeable family. Getting a favorite meant that I had started to bond with them, even though I intended not to. I would begin to initiate conversations more often than was politely necessary. They’d start to get to know me.

One evening, we had a team dinner to entertain a guest consultant. We went to DelFrisco’s, a restaurant so dimly lit that a mob hit could go down without anyone noticing. There was a short menu of various expensive cuts of meat and overpriced vegetables. The men enjoyed good wine and hard liquor and talked about work. At some point, the conversation split to one about luxury cars and another about Dan’s daughter’s upcoming wedding. Dan said the cost was going to rival her college education. I must have flashed something shiny or coughed, because Dan looked straight at me and asked, “You’re not married, are you?”

“Not legally,” I said. To settle the confused looks on the faces of those listening, I added, “I’ve been living with the same man for seven years.”

“Do you plan to get married?”

“Maybe. We don’t want children, so we don’t see much of a point.”

“Really? Would your parents like to see you married?” Dan was about ten years older than my mom and dad.

“They don’t say anything if they do,” I answered. Then, blatantly breaking my rule to keep conversations short, I added, “Even if I did get married, I wouldn’t ask them to pay for it. They put me through college. That was the best gift they could ever give me. I wouldn’t ask for anything else. I’m a grown-up now. I earn my own money.”

Every man at the table looked at me as if Sasquatch had sat down to help himself to a morsel of aged beef. Dan smiled and sucked down some whiskey. Slick-haired Charles laughed and said, “Well, you’re independent.”

At least I knew that much about myself.

* * * * *

The loneliness never went away, no matter how many weeks passed. I had withdrawals from being separated from my partner Todd during the week—who knew I’d miss the smell of Tic Tacs?—but I no longer had to call him in the middle of the day just to hear his voice. At night, to entertain myself, I would take long drives around the city, figuring out where streets connected, conquering my bad sense of direction.

I knew I had to endure that time of pause, a break from the routine of my life. Unemployment had put me in a rut. Before I went to Dallas, I obsessed about my resume and bank account while I cleaned the house and cooked dinner nearly every night. Embarrassed that I hadn’t found a job, I avoided almost everyone I knew. But there was something more to my disquiet.

I could not reconcile the duality that marked my life like epochs.

There were spans of years in which I spent my time mostly in the company of one gender or the other. In my early childhood, my friends were female. By the time I was eight, that changed. I played baseball on an all-boy team because there was no league for girls in my neighborhood’s area. I had girl friends, but I often preferred my boy ones because they didn’t get their feelings hurt so easily, they were more straightforward, and they could keep secrets. Later, my best friend became the love of my life, and I accepted that choosing him meant that I would honor the cultural boundaries between men and women I knew but tried to dismiss.

In college, my primary friendships were once again with women. I spent almost three years as a grassroots organizer for women’s issues. By the time I graduated from college, I had worked part-time in eight different offices with staff members who were predominantly or entirely female. When the consulting firm hired me, my reservation was over the fact that I wouldn’t be working a communications job that served some public good, not that I would work with an exclusively male consultant team. I sensed, and was correct, that I’d have no trouble in such an environment. In fact, I thrived.

I didn’t view either sex in terms of its negative traits: men as oppressors, women as weak, blah blah. My life experience had refuted that. However, I didn’t feel that I had a rightful place in the parts of the world where I felt equally comfortable. My politics were innate, not learned. I was a feminist because the ideology fit my sense of justice, not because I’d been overtly abused or dominated. My ease among boys and men—and their acceptance of me—could not be so simply explained. It occurred to me that I was back in a man’s world for a reason, with unfinished business.

* * * * *

The team tripled when a new project phase started. To help with the workload, another project support person joined us. Phil and I shared a big office that was always noisy with a swarm of consultants. Phil was an old timer, with the company six years when most left after three. He had the qualities that the company’s support staff had to have to survive: a sense of humor, flexible under pressure, able to negotiate, skilled at being firm.

It didn’t take me long to pick a favorite among the new consultants. Liam was a soft-spoken and well-read Irishman. We spent a lot of time talking about books and British movies. He had gone to grade school with the author Roddy Doyle. I was always patient with him because he spoke very slowly and, perhaps, because I knew how much he missed his wife and infant daughter, whom he saw only twice a month at their home in England. I think I liked him the most because I related to him. He was as homesick and introverted as I was.

Although I liked everyone on the team, Bill and Rick were the most entertaining. Blue-eyed, blond Bill was built to play rugby and liked fine dining. Dark-eyed, black-haired Rick was smaller than Bill but clearly more agile. He was conceited in a way that came across as reserve. They battered each other on the basketball court every evening. The other guys made jokes about their competitiveness. Bill touted himself a traditional guy who wanted a wife and kids, but he was the one who loudmouthed about Rick’s tail chasing. I once heard Bill say about Rick’s struggle with a triad of girlfriends, “His deal is, he’s only interested in girls who treat him like shit.” I could only imagine the conversations I’d never get to hear.

Bill and Rick were also the best-looking men within the group. This implicit acknowledgment surfaced among the men in ways I didn’t expect. One of the new consultants, Ettore, came into the office to see if Phil had finished his presentation. Phil couldn’t remember who’d given him the assignment and replied, joking, that all the guys looked alike to him. At that moment, Bill was in the office getting a document from the printer. Ettore started to laugh and said, “And all this time, my fiancée was thinking she was getting a short, ugly Italian when I’m really a handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed American.”

I felt sad and uncomfortable when I figured out why Phil was always curt with Rick, who in my opinion was one of the least demanding members on the team. Phil was born with a birth defect which required several operations on his face and head since he was a child. Phil talked to me about how his appearance had affected his life, including the fact he had a difficult time finding a girlfriend. I don’t know if he realized that he treated Rick harshly because the man represented something he could not have.

Ironically, at the time when the team dynamics were becoming most intriguing, I got a job offer. I hadn’t even been looking. An acquaintance who knew me from my grassroots days called me in Dallas and asked if I’d be interested in working for a nonprofit’s program that she directed. I interviewed on a Saturday morning and agreed to a six-month trial period with health insurance and a salary that was half of what I was making at the consulting firm. I accepted a position nearly identical to the one I had turned down days before Matthew called me to go to Dallas. On my last morning, the guys gave me a surprise going-away breakfast. They even bought me a gift—a lovely emerald green pen. What I remember most is that everyone on the team was there, and that I suddenly admitted that I’d miss them. They, too, were my guys.

* * * * *

Two and a half years later, I wrote a short story about a man who realized he wanted a child of his own after he lost his young nephew to cancer. The narrator’s epiphany came in eight days, starting on a Monday when he received a package containing a gift his nephew wanted him to have and ending the following Monday when his relieved wife told him that the pregnancy tests had been wrong.

It was the third story I’d written for the first creative writing class I’d taken in fourteen years.

I didn’t base the story on anyone I knew, but I did integrate many things I’d learned. The narrator, Jason, was a handsome, smart man in his thirties who worked for a management consulting firm. He cheated on his wife. He had an adversarial relationship with his brother, who resented Jason’s good looks and athleticism. Jason loved his nephew as if the child were his own. He was home only on weekends and alone with his thoughts during the week. The solitude is what broke him.

In that undergraduate class, there were five men and nine women, including myself. Only one of the young men spoke up regularly in class. But that day, the men dominated the conversation, discussing the narrator’s motivations and actions. I realized I’d written a story that was inherently male. It was something they related to, unlike the first two stories I’d turned in which focused on female characters and their problems. I kept all of the written critiques, including my teacher’s. My teacher said the story was credible, about real people and their problems. “It’s, in other words, an adult story,” he wrote. I considered that a compliment.

After class, I went back to my office where I worked with more than a dozen women. Not one man. I missed the old environment sometimes, the subtle different rules of interaction, even the sound of men’s voices. Within the following weeks, however, I finally understood the reasons why I observed people with curious intensity and straddled two worlds so comfortably. I was a dilettante anthropologist evolving into a bona fide writer.

The aforementioned short story was published in a revised form as “Broken Silence” in New England Review’s Volume 26, Number 1 (2005). Photo credits: Dallas skyline from Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau; sea gull from Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

TAGS: consulting, corporate world, Dallas, eavesdropping, gender, gender roles, Margaret Mead, men, nonprofit, people watching, Ronlyn Domingue, The Mercy of Thin Air, women, Writing

RONLYN DOMINGUE is the author of The Mercy of Thin Air (Atria Books). The debut novel was a 2005 Borders Original Voices Award Finalist and was acquired in 11 other countries. Her writing has appeared in New England Review, Clackamas Literary Review, New Delta Review, and The Independent (UK). She earned an MFA degree in creative writing from Louisiana State University. In the past, Ronlyn worked as a grassroots organizer, project manager, teacher, and grant writer. Novel #2 is in progress, completion date heretofore unknown. Visit her at ronlyndomingue.com or Facebook. She will post on TNB the first week of each month.

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