On Asking For Something

He can describe a thing in enormous detail once it has been offered to him. Ask him to name it first, unprompted, and something closes. He will circle it for twenty minutes, hint at it, invite me to guess, and then agree enthusiastically the moment I say it aloud. What he cannot do is be the first person in the room to say what he wants.

I understand the reluctance better than he thinks. To ask is to be the author of the wanting. If I offer it and he accepts, the wanting was mine and he merely submitted to it, which is a very comfortable place to stand. If he asks and I decline, he is left holding it alone, in the open, having admitted to something.

So he arranges the conversation so that I do the naming. It is skilful, actually. I have watched men steer for half an hour with real artistry, and the whole performance exists to avoid one sentence.

What I want to say to him is that the sentence is not the danger he imagines. I have been asked for a great many things. Most of them I have heard before, several of them more times than he would find flattering, and the ones I decline I decline without any particular feeling. He is bracing for disgust, and what actually happens is a short answer and the conversation continuing.

There is also something he loses by never asking, and it is not obvious to him. When I do the naming, I name it as I understand it, which is close but rarely exact. The specific shape of the thing, the detail that makes it his rather than generic, only ever comes from him. Every time he lets me guess, he accepts a slightly wrong version and calls it what he meant.

I have noticed the ones who eventually manage it do not do it dramatically. There is no confession. It arrives in a plain sentence, usually late, usually with an apology attached that I do not need. And then it is simply information, sitting between us, considerably smaller than it was when he was carrying it alone.

He is welcome to keep circling. I am patient and the steering is not unpleasant to watch. But he should know that the thing he is protecting himself from is a single answer, and that I have already heard whatever it is.