I do not know if I should even try to explain my fear - perhaps it was caused by a book on shark attacks I read in grade school, or it has something to do with my fear of heights, where I interpret height as the space between me and the bottom of the ocean, as opposed to the ocean surface, my fear of heights not really being a fear of heights mind you but more a fear of falling, of being on the precipice and tumbling over. A fear which has recurred in many vivid dreams of tragic heroism, wherein I rush to rescue a dog, on skies, while it moves closer and closer to a cliff, and save the dog only to fall myself; or the more traditional dream of saving a baby at the top of a construction site only to be knocked over by a gust of wind, right after having handed the baby back to its grateful mother; or the one where I am attacked by a disgruntled war veteran waiter after standing up for my deranged mother when she loses it and starts eating off other people's plates in a nice restaurant.

Either way I was slowly strolling along the boardwalk at dusk, mulling over a fight I had just had with my girlfriend, if you could call her that. She had accused me of not being honest with her, citing a time we had gone to the movies when I was in a bad mood and didn't really want to go. Instead of telling her that I was in a bad mood and would have preferred to stay home, having seen her come to the door all dressed up and with makeup on, and thinking that maybe I should just keep my feelings to myself, I had opted to go to the movies, but then ended up not being as successful at putting on my happy face as I had originally thought I would be. And, by being unsuccessfully happy, I had made her sad, which wasn't really fair and was also the complete opposite of what I had intended to do by going to the movies in the first place. I strolled along the boardwalk thinking that she was actually right and that maybe I shouldn't think of the conversation, or fight, as a fight, but perhaps as a discussion or critique of flawed behavior on my part.

But then, at the same time, I also felt that perhaps she was wrong, and that in this instance she should have decided to put on her happy face, so to speak, so that we could have just filed the memory among the bad ones which we pretend never happened. Or, so that, even better still, we could have begun a very serious revision of the evening and turned it into a good time and a story to tell our friends and laugh about. Like that time we went to the steak restaurant in Madrid and she broke her rotten tooth on a piece of Argentinean beef so that when she smiled or opened her mouth there was a huge gaping hole and she had to spend the entire time with this hole in her mouth which, she says after I bring it up, made her feel just like a peasant in southern France. A statement which she then quickly accompanies with an uncomfortable laugh. And then we all laugh too, though I am sure she is never quite sure if we are laughing with her or at her.

So maybe that is a bad example and I shouldn't bring the story up around our friends as it really does kind of make fun of her and isn't very funny at all. But either way you know the kind of funny stories, and if it was one, she could talk about it like this: "Remember that time you came over to my apartment and we were going to go to the movies but you were in a bad mood, and it showed, so that we hardly talked on the way to the theater and there were all these uncomfortable moments and you kept looking at me with this inconvenienced look, like oh my god I can't believe she made me come out to see this stupid movie, even though it was your idea in the first place and all you had to do was tell me that you didn't want to go and we could have stayed home, and it's all your fault for being a dishonest asshole."

Though she probably wouldn't put it quite like that. At the same time I am not sure why her side of the story is getting such credibility where my grin-and-bear-it, happy-face sacrifice is being tossed away like so many broken deck chairs at the end of summer. I mean she had spent all that time getting ready, and so was it really my place to say that no, in fact I did not want to go to the movie which I had made us reschedule our entire week to see, having said that we didn't go out enough? Well maybe not reschedule our entire week but you see my point. It is much easier to make decisions the second time around than the first and let me tell you that if I should ever again push to go see a movie and I am in a bad mood when the specified evening comes around I will not hesitate to tell her that I would like to stay home and that she looks beautiful.

I strolled along the boardwalk, slowly, pondering the discussion I had just had with my girlfriend, thinking that perhaps she was right to a certain extent, but at the same time that part of my actions were justified, and that they weren't based in self-interested dishonesty, as she was implying, but rather a quiet nobility or a quiet noble suffering, and that my failing did not lie in the attempted quieting of my noble suffering as much as my inability to keep said suffering quiet. Though at the same time, it's not like she has never been in a bad mood and taken it out on me, as she implied I had been doing in her critique of my nobility. I do remember a few occasions wherein she, after a long day at work, snapped at me for doing something I do almost every day, like leaving my coat on the couch instead of putting it in the closet, or failing to wash all the dishes, leaving the greasy pots and pans from yesterday's spaghetti dinner with all of their nastiness on the stove. Or smaller things, like yelling at me for not leaving her at peace when all she wanted to do was read or be by herself, and why don't I take the dog for a walk or do something useful.

We do have our share of fights, like all couples, and we try to keep them to a minimum as I suppose most couples do. Of course sometimes we fight over the silliest things such as the time we were in a bar in Madrid with some friends and I was playing pool downstairs, a game which I lost and in which I had, before a friend could shoot the last shot, and having had a few drinks, put the eight ball in the pocket with my hand, it being an easy shot and me knowing that he would not miss it. So that when we joined them upstairs and she asked me how the game had gone and I told her what I had done, she, having also had a few drinks and being a pool purist, told me that one never does this in pool to which I politely replied, "Are we going to do this again?" To which she politely replied, "Fuck you!" Which I then followed up with a "Fuck you!" as well and then spent the rest of the night apologizing to her and telling her that I hadn't known what I was talking about, that I had been drinking, and asking her why we always fought, etc, etc.

And I suppose we have beautiful moments as well. Like on the same trip to Spain and France we were in a restaurant, not the Steak house where she broke her tooth but a different restaurant, and I had just finished explaining why I disliked the club scene in general and she had just finished telling me that I could take my whole pseudo-liberal attitude, which was really just a passive-aggressive way of feeling superior to everyone by feeling bad about them in a superior way, and shove it. Which I found a bit too aggressive, and so had to excuse myself from the table and go outside to cry, after which she came outside and apologized to me, explaining that she had been under a lot of pressure at work and that this trip was supposed to be relaxing, and I explained to her that I was sorry but that I had never had anyone talk to me like that, and that I knew this trip was supposed to be relaxing, and we agreed to try to have fun on our vacation. Or, how on the same trip, after she had broken her tooth and did not want to go out in public, I had told her that it really didn't matter, that I loved her, that she was beautiful even with the broken tooth, that I found it sexy, and she told me "ok ok enough I'll go out," that she wouldn't let it ruin the trip, and that she'd get it, the tooth, fixed when she got home.

I slowly strolled along the boardwalk, watching the couples watching the ocean, feeling the wind in my hair, watching the kids play in the arcades while their parents waited outside or went in and grabbed them to scold them about how they had only been allowed to play for a half hour and "we have been waiting for you." And feeling like I was part of the "we", and wanting to talk to the scolded kids and tell them "we" didn't mind being out on the boardwalk so much, that "we" were just tired and that sometimes it was just tough being an adult.

I strolled along the boardwalk feeling both sentimental and at peace with myself after having been critiqued by my "girlfriend." And as I strolled on towards the pier, I saw them turn the lights on and I remembered the passage from "Remains of the Day" where the Sir Anthony Hopkins character - I saw the movie first so it will always be the Sir Anthony Hopkins character - mentions the lighting of the lights and says something reflective which I cannot quite remember, but which struck me as very reflective when I read it. And I myself felt a little reflective reflecting on the Sir Anthony Hopkins character's reflecting, coupled with the reflecting I had been doing after the fight with my girlfriend. I suppose it was a case of life imitating art although I believe it is actually art imitating life, though it may be life imitating art which is really just a sense of calmness where a person can pause and feel like, yes, this is it, I am doing the right thing right now, this just feels right.

At that moment of reflection I had an epiphany. I realized that perhaps things were not going so well with my girlfriend and that perhaps we did fight too much, that perhaps we'd be better off if we were not together, a realization which signaled the beginning of the end of our relationship, though the relationship would drag on a bit like some sort of terminal illness where death is inevitable and all resources are spent on easing the pain. And, continuing the simile, where there is a bit of medication involved in the easing of the pain of both deaths. Because really how can one continue in a relationship after that very definite moment where things cease to be a joy and start to become a chore and you have those nagging doubts that perhaps you have settled, and that maybe she is having the same doubts as you? And while there might be something beautiful in the struggle of commitment and love against the many doubts of the couple, there is a fine line between beauty and pounding one's head against a brick wall, and finally, is it really even worth it if there aren't kids involved? I suppose part of my revelation had to do with a fear of commitment and the knowledge that we had been dating for a while, and what would happen if you woke up one day and realized it was all A BIG MISTAKE, maybe that is why we go out and buy new cars and have affairs and there really are some men who make a habit of trading in the old wife for a newer, younger one just as they trade in the Sport Utility Vehicle for the European Roadster.

So I was slowly strolling along the boardwalk towards the pier, thinking about breaking it off with my girlfriend, when I saw an old flame walking towards me. Things hadn't exactly ended on the best of terms, so I was surprised when she stopped and we started up a conversation, and I found myself suddenly thinking that maybe perhaps this was the start of something, now that I was single again. That perhaps I was calmer now, after my long-term relationship, and that maybe she saw a more stable me.

We talked about the usual. About jobs, she was working for an ad agency, in the city. We talked about the weather, it was a cool evening but not bad considering the season. About what she was doing up here, visiting family for the weekend, I had forgotten that she had family up here. She asked me what I was doing, I told her I was currently working at the local newspaper as an editor. She asked me if I got a chance to go to the city. I had the feeling that things were going well, I didn't see a ring on her finger and she seemed to be smiling at me. I remembered first seeing her at a party in the city, thinking how beautiful she was and how intelligent she seemed, how it almost made me sick to my stomach trying to talk to her, how I had to have a few drinks before I could even approach her. And spending a lot of time with her on the weekend, listening to music or watching movies; or the time I went over to her house when she was sick to make her soup; or the time I brought her ice cream on a whim. I remembered the little, special things about her, certain rules I had to follow, a special order she used when washing the dishes. And I thought about the time we had gone out to a bar and she had been drinking with some friends, and she had had a fight with her boyfriend, and got so drunk that I had to hold her hair back while she threw up in the ladies' bathroom.

I started thinking that maybe we had gotten over the way things ended on a sour note, or to be more specific, with her and a friend ditching me outside a club, and me waiting outside for them to get a ride home, and yelling at her friend the whole car ride back, and then at her outside her apartment, and her telling me to shut up and go home, and that I was going to wake people up. That maybe we had finally gotten over that and maybe things were looking up and either way, I was single, so I had to start acting the part. We talked a little more and I finally asked her whether or not she was seeing anybody, mentioned that I was currently not seeing anyone, and that she was looking beautiful as usual, and maybe we could go out for a drink sometime. And she looked at me with an are-you-serious type look and smiled and said, "Hmm, I don't think so," and proceeded to tell me that it was great running into me and that she hoped we'd see each other again soon, that I should look her up if I was ever in the city and bye. Leaving me standing on the boardwalk watching her walk down past the pier.

I stood on the boardwalk watching her walk away thinking that maybe there was something to the fact that my girlfriend and I fought so much, that maybe the fighting was just another sign of our closeness, and that perhaps there really was something to be said for sticking it out. That maybe life isn't meant to be lived alone, that there's something more than the need to pair up for copulation, and maybe the only way to share your life experience is to build the kind of memories that you can tell to your friends and that single people find so annoying. And that maybe our fight really wasn't a fight, or even a critique, but just my girlfriend trying to be honest with me. And that it was all part of the learning process and the sharing process. I thought that maybe I should try to explain to her that I felt her critique had been unfair to the intention of my happy-face attempt, but that I now understood her position and would try to be more honest and upfront with her. I thought about her in our house, working at her desk, or playing with the dog, and I remembered how she looked when she sat on the couch reading while I did the dishes or played with the dog. I wondered what we would eat for dinner that night, thought about calling her to ask her if she wanted me to bring anything home, and before turning to head back towards my car, I looked out at the ocean under the night sky and thought to myself that what differentiates my fear of the ocean from my fear of falling is that what I don't like about the ocean is not being able to see the bottom.