She seemed interesting enough when I met her in the fall. She was the daughter of a great historian, she held dual citizenship in the United States and Denmark, she was involved with the socialists, and she was an incredible cellist. She was bright. She had an astounding knowledge of classical music. The more we talked, the more I was attracted to her. Socialist that she was, she shared my love for Shostakovich. We were both taken by his romantic mentality fused with intermittent atonality and jazz.

We saw very little of each other, though, so it was no surprise that I didn’t really know her well. We decided to meet at a coffee shop one evening as snow fell on Williamsburg, Virginia. Over the ensuing nine hours of conversation, it seemed that she had been transformed. Gone was the smart political musician for whom I thought I’d fallen. Beneath the surface stood an insecure girl who dealt with her insecurities by claiming entitlement and blowing her own horn. Yes, I’m impressed by the amount of time you spend working with the socialists. Yes, I find the number of men courting you impressive. Yes, even after the fourth mention of it, I still think it was magnanimous of you to have visited your friend in the hospital. Yes, you’re being mistreated. Yes, you deserve more. I kept nodding as the beautiful illusion faded.

Complaining and commiseration are natural, but by midnight our dialogue had become her soliloquy. Around three o’clock in the morning, as the caffeine gave way to weariness, I chose to depart with a truthful answer to a loaded question. “I’m not boring you, am I?” she asked. Well, she was. And I left, but not before having a machine gun of invective aimed in my direction for close to five minutes. To this day, I can’t help but think of her “how dare you”s whenever I listen to the Jazz Suites.