He had wanted... what? All he knows is that it hadn't been satisfied. What he'd been looking for in Don was a flareup of his own, maybe, a responding shout, a responding toss of a container of coffee creamer, something that indicated to him that Don was just as angry about something as he was. It's juvenile, and he knows it, but all he's ever wanted from Don is some kind of sign that he, Michael Ginsberg, is capable of shaking the seemingly unshakable Don Draper. Sure, he's gotten sarcastic asides out of him, he's even gotten downright exasperation. He's been informed that Don would like to shove him in front of a cab, and he's been told...
He's been told that Don doesn't think about him at all. For all the angry responses he'd wanted to get from the man, for all the jibes and insults he's been prepared to accept, that was the one thing he'd never wanted. All he'd ever wanted was for someone -- someone like that, someone who'd written something so brilliant as that damn letter -- to take notice of him. If it had to be in a negative way, so be it. He'd tried to push Don in both directions, he'd tried to impress him with the genius of his ideas all the while goading him towards something like a confrontation, but he'd never received the validation he'd been looking for, and he'd never received the verbal assault (or sometimes even physical assault) he'd been expecting.
What had Don given him? An opportunity to work at a firm like this, yes. He remembers well that Peggy hadn't wanted to hire him, and frankly, he can't blame her. He'd acted like an idiot at the interview, and he'd worn jeans to it, of all things. Of course, he's wearing jeans right now, so maybe he hadn't learned. But Don? Don had provided him with... the occasional approving nod, a sign that his ideas weren't totally shit, and the occasionally failure to ignore him completely, which he always took as a sign that maybe Don was growing to tolerate him after all. And the sabotage of the Sno-Ball campaign, which had been his strongest validation of all.
But still he pushes, and he pokes, and he prods, and he tries to get Don to respond in some kind of like way, so that he can feel a little less alone. And he'd learned, hadn't he, when he'd been over there, that something poking and prodding wasn't the best solution to a problem? Sometimes you had to leave a bullet in a wound to give someone any chance of survival. Sometimes tearing things apart and exposing their ugly interiors wasn't the way to confront a situation. He'd learned that in the literal, physical, solid sense. He still hasn't quite learned it in the theoretical, metaphorical one. Feelings, he thinks, should be exposed. He wants Don to be exposed, not because he wants to belittle or judge him, but because he senses a kinship in them that he can only scratch at the surface of.
He wants more.
"They might not be any of my business," he acknowledges, and the fact that he's even willing to acknowledge that is a little victory for Don in and of itself, although he doesn't expect Don to recognize that. It's what anyone would say, what any reasonable human being would know to be true. Is he a reasonable human being? By the standards of the man standing in front of him, giving him that... look, he certainly isn't. By the standards of the guys in his company who'd come to rely on him protecting their lives, he had been. Who's he supposed to judge by? Maybe whoever's talking to him at the moment, whoever's closest at hand.
"It may not be any of my business," he continues, but there's always a but, because it's Ginsberg, and he's nothing if not contradictory, even when plagued by this gnawing, terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, even when he's shaking so hard he wants nothing more than to collapse onto the floor in a heap and be blissfully unconscious for awhile. "But it does matter. To you, if not to anyone else."
Does it matter to Don? Maybe he overestimates the personal life of everyone else. Maybe he assumes everyone else thinks about these things, maybe he assumes that the same sense of brokenness and hollowness that keeps him up awake at night does the same for everyone else, because he can't stand the thought of being the only one. Because it's incomprehensible, that everyone else had gone through something similar (and no matter that it had been a different war, he thinks, that he and Don had encountered: war is war, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the fighting, there's something inherently alike about it) and nobody felt it the same way he did. He can't be that isolated in the world. It's an impossible thought.
The next words, though, leave him breathless, speechless (probably happily so, for Don, who's found a way to strike at the heart of the matter even if he's trying to avoid it entirely.) He can't do anything except stare, for a long moment, expression on his face completely open, completely without guile, completely terrified. Because Don's said what he's always been afraid people will say, what they always do say, eventually, once they get to know him well enough that they see it, and he'd been hoping...
I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing
There are no words. His vision blurs. He looks, probably alarmingly so, like he's about to bend over and throw up all over the floor of the break room, and while it's very likely seen similar displays, it's not something anyone's eager to have repeated.
Deranged.
He hadn't said you're deranged, but he might as well have. He might as well have stabbed Ginsberg right in the chest, for what those words do to him. It doesn't matter whether he's saying the conversation is deranged or Ginsberg himself is deranged; it all equates the same way, and it's all too...
Too true?
He always has been, he always has thought he's been, he's always tried to drown out to stifle to squash the voices in his head but they just keep coming back and he can't...
There's nothing to say.
He continues to stand there, staring, vaguely wondering how his legs are remembering to hold him up when, by all logic, he should be collapsed on the floor.
"I wanted..."
It seems he's trying to come up with something to say anyway. He tries again. Force the words past his lips. Get something out there, so that Don doesn't have further reason to think he's crazy. Deranged. Whatever the word had been. It's all the same. It's all true.
"I'm not deranged," he finally manages, "If I had been, they wouldn't have made me go to Vietnam in the first place." A poor joke, probably, but the best he can do for now. Retreat back into his old sarcastic tone, remember how to make fun of himself, remember how to keep things light, or at least with a semblance of lightness. That's how he'd gotten through that warzone. It's how he'll get through this one.
"I do want... a discussion. I just don't want to be the only one that has to question myself. That has to question my sanity. A discussion is supposed to have two sides. I don't want to have a conversation with someone who's trying to sell me their version of 'how to be a sane and seemingly together individual.' I want to have a conversation with you. Whoever the fuck you are."
He's not yelling. That would require too much energy. But he's still staring.
no subject
He's been told that Don doesn't think about him at all. For all the angry responses he'd wanted to get from the man, for all the jibes and insults he's been prepared to accept, that was the one thing he'd never wanted. All he'd ever wanted was for someone -- someone like that, someone who'd written something so brilliant as that damn letter -- to take notice of him. If it had to be in a negative way, so be it. He'd tried to push Don in both directions, he'd tried to impress him with the genius of his ideas all the while goading him towards something like a confrontation, but he'd never received the validation he'd been looking for, and he'd never received the verbal assault (or sometimes even physical assault) he'd been expecting.
What had Don given him? An opportunity to work at a firm like this, yes. He remembers well that Peggy hadn't wanted to hire him, and frankly, he can't blame her. He'd acted like an idiot at the interview, and he'd worn jeans to it, of all things. Of course, he's wearing jeans right now, so maybe he hadn't learned. But Don? Don had provided him with... the occasional approving nod, a sign that his ideas weren't totally shit, and the occasionally failure to ignore him completely, which he always took as a sign that maybe Don was growing to tolerate him after all. And the sabotage of the Sno-Ball campaign, which had been his strongest validation of all.
But still he pushes, and he pokes, and he prods, and he tries to get Don to respond in some kind of like way, so that he can feel a little less alone. And he'd learned, hadn't he, when he'd been over there, that something poking and prodding wasn't the best solution to a problem? Sometimes you had to leave a bullet in a wound to give someone any chance of survival. Sometimes tearing things apart and exposing their ugly interiors wasn't the way to confront a situation. He'd learned that in the literal, physical, solid sense. He still hasn't quite learned it in the theoretical, metaphorical one. Feelings, he thinks, should be exposed. He wants Don to be exposed, not because he wants to belittle or judge him, but because he senses a kinship in them that he can only scratch at the surface of.
He wants more.
"They might not be any of my business," he acknowledges, and the fact that he's even willing to acknowledge that is a little victory for Don in and of itself, although he doesn't expect Don to recognize that. It's what anyone would say, what any reasonable human being would know to be true. Is he a reasonable human being? By the standards of the man standing in front of him, giving him that... look, he certainly isn't. By the standards of the guys in his company who'd come to rely on him protecting their lives, he had been. Who's he supposed to judge by? Maybe whoever's talking to him at the moment, whoever's closest at hand.
"It may not be any of my business," he continues, but there's always a but, because it's Ginsberg, and he's nothing if not contradictory, even when plagued by this gnawing, terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, even when he's shaking so hard he wants nothing more than to collapse onto the floor in a heap and be blissfully unconscious for awhile. "But it does matter. To you, if not to anyone else."
Does it matter to Don? Maybe he overestimates the personal life of everyone else. Maybe he assumes everyone else thinks about these things, maybe he assumes that the same sense of brokenness and hollowness that keeps him up awake at night does the same for everyone else, because he can't stand the thought of being the only one. Because it's incomprehensible, that everyone else had gone through something similar (and no matter that it had been a different war, he thinks, that he and Don had encountered: war is war, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the fighting, there's something inherently alike about it) and nobody felt it the same way he did. He can't be that isolated in the world. It's an impossible thought.
The next words, though, leave him breathless, speechless (probably happily so, for Don, who's found a way to strike at the heart of the matter even if he's trying to avoid it entirely.) He can't do anything except stare, for a long moment, expression on his face completely open, completely without guile, completely terrified. Because Don's said what he's always been afraid people will say, what they always do say, eventually, once they get to know him well enough that they see it, and he'd been hoping...
I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing
There are no words. His vision blurs. He looks, probably alarmingly so, like he's about to bend over and throw up all over the floor of the break room, and while it's very likely seen similar displays, it's not something anyone's eager to have repeated.
Deranged.
He hadn't said you're deranged, but he might as well have. He might as well have stabbed Ginsberg right in the chest, for what those words do to him. It doesn't matter whether he's saying the conversation is deranged or Ginsberg himself is deranged; it all equates the same way, and it's all too...
Too true?
He always has been, he always has thought he's been, he's always tried to drown out to stifle to squash the voices in his head but they just keep coming back and he can't...
There's nothing to say.
He continues to stand there, staring, vaguely wondering how his legs are remembering to hold him up when, by all logic, he should be collapsed on the floor.
"I wanted..."
It seems he's trying to come up with something to say anyway. He tries again. Force the words past his lips. Get something out there, so that Don doesn't have further reason to think he's crazy. Deranged. Whatever the word had been. It's all the same. It's all true.
"I'm not deranged," he finally manages, "If I had been, they wouldn't have made me go to Vietnam in the first place." A poor joke, probably, but the best he can do for now. Retreat back into his old sarcastic tone, remember how to make fun of himself, remember how to keep things light, or at least with a semblance of lightness. That's how he'd gotten through that warzone. It's how he'll get through this one.
"I do want... a discussion. I just don't want to be the only one that has to question myself. That has to question my sanity. A discussion is supposed to have two sides. I don't want to have a conversation with someone who's trying to sell me their version of 'how to be a sane and seemingly together individual.' I want to have a conversation with you. Whoever the fuck you are."
He's not yelling. That would require too much energy. But he's still staring.