A few weeks ago I told a friend I would help her with the sound at her show. I didn’t want to, truth be told. I am not a sound person. I am an I-like-that-guitar-solo recording-studio person not let-me-check-the-ground-switch-on-the-direct-box sound person. When the feedback starts to scream, I don’t necessarily know how to make it stop. But she had been searching and hoping for help. She found no luck. Her voice got softer every time she brought it up. Finally, with the show almost here, I said yes. I’ve seen her play before, seen her be confident and sure. I didn’t expect what came next. When she arrived, a different person seemed present, she was not herself. Giving orders, telling me how to do the job I agreed to do. The words were fast and cold. I told myself it was nerves. I tried to be patient. I made a joke, I thought it light as air, teasing her for being so anxious. But she did not hear the joke. She heard an insult. The space between us filled up with something hard and heavy, and I realized I hurt her, though I hadn’t meant to. Her face was stiff. At the end of the night, she handed me money. I didn’t expected that. I told her, no, it’s all right, just don’t be angry about the joke. Thought that would ease the moment. It didn’t. She stiffened more. “Would you have said that if I were a man?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, because it was true.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said, because that was her truth.

And there it was. A moment when one truth cancels out another and reason has nowhere left to stand. I saw her two days later, by chance, on the patio of the Future Bakery. We spoke easily, as if words had never failed us. She smiled, I smiled, and the world rearranged itself into something simple again. We talked about nothing important and everything at once. It felt like the way rain smells after it’s done. The same world, but washed clean.