(2 of 2)
Older story: Wordsworth goes to visit Coleridge at his cottage, walks in, sits down and does not utter a word for three hours. Neither does Coleridge. Wordsworth then rises and, as he leaves, thanks his friend for a perfect evening.
There's a deep, basically serene well of silence in most men, which, for better and worse, is where we live. I do not mean to start claptrapping myself, but I often think that all our acts of aggression and wanna-fight posturing arise from that well as forms of overcompensation or panic. Unlike women, men are not social creatures, not born administrators. It's nicely P.C. to think of God as female, but no woman would have thrown Lucifer out of heaven; she would have offered him a desk job. Had Lucifer been a woman, she would have dropped all that "myself am hell" business and taken it.
I would go so far as to argue that men were programmed to be isolated from one another and that aloneness is our natural state. Silence in male friendships is our way of being alone with each other. Once men have established a friendship, that itself is the word. The affection is obvious, at least to us. A main component of our silence is an appreciation of the obvious.
I may have spoken with my friend Campbell a total of a hundred times, yet I cannot recollect a single idea exchanged or the substance of a subject addressed. He knew that I wished him well, and I knew that he wished me the same. The day he died--before I learned that he had died--I called to him on his bike, mistaking a man of similar build and helmet for my friend. Later, when told of his death, I thought of that other man (I don't know why), and I pictured him pedaling away with a bright wave of the hand. See ya, John.