Alex.
It's a nice enough name. Short. To the point. Easy to spell. So why is it that I never use it?
Have you ever known somebody, even when you were a kid, who you couldn't look in the eye because they just intimidated the shit out of you, and you knew if you looked up into their eyes that you would drop dead or go crazy or shatter into a million pieces and they would know how fucking scared of them you really were.
Yeah, that's right big old Robert Goren is scaring to fucking death of his tiny little partner, Ms. Alex Eames. You got a problem with that?
If you are a cop you get called by your last name. Briscoe. Green. Logan. Barek. Ross. Wheeler. I think it's something we all start doing along about the same time we start tossing around the other jargon of our profession, in the academy. How we call ambulances "buses" and things like that. It was the same in the service. Well, we also called each other a lot of names I wouldn't use in polite company now. But, same deal. Hell, I bet most of those guys didn't even know my first name, let alone call me by any diminutive form of it. I always thought it was a defense mechanism. It's stylized, it's ritual. It helps keep us aware of where we are, what our responsibilities are. It keeps us in the job.
So why does Eames insist on calling me Bobby? And more to the point, why can't I just reciprocate, despite all my posturing and protesting that speaking in last names is just what cops do?
I think we all know the answer to this one, say it with me now: because I'm afraid of her. I'm afraid of the power that would be unleashed if I uttered that name aloud. Afraid that I would end up weeping in the fetal position on the floor at her feet, confessing every impure thought I ever had, professing her my undying … partnership.
