contrariness

When a grieving reporter falls for the struggling baseball player he’s been assigned to write about, their romance is like watching a Labrador puppy fall in love with a pampered Persian cat: all eager impulse on one side and arch contrariness on the other.

The ground itself kicked this contrariness off, the opening punches met with a stunned, polite silence where we had been promised fervour that required riot police.

It was unclear if underlying his responses was French intransigence, academic pedantry or simply a general contrariness.

It is deaf to irony, metaphor, satire, allegory, provocation, ambiguity, contrariness.

And, freedom, exploration, and a little bemused contrariness.