Just Another One of Those
I was followed for twenty minutes this morning by a man without a mask on. He wanted desperately to explain to me the ways in which the pandemic wasn’t real. As he spoke, he gesticulated wildly, stepping towards me every time I mentally measured the distance between us, while readjusting my position. I could tell it was important to him that I understand what he was saying. The conviction leaked through every time his voice broke, which was often. When he asked if I’d gotten my vaccinations, he seemed genuinely disappointed at my answer, and insisted that now there were tiny robots in my bloodstream, latching on to my liver, to my heart. At a push of a button, someone could cause my internal organs to explode. He referred a lot to this someone. In my attempts to disengage, I did not ask who this someone was. I was thinking, mostly, about whether this man’s sincerity would turn to anger if I took my phone out and called for help. And what that anger might look like.
How had I gotten into this situation? The unmasked man, with his hands full, had called out to me to hold the door. When I did, he thanked me, saying that people nowadays were rude, if they didn’t know you, they’d ignore you. He was perfectly normal, even a little charming. Yes, I said, I’ve noticed that too. No problem. He asked my age, then told me I looked younger than that. I felt a little heckled at the assumption that a woman would want to resemble a baby, but didn’t want to get into it, I said, cool. He continued talking. I didn’t want to be rude, to be another one of those rude passers-by we’d just spoken about—even though in retrospect, we hadn’t spoken about it as much as I’d been spoken at about it. I said, I’m sorry, can you put your mask on? And that’s when it really began.
It is not the first time this has happened. Back when I first visited New York, in 2011, I was beguiled by the openness of the people here, the ways you could strike up conversation with strangers, the spontaneity I’d equated with magic. I returned to New York many times in the interim years before moving here in 2019, and each time, the number of people I ran into who believed fervently in the value of their words multiplied. I lived, for a while, with a boy who would trap you in an hour-long conversation every time you ran into him in the hallway. Whenever he went out drinking, he’d come home full of stories which he was sure I’d want to hear. One time, he walked into my room, sat on my bed in his outside clothes, and started pouring his heart out to me. I’m working, I said, and he replied: but aren’t you a writer?
Over the past year, I’ve walked away while a person was talking more times than I can count; I’ve said to people’s faces, I don’t care; I’ve snapped at persistence, so long as that persistence didn’t seem to bear physical threat. I know this is celebrated as having boundaries, as protecting my own space. But every single time I do that, I hate it. I hate it so much. I was raised in a family that values politeness, a value which is hard to maintain in America. I don’t want to be the sort of person who brushes another human being off, who says, with her words or actions, look, I’ve got something better to do. I don’t want to embarrass the both of us by avoiding eye contact, pretending I didn’t see you when I clearly have. I like talking to new people—I’ve made friends simply by virtue of the fact that we’ve walked in the same direction for a while so we might as well say hi. I think, constantly, of how I’d feel if I asked someone sitting across me on the bus a question, and they returned with a gaze of disinterest or disgust, as if I were an insect that’d just burst into falsetto.
I consider myself a confrontational person, and don’t shy away from difficult conversations. So it’s not about not being able to express my discomfort if I need to. But here, in the land of the free, it’s starting to feel as if conflicting desires cannot coexist. As if one story necessarily overwrites another. Listen to me, agree with me. Don’t walk away until you say yes.
I often reach for a middle ground of firmness without crossing into hostility. And yet, so often, I find myself backed into rudeness. I said, no, I’ll snap, and then carry the guilt of their hurt, surprised faces around with me all day.
I turned it into a joke, complained about it once, at a bar with some acquaintances. Someone that day had come up to me on the street, insisting that I was a Taylor Swift fan because of the red scarf I was wearing. I’m slow with celebrity gossip, so that entire exchange left me confused. When I retold the story, a moneyed blonde sitting across from me said, That simply can’t be true.
It literally is, I replied.
I grew up in New York, she countered. People don’t do that.
I felt the rudeness sneaking up my tongue again, I bit down. Sure, I said.
Later, when I asked myself why I hadn’t set her straight, it occurred to me that this was yet another case of a person, already convicted in their belief that their narrative was more important than mine.
This morning’s story has a happy ending. In which happy means physically safe. In which happy means unharmed. After the unmasked man started explaining his theory on how Michael Bay’s Transformers applied to real life today, I made my escape. There’d been a shift in the air, I no longer felt that I was in immediate danger. Believe it or not, I’ve been physically threatened before for many things, but not for my pop culture takes. I relaxed slightly, and said, I have to go. Oh yeah, he replied, of course. It was really nice talking to you. He told me his name and tried to shake my hand. I stepped back again, putting six feet between us, and he went, oh yes, that’s right, you’re one of those.
