pigeons

In early September, a homeless man sprawls out across the still green grass of Newtowne park. Sunlight glinted through green leaves and cast him - propped up with one arm all his weight pinned on his side - in kaleidoscope shadow. A few feet away, I heard his deep, wobbling voice as he addressed a set of two dirty, gray city pigeons. He laughed and told them jokes, he smiled exposing his teeth. He talked to these vermin as if they were people.

And then, kids ran through and spooked them.

"Hey," said the man, addressing the birds as they frantically strutted further and further away from his place on the lawn. "Hey, you come back here." He shifted his weight, lifted his hand and hooked his finger into a suggestive "Come hither" entreatment. "You all," he said loudly, "get back!"

Other people were staring now, rolling their eyes and talking low as this man in tattered denim playfully pleaded after pigeons. He seemed so supremely happy spread out across the grass speaking in coded coos. I found myself jumping to this man's defense. I actually found myself moved by the image, I felt the way I feel watching any other human being love something.

He reminded me of all of the strange things I have done, would do, will do from a place of blind, ceaseless, stupid love. He had pigeons. I had frantically looking for silver cars. Nights without sleep. Burnt red fingers that stung after touching hot springform pans. In reality, the man was drunk and rambling, his mind hazy from exhaust fumes, too much sunlight and bottom shelf hooch. Though, it looked like love and that seemed to be enough. 

lonely people

On Friday nights, lonely people shop for office supplies. A man and his family walk in at 8:45 pm to buy a flash-drive and a dozen spiral bound notebooks. Gathered around their father, the young children clamor and pull producing Kit Kat bars and thin cardboard boxes of Crayola markers.

“No buddy, we’re just here for school stuff.”

“Look dad, they’ve got gift cards!”

“You could buy me a $100 dollar gift card,” says the wife. She takes the plastic bag I pass across the counter and moves the fidgety children towards the exit.

“I’d buy her a gift card to the lingerie store,” says the man leaning in to sign the credit machine’s dimly vibrant pin pad. “I’d spend $100 dollars on that, but she wants a gift card here. To buy office stuff. Isn’t that boring?”

Later, a young mother – my age, maybe a year older - browses the shelves pushing along a baby carriage. She is slight and wet from the rain. She is alone. Her dyed blonde hair is held back in a taut ponytail, exposing dark brown roots. She wears an oversized fleece jacket bearing the insignia of Cambridge’s most prestigious university. Her skirt is tight and short and black.

Strapped into the carriage, the child – a round-faced, pudgy, flailing thing - stretches out his arms.

“More, more, more!”

“I know, more, more, more,” repeats the young mother. “More, more, more.”

She looks at me and takes a candy bar from her purse. She unwraps the cellophane before handing it to her toddler.

“More, more, more!” Screams the baby and the mother eyes me as she tosses her hands in the air.

I want to tell her something, something warm to make her feel better, but I don’t have a child or a husband. I just have a dog. When a dog won’t stop fussing, you take him outside and throw sticks. He settles down. A child isn’t a dog and I don’t know what to tell her so I say, Have a good night and she's off, back outside in the dark, drizzly night. 

Once, on a Wednesday morning, I walked home tired, lonely and slightly miserable. Last night’s black dress with subtle décolletage marked me out as the clear other amidst the multitude of young professional females in yellow cardigans and perfect summer whites.

       
Men on the street corner saw me coming, construction workers. They were dressed in reflective yellow vests and hardhats. When I approached, they didn’t catcall. They didn’t even give me the up-down.

           
“You know,” said one of the men as he sought out my eyes, “It’ll get better. Just you wait, Miss.”

            
He smiled at me, his lips pressed politely together. Nothing toothy, nothing suggestive. The two men around him smiled too. “You hold in there.”

I nodded and lifted my red pumps in a vague, unconfident “thank you”. I kept walking.

We all have our haunts.

            

the telephone is good.

At work, I answer the phone. It isn’t in my job description, just an added menial task bulleted somewhere lower on my To Do list. I’m not complaining. People seem much softer when I am separated from them by a dozen odd yards of telephone wire. I’m less offended by an irate voice if I can’t perceive the body it resides in. The telephone is good. I like the weight of the black receiver against my cheek; I like to talk.

           

“Hi, this is Mary Samson.” A voice attached to a stranger speaks to me. I stand in my end of the world. I wear shapeless black shoes and a red polo. On my nametag I have drawn a smiley face in permanent marker. “I was just diagnosed with acute leukemia and I’m not able to get out like I used to. Is there a way I can give you my credit card and order ink over the phone?”

For a slow instance, we breathe, Mary Samson and I. It seems such a practical approach what we’re doing here on the telephone. I have no ink. I need ink. Help me stranger, please; help me get what I need.

“You can order inks online,” I say this because next to the smiley face on my nametag is a blue button with a star. It reads Associate of the Month. I say this because I want to be human for Mary Samson, but I’m also afraid. “Online, they can send them to your house for you. I can explain how to place the order. I can walk you through it.”

When we’ve finished, Mary Samson offers generic thanks and I say something about having a nice day. Good bye. Good bye. We replace our respective receivers and disappear from one another forever. In two to three business days, a package will arrive in a white poly mailer addressed: Samson, Mary. I imagine chemotherapy.

           

           

            

chris hansen and reductive thinking

A few blocks from my apartment, two men lie down in the middle of the street. (I live in a residential area uncluttered by late night traffic and the quiet, black asphalt is admittedly serene.) They are drunk. I knew this a block ago when I heard them howl into the air. Two stumbling and inefficient night dogs in flannel shirts.

When I was still a girl, Chris Hansen taught me that the world is not safe. TV journalism raised me to believe that people - particularly men - want to hurt me. This is sexist and a gross generalization. However, walking home alone after midnight, I hear my mother’s voice in my head. You are not safe. I am a short girl in stockings and lipstick. I am slow and tripping beneath too many groceries. 

I approach them. I make my big cow eyes hard and roll my shoulders back. I force this posture whenever I want people to believe I am strong.  

“Bystander effect!” Calls one of the men as I pass by his resting place in the road. “You wouldn’t call for help! You’d let us die here!”

I break my locked gaze and remove the ice from my eyes. I look away from the geometry of a stop sign marking the end of the block. I am surprised.

“I most certainly wouldn’t let you die,” I say. “Are you dying?”

“No.”

“Do you need help? I didn’t think you needed help.”

“You’re right. That’s true. We don’t need help. You’re a nice person.”

“Okay.” I say. “Don’t stay in the street. It’s dangerous. You two have a lovely evening.”

“You have a lovelier one. You have fun.”

I leave them where they are.

“Dude,” I hear the other man exclaim, “that cloud looks like a dick!”

Up the road I hear more voices and see the small, red-orange glow of cigarette tips. These are the friends of the street men, lagging behind, tired and swaying after a long night. This group will find the missing two and prod them to come along, to get up, to go home and go to bed. Tonight, we’ll all be plenty safe.    

chamomile tea, iv drips and clever stupidity

On a first date I scorched the roof of my mouth drinking chamomile tea. Five minutes in and the silky pink flesh of my hard palate began to swell in angry, inflamed defiance. It stung to raise my tongue. For God’s sake, I panicked internally, hoping the pain-prompted mistiness in my eyes made me look demure, couldn’t you have just let that cool?!  I never let on.

Similarly, I once attended an interview sporting a fever of 101 degrees. It was an exercise in how to gesticulate – my default mode of expression – without raising one’s arms. The interview lasted a half hour and I sweat through my periwinkle blouse. Stepping out of the general manager’s back office I shook the man’s hand, thanked him for his time and promptly headed to the emergency room. 

I waffle between glorifying and criticizing my persistence. 

A classified ad for me might read: 

Madison, a valuable date and employee, so loyal and polite she'll basically die here if you want! But don't worry, she'll make sure not to inconvenience you while doing so! 

city street sick and paper napkins

I cross the intersection in the midst of green light commotion. I could wait, but I don’t. Today, I have just finished my morning shift and I would rather run – fake shouting – through the rising exhaust fumes and gritty, gray ice slush to the other side of the street. I’m almost done in by a bicyclist (this is a blue state) and I mount the opposing curb with a self-conscious laugh.

“Sorry! Thank you!”            

It is 3 pm on a Wednesday and the type of cold that makes your head ache. A few inches in front of me, a woman vomits into her hands. She’s clean and middle-aged. She doesn't look homeless though the skin of her face is ruddy-red and craggy. I don’t process what is happening until I witness a young woman pass by. She is wearing toe shoes and carrying a canvas tote. She reaches into the bag and retrieves a single, flimsy, white paper napkin.

"Here,” says the young woman and she holds out the napkin without delaying for questions. She moves through the scene, her arm straight with the assured grip of a born mother, totally undaunted. She does not stop walking, not for a second. “Clean yourself up.”

The middle-aged woman doesn’t speak. She brings the napkin to her mouth and dabs at her chapped, pink lips. After a second, I remove myself and move along too. Nothing to see here. Whenever I am corrected, it is my first instinct to verbally confirm with another human being that I realize I have made a mistake. As if I can somehow lessen my degree of error by letting everyone know that I too understand my fallibility.

I wonder what it feels like to mutely accept the universe's care? If a stranger's outstretched hand and paper napkin looks like a gift or a jeer? If it even really matters how it feels?

socks, anti-aging and peanut butter

In late August, hoards of young Ivy Leaguers descend.

I sell them 3 subject notebooks. I sell them dry erase boards. I sell them flash drives in the shape of cars, sharks and Stewie Griffin. When I ask for photo identification, I’m presented with college IDs on crimson lanyards. I smile at the genuineness, the sometimes less than covert human desire to proclaim, “Look! I’ve made it! Affirm my effort!”

At 11 pm, after I’ve punched out of work, I ride the bus. At my stop, I thank the bus driver because I wasn’t raised here and I walk the two blocks to my apartment. It’s dark and quiet and sometimes – if I let it – the cemetery I must pass, unnerves me. I’m not afraid of tombstones, just stillness. The way tricolor, foil pinwheels on children’s graves glint and catch moonlight. I’m uneasy of time. So, I imagine what I’d do if I were jumped. I count the streetlights. I try to drown out the calm with too much thinking.

When I arrive home, I let my dog outside. I take off my pants. I make a peanut butter sandwich. I talk on the phone to A. I send a text to B, another to L, a final to A. Something inane like, Meow, or I want brunch in and around my mouth. I read. I write. I listen to music. I refuse to sit quietly.

At the roughly appointed time, I wash my face. I brush my teeth and put on wrinkle cream because once, while still in university, I overheard girls my age saying they wore wrinkle cream. That it was never too young to start. That they’d preserve their skin, their beauty, their youth long into the future. I smear on wrinkle cream like I might live forever. I put on socks.

After this, I lay down beneath a scratchy wool blanket pilfered from my dad’s house. I turn out the lights. I lay still in the darkness, I create lists in my head, I edit them, I write stories and dialogues and poetry until wakefulness eludes me. I sleep.

This was not the life I imagined for myself as a college freshman. 40 hours a week in retail, eating peanut butter at midnight, just outside the city. This was not my expectation.

I always imagined adulthood would feel more solid. Even as I stood on the threshold of my twenties, I assumed by the time I moved out of my parents’ house, I’d have it more thoroughly figured out. Perhaps I wouldn’t live in a fabulous 1-bedroom apartment (I don’t) and likely I wouldn’t spend every day modishly dressed (style is confined to Fridays, dinner dates, and hosting visitors), but I would at least know what I want.

I haven't got any idea of what to want. 

Any person who claims to “know thyself” is a liar. This is what I’ve learned about being an adult. Nobody has any idea about what they want or need in the long run. It is a daily assessment. The realization feels sort of good and sometimes slightly awful.