Brand New Horizon

(in which we discuss the finer points of city living)


A few weeks ago, I got stopped by a homeless guy on the street.  I still felt new to the city: I knew the routes to and from all the necessary places, but they didn’t feel like habit yet.  And the nighttime walk home from work still looked like the opening scene in a horror movie.

In short, the homeless guy unsettled me.

Most of the time, I can duck around just about anybody and get away without real interaction.  I think a lifetime of shyness has prepped me pretty well for walking through a city; my immediate response to any reaching out is to shrink and squirm away.  But I was distracted that day.  I had a build-up of texts and emails on my phone, and I was still within sight of work, so I hadn’t yet built up the wall of resistance.  Anyway, he took me by surprise, and before I knew it, we were in some deviated form of conversation.

He started off with a “hey, can’t you help me out.”  I think I responded with a deer-in-the-headlights look.

He proceeded to tell me that I look like a Barbie doll, to hug me without my permission, and to ask if I could give him some sanitary napkins.  I answered, in an especially girly voice, that I didn’t have any, and ran away.

I had to throw the shirt straight in the laundry, of course.  I’m not saying all homeless guys are dirty, but I think if they’re asking for sanitary napkins, you can probably assume.  Besides, who knows who that guy has hugged?

I thought about it the whole way home.  I tried to think my way through it, so I could shrug it off me like a sweater and forget it ever happened.  I ended up wondering most about the Barbie thing.  I don’t look remotely like a Barbie, so it puzzled me.  Maybe he thought all young women look like Barbies, or maybe all white girls?  Or maybe someone had told him that was the best way to give a lady a compliment.  Or, maybe, he really thought I looked like one.  I usually clip my hair up so that some of it kind of bounces over the side, and I don’t know--that could look like a Barbie thing?  The bouncing bit?

Or maybe I should stop trying to analyze the verbal stylings of a man asking for sanitary napkins.

Anyway, when I got back to my apartment, I just thought, “Hey, welcome to the city, kid.”

The homeless here are ubiquitous.  I don’t know if Seattle has an especially high population of homeless, or if I notice it because the city is so beautiful and full of trees and you can always see the water, or if I notice it because I grew up in the suburbs and I really don’t know what city life is like.  But much like the napkin man, that fact of it took me by surprise.

I guess I’m used to it now.  I’ve got my bob-and-weave style down.  I know the way home and I don’t care about taking it at night.  Sometimes when I walk the overpass, I just stand there a while.  Twenty feet to my left is a mini-park, and most nights, someone sleeps there.  The homeless go to bed early.  By my standards, anyway.

Sometimes I play a game.  I don’t know if the game is evidence of my slack morality and poor character, or if it’s just a self-protective reflex against a horror I have no power to change.  I call it “Homeless or Hipster?”  It’s pretty self-evident: I see someone who looks unwashed, unshaven, carrying a bag or two, sitting on the ground.  I take a guess.  If eventually I see a Starbucks cup or a sketch in progress, then hipster it is.  If one of the bags is a trash bag, then it’s homeless.  Sometimes I never reach a definitive conclusion.

When I think back on the napkin man, it brings up a few tangential thoughts.  I don’t like to be hugged by people.  There are exceptions, but in general, I’m not a hugger.  Of course, being hugged by a homeless man is a little worse than being hugged by a clean, employed acquaintance, but I would request neither.  Unfortunately for me, a lot of girls like to hug.  When I was a kid, girls liked hugging, and squealing, and makeup, and Leonardo DiCaprio.  I was kind of into black eyeliner, but the rest of these were lost on me.  Still, I was acutely aware of how well, or not well, I fit with other girls, so I learned to adapt.  I don’t shrink away from the hug.  I let it happen, and I don’t even wince.  I do tend to over-pat though.  Excessive back-patting is now my thing.  I think it’s my involuntary method of distancing myself from the hug.  You can get the girl out of awkward, but...

One of my housemates in college was sitting in our living room one day, reading about prisoners on death row.  They’re all in isolation, and they’re there for years.  The isolation drives them a little insane, in the strangest ways.  Apparently more than a few of them start acting out with the intention of getting the guards to beat them up.  It’s been so long since they’ve been touched by another human being that even this rough treatment is preferable to nothing.

I can’t help but connect the story of the prisoners to the napkin man.  I don’t have any words to give the connection, but it’s there.  I suppose it’s another self-protective reflex that we ignore it.  But sometimes I wish we wouldn’t.  I don’t know what we’d do if we didn’t.  I don’t know what there is to do.  And I guess most other people don’t either.  So we back-pat a little excessively, give a heavy sigh and a shrug, and go about our days.

The shyness has served me well.  I know just how to lock down any connection, any unwanted emotion, and shove it in a box somewhere.  I’m never touched by anything unwanted for too long.  Already, the napkin man has faded from unpleasantness.

I don’t know what disservice I do myself with this.  I don’t really have the time to figure it out.  Who ever does?

Unwrite Your Life!

Hello, blog babies!

Upon reflection, I have realized that my last post, though earnest, was a bit of a downer.  So I figure maybe it’s time for an upper--or, at least, a post that wouldn’t sound weird if you read the whole thing in an up-at-the-end valley-girl accent.

How do I think I might accomplish this?  By listing things, of course!

At any given time, I have lists floating around in my head.  Sometimes I write them down, but usually I don’t.  Basically, I prefer to keep my entire life-schedule memorized at all times, thereby eliminating the need for a planner--or written down lists.

I’m usually surprisingly good at doing this.  Or, let me rephrase--I’m surprisingly well organized compared to a lot of other people, considering that I never write anything down.

It’s not a foolproof system, obviously.  For some reason, even if I can remember 15 different meetings/work times/classes for weeks on end, even when the times change (and in the jobs I’ve worked, they changed quite a bit,) I cannot seem to remember more than two grocery items at a time.

But, alas, there comes a time in a young man’s life when she must admit that owning a planner is maybe the adult thing to do.  So...I don’t know...I guess I’ll get one of those sometime...maybe.

In the meantime, I’m going to write down some of my life-lists right! here!

Right now, my three working lists are: Things I Seriously Need to Do in the Next Few Weeks, Things I Want to Do Sometime Before I Die, and Things I Would Do if I Got the Novel Published and/or Won the Lottery Despite Never Buying Lottery Tickets.

Kthxherewego.

Things I Seriously Need to Do in the Next Few Weeks:

-Trade in my car!  I’m actually working on this one.  This very Saturday, I have plans to see some cars.  I love Cherie (the 2001 Hyundai Elantra I’ve been driving for 3 years and yes, I named her, and yes, she has a gender, shut up,) but she’s getting on in years.  I can’t even drive her to work without experiencing a paralyzing-death-fear anytime I hear a sound I cannot immediately place.  And, um, not a huge deal or anything, but I’m sort of moving to Seattle in a few weeks?  Yeah, that’s a thing.  And Cherie is not gonna survive that trek.  So, sadly, I must put her to pasture and start anew.

speaking of Seattle...

-Find a new place to live!  I could write SEVERAL paragraphs on this one, but it takes up about half of my waking thought already, so I’m gonna breeze right past it instead.

-Find a new job!  Basically, I’ve been going on indeed.com and searching “creative writer.”  I’ve found a few good ones, several more mediocre ones, and ones that at least sound better than how I get my money now.  So...yay?  I’m also halfway signed up with a tutoring service.  Yay for my SAT scores getting me paid!!!

-Buy a new computer!  Seriously.  Seriously.  I’m on Momsy’s right now.  It’s burning my fingers.  My own personal computer has been incapable of turning on for three months.

-Really, really, figure out what I can leave behind, and start packing all of it.  I’ve got way too much stuff.  It can’t all come with me.  I’ve already donated a mess load of stuff--mostly things that have been in storage for 5+ years--the kind of stuff I didn’t want to take to college with me but just couldn’t quite part with yet.  I’ve parted with a lot of it now, but I still have almost a whole box of Buffy magazine cutouts.  It kind of looks like I’m a Buffy-obsessed serial killer.  (Which surprises no one, I’m sure.)

Alright.  This is getting a little long, so let’s break it into parts, shall we?  We shall!

Here concludes part one.  Part two will, of course, be--”Things I Want to Do Sometime Before I Die.”

Night night, blog babies.