Usually the time
in the subway
is reserved, in my mind,
for playing
Angry Birds,
Plants v Zombies,
or Carcasonne,
mind distracting games
after an
overbusy overstimulated
morning of getting the kid
to school.
Sometimes a friend
sees me, or I
see a friend,
and
we chitchat.
But one day,
recently,
I noticed
my breath.
I didn’t take a
device out
of my bag.
From the stop
near the school
to the stop
near my office
I counted.
In out. One.
In out. Two.
Three stops later.
In out. Forty-four.
There were delays
in the subway
that morning.
Typical MUNI.
I panicked when
I counted
“In out. Sixty.”
Sometimes the subway
feels too small.
And then I feel
slightly crazy
and completely human.
I watched the man sleep.
I watched the woman
tap tap tap tap tap
on a device.
I admired a pair
of shoes.
I wondered how she
got her hair to be
just
like
that.
I felt invisible
while
paying attention.
In out. Eighty-one.
At last.
Grateful for
time
instead of
anxiety.
Category Archives: storytelling
The Driver
“In Ethiopia it’s 70 degrees and sunny every day, I miss that weather,” says the driver as we make small chat about the freezing weather and snow in DC. Then the conversation veers around where I live (San Francisco), where he used to live (Ethiopia), what he likes about being a driver. “Do you drive,” he asks? “As little as possible,” I reply, “I prefer to passenger on planes trains cars, and pedestrian as much as I can.” I mention my daughter. She wants to learn to drive someday. Sometimes, I’ve noticed, well, more often than not, if I mention that I’m a parent then I’m assumed to be straight unless I quickly (often non sequitorly) append a reference to my wife.
He mentions that he has a friend, from Ethiopia, who moved to San Jose, while he, the driver, lives in Virginia. His friend told him, “don’t visit me here.” He asked why. The friend responded, “there are a lot of gays here.” He asked me, “Is San Francisco full of gays?”
I wondered where this conversation was wandering. It felt slightly awkward. “There aren’t any gay people in Ethiopia,” he continued, “people hurt and kill gay people. I don’t understand the gays. I have a friend, she says she’s lesbian, and she asks me all the time if I’m okay with gay.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. With the conversation threads of immigrating from a country where being gay means invisible or harmed (how can you harm and kill gays if nobody is gay?), the friend who doesn’t like the gays in San Jose, …. It seemed the odds weren’t good for this conversation and I felt trapped in the back of the car.
I’ve had this experience before. A driver chitchats, I respond and add to the conversation, eventually I’m asked if I have children, if I’m married. Yes, yes, I reply. And, inevitably, “what does your husband do?” And so, “oh, no husband,” I cheerily say, “I have a wife.” The majority of the time, “oh, my mistake” is the response and the conversation continues, but a few times there is silence for the rest of the ride, the driver, the married dyke out of the closet in the back seat.
This driver continued, “I don’t understand gay, I don’t know any gays, besides my friend who says she’s lesbian, my friend in San Jose is afraid of the gays, sometimes I think I see gay people here in U.S., in my country being gay is not okay.”
“If she says she’s a lesbian, then isn’t she a lesbian, not just saying she is?” I challenge him. He considers, “I don’t care who anyone is, it’s just that I grew up where there are no gays, gays are hurt and killed.”
Then we were at the airport. My heart was beating faster. “Thank you for the ride,” I say, “you’ve met one more gay. I’m married to a woman.” His head whipped around, “you? Really? No way.” Keeping a quiver out of my voice, not having felt so slightly afraid of coming out to someone in a long time, “yes, I’m a lesbian like your friend, and I have a wife who I’ve been with for 15yrs and we have a daughter.”
I smile and step out of the car and walk into the airport. I wasn’t in danger but I was so shaky nervous.
The more people know “the gays,” the less likely they are to vote, or advocate, against civil and human rights for LGBT people. One towncar driver at a time. Speak up.
Slide Snow
It was my wife’s birthday. I had not been cross country skiing in 20, or more, years. We rented skis poles boots at Tahoe Donner cross country and consulted the map. The woman at the counter said the green (“easy”) trails to the Cookhouse could be done by us and the 8yearolds. We set a course …
and skiied off into the forest.
The downhill was faster than I expected. This was an “easy” trail? It wasn’t going to be easy for the 8yrolds to ski/climb back up.
The best parts of any skiing, downhill or xcountry, for me, are the moments of silence with trees and snow and air.
After lunch we started to climb back up the hill, my wife with our daughter encouraging her to keep going, and I went ahead. I carried both worry, that our daughter was too tired to ski the rest of the way, and joy, skiing climbing alone in a snowy forest as the sun set over treetops. A fine treasure.
I stopped at a bench at a trail intersection and they met me there — my wife towing our daughter using a ski pole as the tow line. And so we continued back.
We consulted the map again. 8 miles. No wonder it was exhausting for the kids! Happy new year!
Who’s the bully?
I stopped work early today to pick up my daughter who, this morning, mentioned she was really tired. I thought it’d help her to come home early and get some downtime. I got on MUNI to head towards the stop near her school. In the subway, downtown, the streetcar lurched and screeched and screamed in a sudden fast stop. I was standing, holding on, and I fell, flew forward down the aisle, caught myself on my knees and hands. It happened in seconds. I saw a woman, sitting, fall forward and hit her head on a pole.
The man who had been standing next to me did nothing, watched me as I got up and caught his eye, turned away from me. The elderly ladies sitting in seats exclaimed, “are you OK? would you like my seat? Do you need help?” I felt bruised and scraped and slightly embarrassed as I picked myself up, grabbed my bag of computer and gadgets and regained my position on the streetcar. I was fine. My knees ached, I could feel the scraped skin, my hands burning from the landing, and I’m just waiting for 3 more stops to pass so I can get off this bully of a streetcar.
I grew up in the country, in a beautiful house on beautiful land with beautiful views, at the top of a hill with a 1/4 mile long gravel driveway from the local highway up to our house. Early every morning, as a child, I would walk/run down the gravel driveway, with its curves, past the clump of trees where my imagination claimed tigers and lions lived, to meet the school bus down on the local country highway. I rode the bus for an hour to get to school. Sometimes I would fall while running down the last hill, rocks scraping into my knees, above my knee socks, below my skirt or dress hem. I’d get onto the school bus with bleeding knees, some kids would point and laugh at me, and the ever gracious kind bus driver, Nancy, would hand me bandaids.
Today on MUNI, with my knees aching and feeling scraped after falling and flying down the aisle, the memory of the gravel driveway and running for the school bus felt fresh, along with the memory of the kids making fun of me. There were a lot of bullies in my elementary and jr high and high school years. In elementary school, for a year or two I had pointy toed saddle shoes and kicked-in-the-shins anyone who made fun of me or my friends. Was I a bully too? Or was I protecting myself? What’s really the difference? Aren’t some bullies acting out of reactionary self-loathing?
Recently I felt bullied on Twitter, reminded of the gravel grinding into the skin of my knees, when a friend wrote vitriol and curses to me and my wife. She’s since removed the curses that she directed at me and my wife.
My wife, Moya Watson, has written and spoken a lot about, and helped create media about, bullying online and offline and within one’s self. The way she listens and hears the stories and experiences of others, expresses, her own and other’s experiences, and weaves all of the humanity, is a luminescent beauty.
Last night I went to a splendiforous dinner party at Firehouse 8 where the entreaty at the start of dinner, once everyone was seated, was to leave our inner critics at the door. That can be a self-bully, that inner critic. The one who can say you’re not ____ enough.
So this city, these friends, that friend, those people, the damn streetcar, your own self, we it all have bullies within and around us. The trick for me right now, the attention, is to be aware and conscious of the full drama of humanity, also, within and around, with love and kindness on the flip side of anger bullying criticism.
