Lydia’s Blog

I have a rare gift. Very rare, it would seem. That gift is the following: I am like catnip to raving, often intoxicated indigents. If there is a reeking, loudly swearing reprobate within 200 meters, he or she will find me, find a seat immediately next to me, and proceed to put on a great show.

This happens at least once a week. Last week there was the grunter on the U-Bahn…who parked himself basically on my lap and proceeded to empty a large carton of boxed wine into (and onto) himself. Two days ago, it was the odd, trousers-averse Pacific-islands native who refused to stop touching my hair and telling me about our beautiful children as I flipped through a magazine at a cafe.

Earlier today, as I sunbathed a bit in the park, drinking coffee and unobtrusively reading The Economist, I was unsurprised to see a disgruntled and disorderly homeless man plop down next to me. He muttered, bleched and drank for a bit before snoozing for a bit. After waking up, he saw the cover of my magazine and decided to give a particularly mean-spirited monologue about how Americans destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq and if he wasn’t personally more vigilant (thus able to round up and lead his countrymen), we’d end up flattening Germany as well. When this line of thinking led him into a particularly nasty exposition about how I had probably bought my vagina from Louis Vuitton, people in the vicinity began to quietly gather their belongings and move away.

I just sat it out until the guy got bored and moved on. Took about two hours.

Why me? I sometimes wonder, in such situations. I have a couple of theories.

One, my mother constantly used to bring people around that were, well, not exactly considered the height of savory by normal society. The weren’t white-supremacists or pedophiles exactly–they were people she’d meet at the local public access TV stations, or comic book conventions. While most people (including my Dad, if left uncoerced) would politely steer way and I mean way the fuck clear of these people, by mother found them uniformly charming. For these men, In her book, living with their moms at age 37, having never had any contact with a three-dimensional woman, and having doll collections would be qualified as considerable strengths. Other plusses included personal hygiene incongruities, the constant presence of clothing featuring DC characters, and hairstyles as “hommages” (to Elvis, Wolverine, Andy Kaufmann, etc.)

She gave these men what so few people in their lives were giving them: a non-judgemental reaction. Although there are obvious differences, between these two cases, I also find myself unwillng to scowl and pull my newspaper over myself in cover as these people come near. I won’t stand up and march indignantly to the other side of the train, plopping back down with a caustic sigh. These people are pretty awful and annoying, sure, but they also probably didn’t mean to turn out the way they have. If I’m the one person that smiles and treats them kindly in a day, who does that hurt?

On my first trip to New York City at about age nine (with the St. James Church Choir), I walked past the then-ubiquitous wall of bums at Grand Central Station (right in the main hall…as you walk toward the tracks out to CT and suburban NY). I was reaching into my pocket to grab a quarter for a crying legless guy when the choir director’s wife grabbed my wrist and marched me away from both the bums and the other kids.

“Don’t go near the dirty people.” She hissed at me.

My Dad was different. He’d never provoke or approach an encounter with an indigent, but if one were to occur, he always seemed to know how to end it as quickly as possible while also seeming inhumanly friendly.

My second theory is the following: These people can smell their own.

What makes sane, normal people into babbling crazies that fall through the uneven slats of our society’s idea of decorum? It’s probably a combination of things. Maybe it’s a inborn tenuousness in terms of mental health, exacerbated by substance abuse, trauma or both, and topped by a healthy squirt of desperation and a gleaming cherry of lonliness to boot.

Recently, I’ve taken to talking to myself. Of course, I’ve always mumbled to myself in private, but I’ve been catching more public incidences as well.

A few days back, I was settled on a bench at one of the more apalling pomo coffee shops on my street, which happened to be quite crowded at the time. I got up to grab a water. When I came back to my spot, a choice pomo couple was preparing to settle there, somehow deciding to ignore my bag, nearly-full-coffee, and spread-open magazine. I gently pushed past them…going to reclaim my perch.

“Hey dickholes, I’m already sitting there…” I thought. Or I think I thought. Or I think I thought I thought.

Completely involuntarily, my inner monologue had managed to go public. The pomo couple turned and glared at me, incredulous. I recognized their look. I think I smiled.

In any case, I got my seat back.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 11th, 2006 at 8:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.