5/13/2021 Ass Outta u & Me
While waiting my turn at the local food bank today, a gentleman on crutches was exiting, and upon seeing me and my bags (I had my duffel, a pannier, and my backpack on with my bike helmet hanging from the backpack strap), he said, "You look like you must be campin'!" I get that a lot. Not many people ride around with a pannier on their bike, let alone the duffel and backpack. Even in bike-friendly towns, the most you usually see is a little pannier on a city bike. Anyway, "Yeah," I say. Then the inevitable, "Where at?" "Ohhh, I don't like to say, really..." I let the rest of the sentence trail off as he sort of interrupts me. Not really in a rude or narcissistic way, just in that enthusiastic friendly-conversation way. Or maybe it was a narcissism thing, but he's just better at hiding it than others. At this point, and this became clear pretty immediately, he assumes that I'm scared stiff of intruders. You know the ones. They're the ones your parents use as scare tactics to get you to lock your car door and never go out at night by yourself. Those ugly, scruffy, rapists, thieves and murderers. They're everywhere. Actually, I agree with this, but not in the sense that others usually mean it. He proceeds to tell me about a woman he knows who lives outside town who's got acreage and would be happy to host us so that we could have a place where we would feel safer. At this point, he thinks I'm by myself as I haven't mentioned Adam yet. I give the usual polite responses that are expected of me in a situation such as this: "Okay, cool!" and, "Thanks, I appreciate it." During this shorter exchange, he mentions the safety issue at least twice. Since by this time it is my turn to go into the food bank, we agree that he'll wait outside in his car for me to go through then he'll give me the woman's phone number.
I go through the pantry, and to be honest, I got distracted and completely forgot about the dude. I apologized about it at the beginning and end of our subsequent conversation. He didn't seem bothered by it at all, but the woman in the car with him didn't really seem amused. She was looking at her phone for the duration of the conversation, sometimes nodding yes or no, though I'm not sure whether it was along with the conversation or to things she was seeing on her screen. Our second interaction here is where it really got interesting. So he gives me the woman's phone number whose property I'm "welcome" to stay at, for a fee, of course. That fee being her use of my able body for her own ends. Apparently, I'd be helping to build greenhouses in exchange for camping and access to water and, "all that good stuff." Not that I necessarily have anything against building greenhouses, but no one on this planet that I have encountered has just "let" me stay with them without expecting something in return. Especially in the last 14 years. Once, after Adam and I had moved to Indiana from Ohio, I was considering going back to Ohio for a week for a dance thing. I was asking friends in Ohio about staying for a week, and one of them, I shit you not, told me we could stay there, and that "we could work something out like doing some yard work and walking the dogs. Stuff like that. "Seriously? I'm staying for a week FOR A GIG, and you expect me to live your life for you?! Hell fuckin' no. You're the one who got the fucking dog. You fucking walk it. I didn't go back to Ohio for that gig. I didn't really want to in the first place. We just needed somewhere to go. You're the one who wants to build the greenhouses, you fucking build them. Again, it's not that I wouldn't do it. I'm all about gardening! Shit, I love it! There are few things that bring me as great a satisfaction as eating food that I raised from seed. I just don't appreciate the insinuation that it is expected of me. If my welcome at your home is contingent upon me doing your work for you, then that, in itself, is the antithesis of welcome. Welcome, like love, is unconditional. To say you love a person unconditionally is redundant. Same goes for welcome. So the guy and I are discussing subjects along the lines of "living your life," and "going with your gut," and how God's knowledge is innate and that most people don't use it. You got that right, buddy. But for the wrong damn reason. So he's on and on about "not being afraid to take adventures," and "shutting people out of your life and the experiences you'll miss because of it." I manage to get in edgewise that, "Yeah, that'sss......part of why I'm out here on my bicycle." Now, I don't necessarily disagree with him on this point. If you live your life in fear, then yes, it can paralyze you, and that's not living. He related an anecdote: "I was married to a woman for 30 years," he says. "She was abused as a child," and he goes on to explain how she had built a castle wall around herself and how she was the only one inside, and, "Guess who was on the outside?" Of course, he was begging for my sympathy here, but he did not get it. "Everyone." I say. "Yeah that's right, everyone," but the answer he was looking for was himself. He then went on to ask, "How many experiences did she miss out on because she was blocking people out of her life?" What I said at the time was, "That's too bad, I'm sorry to hear that," and it is. And I was. But later it occurred to me that he's asking the wrong question. What he should be asking is: "What have I done in my life to establish and perpetuate the environment against which she had to defend herself?" He obviously wanted to be inside that castle wall, no matter the cost to his wife. He thought he deserved it, and in my opinion, the very act of thinking he deserved it, rescinds the privilege. It sounds to me like he just wanted her to be who he wanted her to be instead of who she was. He didn't care about her healing, he only cared that he was outside that castle wall and wanted to be inside it. He only cared about himself. Same situation in my conversation with him: he didn't care about my safety. He didn't bother to ask why I don't like to tell people where we're camped, he assumed the answer which allowed him to justify assuming the role of savior to me. For the record, the reason I don't like to tell people where we're camped, and I did end up getting to tell him this, is that it's not that I necessarily think he has nefarious intentions, or even anyone he might tell, but maybe someone they might tell, or someone they might tell. Not that that person would be like, "alright, Friday! 10pm! Bitch rapin' time!" but that person might just end up somewhere near where I'm camped by chance because, hey--it's public land. Maybe they get drunk. Maybe they're an opportunist. Maybe they think, "hey, this is where so-and-so said that chick was camping, I'm gonna see if I can find her." They might not have bad intentions that first time, but, like I said, maybe they are an opportunist, and upon seeing me and what I have, what's to stop them from just taking it or coming back and trying to create another opportunity for themselves to take what I have? Or maybe they tell someone else about something that I have and say, "hey she's homeless, just go take it from her, what's she gonna do?" And why do I want a pop-in like that? I'm content with my own company and that of Adam. I don't really care for the pop-in. Especially from strangers. Actually, to be perfectly honest, it's the strangers I mind less. The random strangers just out on a hike? They don't usually stick around too long. The people I know generally just want to spectate my life as if I'm a sideshow at the circus. Whether it is to mentally criticize to lift their own low self-esteem or to spectate something they themselves long to do but know they never will, I still don't care for it. I didn't get that far though. When I told him about, "maybe it's not someone you might tell, but someone they might tell, or someone they might tell," with a know-it-all, let-me-stop-you-right-there," tone in his voice, he says, "I'm interested in statistics and numbers and all that." Puzzled at the sudden subject change, I say, "oh yeah?" He says, "The likelihood of something like that happening is so small." "All it takes is one, though." I reply. He agreed, but I could tell he didn't like it. He went on to talk about how dangers are all around us. "Airplanes could fall from the sky!" "Exactly," I say. So we're agreeing that the dangers are all around, but he just doesn't want to accept that maybe, just maybe, I just don't want visitors. He would rather believe the falsity that I am unhappy with so little contact with others in my life than the face the truth that I might just not like him. So the end of the conversation starts to roll around, and he starts on with a new tactic. Now he's giving me a pep talk about going with my gut and just trusting people. He says that his head is sometimes right but has steered him wrong plenty of times in life, but his gut has "never been wrong." I'm agreeing with him because, y'know...I've had bad feelings about people in my life that absolutely turned out to be true...who hasn't, right? But in my head, I'm going, "kinda like now?" I ask him if he watched Seinfeld when it ran, he says, yeah a bit. So I relate to him an episode where George is wallowing in his sorrow of having lost his ex-girlfriend, Susan. Kramer comes in and George asks him whether or not he should call Susan, "Now what does the little man inside you say? See you gotta listen to the little man." A devastated George replies, "My little man doesn't know." Kramer: "The little man knows all." With that, I give a very Kramerian exit. For comedic effect, I turn around and raise my hand in the air as I take a few steps away from the car. I come back, we shake hands, he makes a few last attempts to convince me that I don't know what's good for myself and that he does, and he leaves. I pack my bike up and head home, where I can be at peace. Comments are closed.
|
Archives
February 2024
CategoriesAll Eats Gear HSFRL Lifestyle Nugs Opinion Patterns Recipies Travel |