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Fri | December 09, 2005
the presumptuous white man
I saw him again last night. I am not sure if he was the same person because he was wearing a different jacket-- a blue puffy vest, instead of the black wool coat. But he had the same slightly epileptic energy. He looks like an Aztec totem pole, tall and rectangular, with a solemn face and broad sagging cheeks. He is old, but not weak.
--
On Wednesday night I wanted to go to the Asian American Writers' Workshop for a panel on publishing short stories. However I missed the train by a full two minutes. I watched it glide across the overpass as I walked down Hillside.
As I stood in the cold, reading the train schedule and resenting myself for not putting on my shoes and getting out of the house more quickly, someone walked by behind me.
He didn't stop, but as he passed, he said, "where do you buy the tickets?" I didn't know whether he was talking to me or not-- the voice was a distance away, and not in my direction. I can tell whether sound is coming directly at me. I didn't turn around.
He walked by again seconds later and said, "where do you buy the tickets, I'm asking you nicely." As I turned my head he concluded, "you don't speak English, you're from China."
I do speak English, I half-muttered, the words staying mostly in my mouth.
At the same time he had continued without listening: "I'm from Mexico, I need to get to Penn Station."
"You don't buy the tickets here, you buy them on the train," I said. "The next train is at 6:10, you missed it."
He started to say something else but I walked away.
I thought how he irritated me: "I'm asking you nicely." He had taken on an adversarial tone. I had not done anything and he had escalated things to a confrontation. I wasn't ignoring you, I should have said. He should have said 'excuse me' and then waited for me to turn around. Instead he presumed it was my fault-- it was that I did not understand English. He just kept talking; he didn't wait for me to confirm or deny anything he had said.
When he said he was from Mexico I started to feel that he was just saying lines. That he was an actor and that he was delivering lines. I think I do this sometimes to convince myself that something isn't real, so I don't need to deal with it. "I'm from Mexico, I need to get to Penn Station." It sounded like he was just saying it. And it did not make sense- if he really thought I didn't speak English, why did he keep talking?
He didn't seem like he was from Mexico. He said "I'm asking you nicely" and who says that except white Americans and perhaps British people? It was in his manner- he just seemed like this societal white guy, who has supper and calls his basement the cellar. And it was in the capitalist way he situated himself in relation to me- the way he thought of himself and the way he thought of me. Unless Mexicans are capitalists, but I suspect they are not.
--
I saw him last night on the 10:39. He was wearing a blue puffy vest and he had a blue bag from the Met. He had gotten up as the train pulled into Chatham. There was a moment- a mental skip- when I saw him. He had just skipped himself and I skipped as his finished. I walked by and he went back a few seats to talk to another old white man. I don't know whether they knew each other or if he started the conversation just then. At any rate they talked to each other -mostly the Mexican to the second man, rather than vice versa- and I did not listen.
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