Stranger
Idiot, idiot, IDIOT!
You’re so damn shy! What will you even SAY?
You’re a man now and this could be totally inappropriate. What if a man is the reason she’s out there in the first place!
Still, I couldn’t bear the darker possibilities my mind was inventing around her and the way she was sitting and the space she was staring into and…
oncoming traffic.
I tried not to be seen until I was right back in front of her, unbearably, inconveniently, excruciatingly awkwardly on the ground by the crosswalk button that I and others needed to use. I would royally resent this in a vacuum, but it also had all the makings of an unconscious cry for help. If you need to cry alone, a crosswalk isn’t the place to do it.
Idiot, idiot, idiot…what do I say?! Do I sit down? Am I a creep? A creepy fucking man now. Good job, dumbass. Now you’re in over your head.
How long will I be here?
Fucking autistic brain and its schedule selfishness fuck fuck what do I say how do I-
“Are you okay?”
A nod.
I figure my natural lack of eye contact might actually make things…less creepy? Less cloying, maybe. Good, good.
Take it slow-
“Do you…do you need anything?”
No.
“Do you uh, um…want me to sit a little?”
Something nonverbal but it looks like assent and I see her eyes this time.
I sit.
“I-I live nearby actually. I couldn’t help but notice.”
Idiot. Dance around the stuff…what are you supposed to make small talk with? Aren’t you supposed to do that with people in crisis?
Is this even a crisis? Idiot! Don’t say your age, because it would be confusing. A 29 year-old man who probably still passes for 16 at this point. Do we really wanna explain that? Idiot, idiot, idiot-
I-I love to walk before I go work. I work from home.”
Does she even have a home? Idiot.
Do you walk here every day?
“Yes.”
Good. Words. She is not scared?
We sit some more.
I pay attention to where my head goes and try not to stare or anything, but I also try not to look disengaged or distracted or distanced in a way that isn’t just the perfectly-calibrated, respectful sort of distance that I have read a man is supposed to give, because men can be dangerous, and I am one now.
But, dammit, I am also a human, and she seems to have a silent space that needs to be filled by a human. Men are humans.
Idiot. Now it’s awkward silence. Now what? Am I too close? Am I being creepy? I’m so small; it’s probably fine. Idiot.
We sit some more.
Don’t say your name.
Your voice is too low now, and you still haven’t mastered it, and it’ll come out as a mumble again and you’ll have to say it again and you sure as HELL don’t look like a ‘Norman’ and how the fuck would you explain-
“I-I’m sorry. I’m very shy. I love this time of day.”
What the fuck was that? You ‘love this time of day’. Way to go, you awkward dumbass. Are you even helping?
But the silence seems okay, and she seems okay with it. We sit some more.
I’m turning the meeting twenty minutes from now and the wording of the slack message I’m about to send about missing it over and over in my mind when she stands up abruptly and walks away.
Don’t follow her.
I cross to the other side of the street, though, and I spy a little. I placate myself with what seems like her reasonably straight, reasonably less-distraught style of movement as she fades from the corner of my eye.
That one little jog she did to cross another street seemed a little careless, but-
Don’t follow her.
It might have been my gut this time. Something said that I was a stranger, and that my job was done. Also that men shouldn’t follow people.
MAYBE your job is done. Maybe she’s not okay. But what can you do?
Idiot. Go to your meeting.
Yeah, a stranger. I’m Norman the stranger.
Strangers are useful, right? A stranger can stop a spiral, right? A brief interrupt, an idiot little stranger, maybe enough of a distraction, enough of a presence to scientifically snap a mind in a bad moment out of-
Stranger. Norman the stranger.
I say it quietly to the air this time, and make myself feel bigger than I am. Empathy is a bastard, and I probably still am, too, and I walk home and I go to my meeting.
