by Jane Borden
The first time you’re captured in the background of a tourist’s photo.
The first time you picnic in Central Park and don’t feel like you’re in a movie.
Although there are certainly other universally encountered questions in New York, for example, “Spare some change?” and “What are you looking at?” there is no other that elicits such a variety of answers—not even, “Who’s your favorite cat in Cats?”
“Putting aside the unbridled aggression thing for a minute,” I said, this time using my vocal cords, “how can you even argue that one definition could apply to everyone in this city? I know the subway really well; you could drop me anywhere and I’d find my way home. That makes me feel like a New Yorker. But there are people on the Upper East Side who’ve never been in the subway. Are you telling me that means they aren’t New Yorkers?”
“Of course that’s not what I’m saying,” he boasted. “Just the other day, I was told to fuck off by a dude in a suit getting out of a limo.”
Arguing with him was like shouting at deaf people, or more specifically at my deaf cat, as she is also very annoying.
“You’re implying that these belligerent New Yorkers had never accosted strangers before they moved here. And, furthermore, that people in other places around the globe don’t scream at strangers.”
“New Yorkers are born in other parts of the world every minute,” he countered. “Sadly, some of them never get here.”
So being a New Yorker is like being a preop transexual? That idea is preposterous—although, it did seem true in his case, as he was acting like a superfluous dick.
“What about people who were born here?” I asked. “Surely there are some who’ve never had this ‘Eff-you moment’.”
“Being born in New York does not necessarily make you a New Yorker,” he said. “There are more people in the city who weren’t born here than who were. Native New Yorkers are a minority. Therefore, based on the numbers, being born here cannot necessarily define you as a New Yorker.”
He’d made this argument before; it was well rehearsed. What infuriated me was that much of it made sense.
“Look,” he sighed. “You know I’m right; you’re only fighting me because you’ve never done it.”
“No, I honestly believe—”
“Where are you from?” he interrupted.
“North Carolina, but I don’t see what—”
“Southern: typical.”
“What?”
“You people are very passive-aggressive.”
“Well, geez!” I said, before sighing audibly, crossing my legs, and looking the other way.
“Exactly,” he snarled.
It’s true. I’ve littered countless squares of innocent sidewalk with furious mutterings intended for my aggressors. Some of the things I’ve said to concrete include, “Maybe you should get out of the road,” “Maybe you’re blocking the stairs,” and, my personal favorite, “Oh yeah? Well. Yeah!” Zingers, all of them, eh? I really showed that crosswalk who’s boss.
I never fight back. Ever. Not once have I returned a verbal assault hurled at me on the streets of New York. Yet I am doomed to remember them all. My brain keeps a perverse catalog, and there’s one in particular that’s never on back order. Every time I see an overweight, baseball-capped man with a beard—which is pretty frequently in New York—I cower slightly out of muscle memory. While crossing an intersection in Hell’s Kitchen our shoulders bumped and he yelled, “Watch where you’re going!” I stopped, and pulled my head out of my book just in time to make eye contact as he spat, “Stupid bitch!”
OK, I realize that this specific collision was my fault. I also know that, generally, people who read while walking are a special breed of bothersome (I’d grown cocky with the whole hive-brain thing). Still: “Stupid bitch”? He said it with ferocity and intention. The slur was not thoughtless; it was not tossed off. He aimed before he shot; he hit me in the gut and it hurt. So I said, “I’m not a bitch, I’m … I’m a human being!” which is the most cowardly response possible. But, then, of course, I had no reason to be ashamed as I didn’t actually say it out loud.
What a wounded little princess I am, so dumbstruck by the staggering injustices of brutish goombahs. I shouldn’t care. He certainly didn’t: Two seconds later he was whistling. And I was—oh God, it’s embarrassing—crying. Walking along West Forty-Fourth Street crying, asking the sidewalk for justice. “Why did he have to be so mean? Where does he get off? Who gave him the right?” But the sidewalk did not answer; I suspect it couldn’t hear me through the gum.
I try to recall my mother’s directive in situations like this. If, for example, the woman at the U-Save-It checkout counter had been rude, Mom would smile even wider at her and then say, after we left, “You know, she’s probably having a bad day, bless her heart.” But try as I might to cull that sympathy, all I could muster was, “I hope he’s having a bad day!” I was angry: mad enough to stamp my foot, to slam a door. I was so mad, I could have typed in all caps. I felt my face flush. People were staring. My inner response? “See what you made me do? You … stinky-poo!”
I whispered to myself on Forty-Fourth Street, “Let it roll off your back: Be the duck, be the duck.” Be the duck? Like the one in old paintings who’s in the mouth of a Labrador retriever? And anyway, if I’d really let the altercation roll off my back, I wouldn’t remember it so clearly now. Instead, it seeped through my gossamer-thin skin, planted seeds, and blossomed into full-fledged hatred—which also remained inside me.
I’ve never fought with a friend. I’ve never fought with a boyfriend, not even during breakups. I think the last time I screamed at anyone was in boarding school. One afternoon, while hanging out with several other girls in Alice Lute’s dorm room, I got overly excited about some topic—I don’t remember what, but I’m sure it was nerdy. Alice rolled her eyes and said, “Gah, Jane, calm down!” When you’re a spaz, and have spent your whole life being a spaz, you grow very sensitive to those two words and to their judgmental implication, “You are embarrassing me.” It is one of the few things in life that can send me from zero to sixty in an instant.
I shouted at Alice, “I will not calm down!” and then I left, a move that effectively fulfilled her request, considering an absent person is as calm as they come. Thirty seconds later, at the other end of the hallway, still fuming, it dawned on me that the box of Hot Tamales I’d just purchased at the student store was still sitting on her floor. I have lamented the loss of that candy for years.
The bottom line is, I’m completely inept at fighting. Discussions I can nail. But as soon as things get heated, I’m all stutters and tears. I grow irrational and everything comes out wrong. Then I pout, say “That’s not fair!” and run away. Be the duck? Obviously the bird I’ve chosen is ostrich.
So no, my yellow nature was not news to me. But I hadn’t before considered that such passive-aggressive tendencies might be related to my origin of birth. And when I thought about it, Jake’s theory made sense. Of course my skin is thin: It’s completely bereft of scar tissue. If strangers bump into each other in the town where I was reared, the fighting they do is over who can apologize first.
Years ago, Aunt Jane and Uncle Lucius were invited to a cocktail party in Raleigh. At the last minute, my aunt changed her mind. She wasn’t sick; she just didn’t feel like attending. But she couldn’t fathom insulting the host by canceling. So, instead, she convinced my uncle to go alone—and pretend she was there. Throughout the night, when someone asked, “Where’s Jane?” he’d say, “In the living room,” or “By the hors d’oeuvres,” or “You just missed her; she went to the bar.” It was a large party and, as she figured, no one noticed. The following morning, my aunt called to thank her host, telling her it was lovely to see her. She also received a few calls herself, from friends complimenting her on the previous evening’s ensemble. Apparently the emperor was wearing clothes, and they were “divine.”
This is how docile my childhood environm
ent was—all of the time. In polite Southern society, there are no natural predators. We’re a gentle island species that has never known aggression due to an absence of wildcats. The South is like the Galápagos Islands. How ironic that so many people there think Darwin is bunk.
So I guess, before I was the ostrich, I was the big dumb blue-footed booby. I waddled around New York looking to make friends with everyone because I’d never been taught to fear. Hello, shivering man in the oily hooded sweatshirt! Want to come home and meet my mom?
I might not be a fighter, but give me some credit; at least I am no longer a boob. One learns quickly in New York. Allow me to recognize a few of my tutors.
MAN 1: [Holds door open.]
JANE: [Smiles widely.] Thank you. [Walks past.]
MAN 1: Damn, girl, look at that ass.
MAN 2: Excuse me, does this train stop at Park Avenue?
JANE: [Smiles widely.] Well, it stops at Lexington, but Park is just one …
MAN 2: Cause I want to “park” myself in that ass.
MAN 3: [Stares from corner.]
JANE: [Thinks, I know where this is going. Chooses to avoid eyes and look downward instead. Instantly realizes her mistake.]
MAN 3: [Masturbating.] Aaaassssssss.
That last time was the day the booby’s bird brain grew three sizes. I came to understand the notion of predators—and that I am prey. I’m not ashamed to admit it: I am afraid! If that goombah’s first comment made me cry, imagine how damaging his follow-up. It’s not passive-aggressive; it’s just passive. I’ll throw objections and epithets at the sidewalk instead. As opponents, we’re a much better match.
Here’s what I don’t understand, though: If people in the South have found a way to be nice to one another all of the time, why can’t we can achieve that in NYC?
Hilariously ideological or not, I said as much to Jake. His reaction to my naïveté is best described as spit-take.
“Oh please!” he spewed, whiskey dribbling from his mouth. “Everyone’s nice in the South? What a crock of bullshit! They just wait till you leave the room. What’s that saying you have down there? ‘Kill ’em with kindness’? Y’all may use a different weapon, but the intention is the same.”
Ack. Aargh! The sweaty drunk guy was right. I couldn’t stand it. It was like the one time I agreed with a Christopher Hitchens article. Fine, yes: Sometimes Southerners say “ugly” things behind one another’s backs. But you know what? If that goombah had waited to call me a “bitch” until later when he was hanging out with his girlfriends over iced tea, then I wouldn’t have cried all the way down West Forty-Fourth Street. What did he achieve by hurting my feelings? It didn’t teach me a lesson about reading while I walk; if anything, it cemented my proclivity to do so as a tiny silent F-U, which is, again, the most passive-aggressive way I possibly could have reacted.
“Besides,” Jake continued, “of course you can be nice to each other in the South: No one is ever pushed to the limit!”
He’s never seen my mother on Christmas Eve.
“Each person has, like, a hundred square feet of personal space to, I don’t know, play banjo in,” he said. “There are more than eight million people in New York! When you’re crammed together, tensions build—exploding is how we reestablish stasis. It’s the natural order of things. The sooner you accept it, the better.”
I don’t want to accept it. I refuse to believe that when Billy Joel said he was in a New York state of mind, he meant he felt like punching a cabbie.
“But general public politeness has existed in New York,” I said. “Recently! In the weeks after 9/11, everyone went out of their way—”
“Ah, 9/11,” he said. “I thought you might play that card: typical.”
Typical! Typical! He was making me crazy. “Well, it’s true,” I persevered calmly. “And the same thing happened during—”
“The blackout?”
No wonder strangers scream at this guy.
The point I would have made, had I not been interrupted by the splattering of his self-righteous spittle on my cheek, is that in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, for at least two weeks, the air was empty: No car horns honked, no construction workers whistled, no bike messengers crashed.
But you already know this; I wrote about it in a previous chapter when, because I was typing instead of arguing, I could articulate the ideas and represent them via an egregious repetition of the word “gorilla.” To him, though, I was unable to explain my experience of watching two people approach a one-lane stretch of sidewalk and then, instead of racing to beat each other through, they both slowed and invited the other to pass.
And, yes, it was a slippery slope. After those few weeks, we quickly fell back into bad habits. Regardless of all the flag and T-shirt reminders of our claim that we never would, it didn’t take us long to forget.
“The point is: it happened,” I said, “proving that it is possible—in New York City—for the baseline of social interaction to be unselfish.”
“Car wrecks happen! Is ‘slammed into a tree’ the natural state for an automobile? Don’t get me wrong: I think it was amazing how the city pulled together after 9/11. But it was an aberration—that is all. I don’t wish for the natural state of play in New York to be belligerent, but there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s simply how it is.”
“Of course there’s something you can do about it!” I shouted, alarming the other members of our party who slowly made their escape to the back of the bar. “Stop perpetuating the system! Stop acting like a jerk. But you don’t want to. You want to believe that the city is naturally belligerent, because that justifies your own aggressive behavior. It makes you feel better about being a bad egg.”
He started laughing. Oh God, I thought: I called him a “bad egg.” When would I stop proving his point about me? I felt like a butterfly tacked in a box.
“Well, well,” he mocked. “Someone’s getting angry.”
“No I’m not,” I said, though my bottom lip betrayed me.
“Yeah you are. And you know what? One day you’re gonna explode,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Everyone has a breaking point,” he persisted. “Everyone in New York will eventually break. And so will you. One day you’re gonna pop and go all Bernie Goetz on someone.”
Bernie Goetz? As in, the “Subway Vigilante,” who shot four thugs on a 2 train? Now it was my turn to say, “Typical!” (But, of course, I didn’t.) Why do New Yorkers love to romanticize violence? I’m surprised we haven’t erected a statue of Travis Bickle next to Lady Liberty. To me, the nuts with guns are the aberration in New York. But, then, obviously I want to believe that—for the same reason I accused Jake of wanting to believe they’re the norm. Labeling them perverted helps me justify my yellow-bellied nature.
Which is why the notion that I might emulate Goetz was preposterous. When I’m pushed against a wall, I don’t shoot; I try to blend in with the paint. These boots are made for running, and possibly leaving behind cinnamon-flavored candy as a gift.
At the same time, though, I do have friends in New York—reasonable, polite Southerners—who have gone all Goetz, who somehow crossed over. I know because, so shocked were they by the incidents, they talked. Carter, from Greensboro, North Carolina, hawked a loogie on a taxicab when it cut him off in the street. Tiffany, from Charlotte, told a group of teenagers on the subway to “Shut up!” And Abbie, also from Charlotte, once confessed that, after being struck in the face by the briefcase of a man running up the stairs, she turned and screamed, “Fuck you!” Each story was followed by something along the lines of, “I don’t know where it came from” or “I’d never done anything like it before.”
So, terror upon terror, what if one day I flip out on some poor girl reading a book while she crosses the street? If so, does that mean I’ll also be fat and unattractive? Plus, if Jake is right about that, is he also right that that’s when I become a New Yorker? And if that’s the cas
e, then where the hell had I been for the last five years?
It’s true that living in New York can leave one feeling invisible. The city is indifferent. And you are but one in the sky of eight million stars. It can compel you to act like a child, to shout, stamp, and punch to get attention, to prove you actually exist. Maybe howling at each other is like planting a flag in the soil or carving your name in a tree for next season’s campers: It’s just another way of saying “I wuz here.”
And then it dawned on me. I thought about the goombah and my mom’s words: “He’s probably just having a bad day.” Feeling so ignored that you doubt your own existence is—on a scale of 1 to 10, with “bad hair” being 1—a really bad day indeed. I tried to feel for him.
That girl reading the book just bumped into me. What, did she not see me? Am I invisible? Oh God … what if I am invisible! Am I a ghost?!? Quick, think: What did I have for breakfast? I can’t remember! Did I even wake up or have I just been wandering Hell’s Kitchen since the moment I died? How can I find out? I know: “Stupid bitch!” Hooray, she heard me. And she’s crying—oh, thank God.
So maybe Jake was on to something, even if for a different reason than he’d thought: When you have been forced to question your existence to the point that you need to prove you’re alive, you become a New Yorker. Cogito ergo sum a New Yorker.
Or maybe that goombah just thought I was a bitch. I don’t know now, and I certainly didn’t that night on Staten Island. So instead I responded to Jake’s Goetz comment by saying something like, “You’re a douchebag.”
Erm, that came out wrong.
“Good one, Jane. Look: I’m tired of talking about this. You know I’m right; you’re only arguing because you hate being a coward.”
“No: What I’m saying is—”
He stood up and motioned toward the rest of our friends by the bar. “Come on, guys. Club Atlantis calls.”
Wait. I wasn’t finished with him. It’s like he wasn’t hearing me. It’s like I was making no sound. It’s like I wasn’t even sitting there.
