Thinking about Trayvon Martin

My workout ground to a dead halt tonight when I noticed that the TV above me was covering Trayvon Martin and I watched, riveted, while mainstream news said things like, “This is a new movement.”

That’s what it feels like, even being here in Wisconsin where there isn’t yet a response despite our own local murder of a Black boy for doing what teenagers do (what I did); despite the latest vicious racism, like semester-clockwork, from our frats; despite everything. It feels like something was let out of the bottle with Troy Davis and Occupy, or maybe like something finally crawled its way out, and it’s not going back even if it hasn’t yet taken stock of itself, even if it hasn’t figured out yet what it is.

I can’t stop thinking about the picture from the CNN slideshow of three men of color on a New York City bus urgently photographing the Million Hoodie March blocking their bus’s progress. It feels like a line is being drawn, between cops and prosecutors and reporters and racists laying bare that they don’t care in the slightest about Black boys’ lives, and people shouting that we care. When I look at that picture of the bus, it feels like maybe this is the first time they ever saw someone shouting that they care. It feels tangible how much they care back. It feels like one of those moments when options change.

I hope, I hope this is a new movement. Because we really need this one.

Fast Women

Here’s the thing: I walk faster than God. I am from New York, and we are a walking people, but even New Yorkers can’t keep up. Midwesterners barely realize what’s happening as I weave through their molassal sidewalk clumps. Mostly people find me freakish. And by that I mean, I get commentary.

I get four types of commentary. Friends, women and men: “I saw you on the street and tried to wave, but you were already on the next block!” (They recognize me in the blur of movement because I usually have a good hat.)

New friends or acquaintances, usually women: “Thank god, you’re the only one I don’t have to slow down with.” We speed and chatter and become better friends. *

Strangers, invariably black men, often older: Laughter and remarks, variants of, “Where’s the fire?!”, or sometimes just an astonished, “Damn.” These ones are my favorite. There are few regular occurrences that improve my day as much as unexpectedly having an occasion to joke around with strangers, which is why I have the best name in the world.

Acquaintances, invariably younger white guys — and this is not the gender-neutral form of guys: Competition.

They’ll hear me or someone else mention that I walk fast, and they’ll immediately respond, “I bet I can beat you to the end of the block.” Which, I bet you can; your legs are longer and I’m not a runner and it’s just that my natural gait happens to be faster than anyone’s I’ve ever met. But, dude, I find it remarkably self-revealing that this is your reaction, because I notice that it’s not that you’re like me and have a self-identity built partly on walking faster than a hungry hippo, which could justify a certain amount of defensiveness. Or even that you desire a friendly competition, in which we shit-talk each other’s walk and race and then feel fondly toward one another because what bonds you like a mutual shit-talk? Those things I would understand.

But no. That’s not what’s going on. All evidence suggests that, although you have no particular investment in walking fast, nevertheless, the idea that this woman walks faster than you offends you. You must show her up. Well.

I fly a lot through Detroit**, and this occasions a long walk in their crazy neon-lit tunnel between terminals. My airport principle is that you avoid the moving sidewalk because people are not well socialized to place themselves in such a way that you can get around them, so it’s faster to walk alongside where you have more room to maneuver.

So recently I’m strolling through that tunnel and out of the corner of my eye I see this 20-something white guy walking slowly on the moving sidewalk do a double take as I come up alongside and then pass him. And then I see him speed up.

Now, normally I do not engage these races, but something about this dude, or the neon, or the lingering resentment from having earlier had to interact with the TSA brought it out in me. So I sped up, subtly, at first. And he sped up. And then I did some more.

And we got to be moving very fast, him on the sidewalk with his head turning to stare at me, and me next to him and just ahead, much faster than I usually stroll but maintaining my stroll gait (you should feel like you’re loping) and gazing around at all the pretty lights, and this went on for quite some while before the tunnel was over. I pulled through the end (I also have walking stamina); I stepped out a few feet ahead of him and onto the escalator that carries me to my Vino Volo, where everybody knows my name and I’m always glad I came. And I never once looked at him.

Yeah, I’m fast.

* Shout-out to the guy who spent our walk analyzing why I am so fast. His take? My hips are super-twisty, which lengthens my stride and generates momentum. This seems plausible because I definitely do generate an unusual amount of momentum when I walk. I know this because when I walk with very slow people (sorry, Emily), my options are to exhaust myself walking slowly — which I presume means I’m walking in a very different way, ’cause that shit is tiring — or to direct the momentum upward instead of forward. So I bounce.

Also, can I just say that everyone makes fun of my crazy heavy backpack in which I carry everything I own (“Are you… going on an adventure?”) and which gives me an unfortunate resemblance to a fourth grader, but just imagine how much trouble we’d have walking together if I didn’t handicap myself. I’m doing this for you.

** My layover choices are unusually sensitive to the presence of a Vino Volo.

Good thing a dog doesn’t get stuck in that tree.

I gave my five-year-old cousin Luke — yes, that Luke — STUCK by Oliver Jeffers a few hours ago, and so far he has asked us to read it to him three times. He laughs uproariously and shares his opinions about the protagonist’s errors each time, and pointed out an awesome joke in the artwork that I’d missed. I am declaring STUCK a big success.

Just now Luke and his older brother were watching a video that involved teasing a cartoon dog and Luke became extremely upset that someone was being “mean to a dog.” In the midst of his enraged stomping off, he yelled, “Dogs helped us stay alive!” (The New Yorker a few months back says Luke is right about that.) To avert the tears that were forming, his dad offered Luke the chance to pick the next video. Brightening immediately, he said, “Let’s watch cat teasers!”

I love that kid. Let’s hope tomorrow’s presents (for these kids) and the next day’s (for my niece) are as successful.

The boy at the top of the stairs

I bought Padma Venkatraman’s CLIMBING THE STAIRS a while back thanks to rave reviews, and pulled it off my shelf a couple nights ago.

(The one benefit of a recent roommate’s departure, even though I miss her and her troublemaking cat: she cleaned; I found piles of unread books. The benefit of having recently canceled the internet in my home: I read said books instead of blogs.)

At first I didn’t get what the reviewers were so excited about. The setting–World War II-era India–was interesting, but some of the dialogue felt forced, and it seemed like Venkatraman was setting us up for a fairly obvious morality play.

Then she introduced the love interest. Then I got it.*

(SPOILER ALERT for what follows.)

The best thing about CLIMBING THE STAIRS is that it could so easily have fallen into Sarah Dessen Syndrome–the label I stole from YA Lit and Death for when the romance is built on the preternaturally perfect and mature teenage boy solving the heroine’s previously intractable problems with his unnatural sensitivity and emotional insight, ’cause we all know that’s how high school relationships work–but it chooses to go somewhere totally else.

Venkatraman has Raman, the boy, repeatedly fail to understand why the protagonist Vidya is suffocating under the restrictions of her freedom, why she lives in terror of marriage and being subject to a husband’s control. And every time he doesn’t get it, Vidya gets angry and calls him on it. And he’s bewildered, and then he thinks about it, and then he learns.

And yeah, I fell in love with him too.

And also, the main reconciliation scene? Top-notch. This is what teen romance is for.

* Incidentally: I said this line spontaneously yesterday while recounting to friends at the bus stop–I live in a college town; you run into people you know at the bus stop; it’s weird–what I’d read the night before, and we started speculating about whether you could liven up seminars by having a point in each class where you say, “And now let me introduce the love interest.”

Like, are the “new cultural approaches” to the sociology of poverty the Romeo to the study of institutionalized racism’s Juliet, and maybe those crazy kids would be able to make it work if only their families would quit carrying on an old war that no one even remembers what it’s about anymore, but people are going to die, ok, because Romeo can’t keep it in his pants and thinks he’s meant to be with every next girl, and Juliet’s a little desperate and starved of guys like Romeo’s attention, but maybe they’d be able to look back on it later and laugh about that youthful romance that they both learned something from if only her parents would stop flipping out every time Romeo turns up on the balcony? Or are they actually the little punk-ass rebel at school, who seems all subversive and so you cut school with him and think everything he says is, like, so deep, and then it turns out he stole all those cheap lines from a Vincent Gallo movie and he’s been sleeping with your sworn enemy on the side, and your grandma’s all, “I told you so,” only now your grandma’s named Steve Steinberg? Like that. I would offer extra credit to any student who wrote a convincing romantic short story about our class material, but I’d dock them points if the ending were contrived, or, worse, if it didn’t really sell the romance. ‘Cause, you know, I have pretty exacting standards and I expect students to rise to them.

This is a favorite pasttime among several of my grad student friends: come up with the tics we plan to cultivate as faculty to provide our students with endless amusement, speculation, and class bingo/drinking games. If I ever learn that one of the bizarre faculty behaviors we go into hysterics over is similarly affected, that professor will have my undying admiration. But the truth is, I probably don’t need to cultivate anything. We play this game because from our perspective, hilariously crazy behaviors are something we’d have to artificially decide to engage in. But it seems inevitable that just letting our own personalities shine through will provide fodder enough for student scorn.

Wednesday Words: Oh, what a surprise — my problem is I talk too much

The difference between a brilliant punster and a groan-inducing punster is mostly a matter of how high the threshold is set for public utterance.

– Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams, Jr., INSIDE JOKES: USING HUMOR TO REVERSE-ENGINEER THE MIND

Wednesday Words: I want to plagiarize this sentence in a romance novel of my own.

He stiffened for a moment but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shitted on the ground.

– Susan Andersen, BABY, I’M YOURS.

…Okay, fine, it’s a typo. Although frankly, putting a typo like this in your book (and then blogging it) is not a bad viral marketing campaign.

Generation Gap

Back in late June, I was talking to my friend Adam, who was going to see his nieces, ages 11 & 13.  They were passing through NYC on their way to summer camp, and Adam wanted some gift ideas.  Now, my memory of summer camp is that the best thing one could possibly receive was a food package, particularly if that package contained ramen noodles, Easy Cheese, and candy.  But that concept was rejected out of hand, so we moved on to books.  Adam went through a list of books he still had from back in the day, and I yay’d and nay’d and pondered age-appropriateness (which has never been my forte).  Paula Danziger? Totally.  Bridge to Terabithia? Probably read it in school.  Lord of the Rings?  Oh right, the movies.  Sylvia Plath?  Mmm, maybe wait a few years for the teen angst to bloom more fully.  Anyway, I was having fun, but Adam eventually decided to bring several options and let them each pick one out.

The report the next day? The 13-year-old heartily recommended that her younger sister take The Giver.  To which the younger sister replied, “yeah, well – I have a kindle.”

And then I felt old and out of touch.  Because that had not even for a second crossed my mind.

It’s personal.

Today I enjoyed reading the n+1 personals. My favorites are THE GIRL WHO WASTES HER TIME DETECTING EMOTIONAL NUANCE IN ARROGANT INTELLECTUALS and THE SEMI-PUT-TOGETHER UPTOWN BOY, but I’m rooting the hardest for THE ACADEMIC LADY, because being a woman in philosophy ain’t easy.

Were I on the n+1 market, which I’m not, mine might go like this:

THE WOMAN WHO ISN’T A GIRL OR A LADY

I do things with statistics and write about it for a living. It’s a great life where those who mind that I dress badly mind quietly. Someday I want to have a dishwasher and a dog. I already have a canoe. I’ll always want to share food at the restaurant, but if you eat the thing that I was saving, I will hunt you down first and then come after your loved ones. I know how to chair a meeting and I strive to use this power for good. My house is always a mess. It’s worse than you were imagining when you read that line. I am aware that ostentatiously close female friendships are part of the performance of being a girl, and this awareness does not make me value them less. I like pink and Pink. I will beat you at card games. I will gloat but never cheat. You don’t have to read all my favorite books, but you might have to listen to me explain at great length why I love them, where ‘might’ means ‘will definitely.’ I’ll repeat myself; I’m sorry. I can be the low-brow to your high-brow. In less than a month I’ll be able to do 100 pushups. I believe in humanity, its dignity and equality and all its possibilities. I have a problem with the internet. I laugh easily and loudly, and then I get angry that men are considered funny if they tell good jokes, and women are considered funny if they laugh at men’s jokes. I tell jokes. Pay attention to me. I used to be afraid of spiders but I’m getting better. I have written a long paragraph about myself and said nearly nothing about you. That’s because I don’t know you yet. I am enthusiastic. I am available for coffee.

…I’m thinking it’s a pretty good thing I’m not on the n+1 market.

Onwall personal ad

Pop quiz: Whose n+1 is this?

THE BOY WHO CAN HEAR YOU OVER THE MUSIC

I’ll pick you up anyplace anytime, but the stereo is mine. It might be Afrobeat. It might be techno. It won’t be Ke$ha: that’s not OK.

…No. It isn’t. It’s appalling.

…I might be a little judgmental. I might be a little angry, but it’ll be OK. I don’t care what anyone else thinks; I just want to know what you do. I’ll listen.

I guess I have to withhold tagging this post until someone gets it in the comments. Now you write one!

Advice to Men

I mentioned before my grandmother’s strong reaction to my dad’s mustache. As was probably inevitable knowing my grandma, said reaction has now been immortalized in a poem.

Advice to Men

Tell me this!
Are men beset with facial gashes?
Is this why they wear moustaches?
All their glamour’s disappeared.
Who wants a kiss that’s mustard-smeared?

And that, of course, brings up the beard.
An attachment ladies all find weird
That gives them pause.
We’ll overlook their facial flaws…
A beard is just for Santa Claus!
The men we love all take the trouble
To shed thier daily prickly stubble.

Here’s advice I give you free.
Be it side-burns or goatee,
To romance, whiskers aren’t the key
Take me,
I crave no jewels, no gold, no loot,
Just a man who’s not hirsute!

[Note: I restricted the poem to only one form of typesetting emphasis, but I will note that the original made nice use of underlining, italics, and bold. I may have lost some subtlety in emphasis here. But I think you all can pick up the message. Men, get out your razors.]

I enjoy being me.

And talking about being me.