Shiny, overconfident clothes you could never imagine yourself wearing hung along the walls. I felt some sort of clothes-store consumer shame creeping up my insides. It was all the insincerity of high school with the added humiliation of mirrors.
–Deb Calleti, THE SIX RULES OF MAYBE
“I don’t know many rules to live by,” he’d said. “But here’s one. It’s simple. Don’t put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles — drug or tattoo — and… no inessential penises, either.”
“Inessential penises?” Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. “Is there any such thing as an essential one?”
“When an essential one comes along, you’ll know,” he’d replied.
– Laini Taylor, DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE
By the way, I cannot recommend this book enough, but I warn you: the first couple chapters make it seem like it’s going to be a less good book than it is. Just keep going, and then thank me (and Bethany, who told me) with all appropriate effusiveness.
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.
Allow me to break your heart:
…Now allow me to put it back together again:
UPDATED: This Jimmy Kimmel clip is absolutely hilarious — especially the girl who gets the half-eaten sandwich! — but the family whose idea of “terrible presents” is to give their kids presents for the “wrong” gender makes me very sad.
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.
Aunt Emily had spent a lifetime interfering–days–weeks–years. There was nothing she could do better, or that she enjoyed more. To thrust her finger into somebody’s pie and wreck it–that was Aunt Emily for you. Lucinda’s grandmother, having died when her mother was a very little girl, had left Aunt Emily the oldest of the family; and to her had descended that divine right of putting her finger into family pies.
–Ruth Sawyer, ROLLER SKATES
P.S. Just so there’s no confusion with regards to the name, I’d like to state for the record that the above quote is not about me. You can tell because I have no siblings.
…in which Bart and Homer form a tween fiction writing team.
So many vampires, with the fangs and the capes and the medals – nobody knows how they earned them.
- Professor Frink (weird scientist guy), The Simpsons
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