Gloaming Crackle

I have only been out of the country twice. This might seem strange for a Mainer, as Maine is right on the Canadian border. It’s only a short drive, and there you are in Quebec. I don’t drive, though, and I have never really had any friends near enough, mobile enough, and spontaneous enough to go places with. I’m so unused to the concept that even now, when people I know live only a dollar and a quarter away, it never really occurs to me to “hang out” with them. I just don’t grasp the concept, too well. I have my space; other people have their own. I don’t bother people; they don’t bother me. When you go out of your way to visit someone, you have to find ways to be entertaining. You have to find things to say. You have to make room. No matter how much you like a person, it’s awkward. I have my own things to do; I assume so do other people. Unless I’ve got something specific to share, I figure there’s no need to waste their time and energy in placating me, when I’m better able to amuse myself. Let’s say that it’s more efficient this way.

The one time I left the continent, I went to the UK. I went with a theater group from high school; we played Godspell for our sister school in Kent. Godspell has two roles, really: Jesus and Judas. I was neither Jesus nor Judas. I signed up for the play to avoid sports; I signed up for the England trip because, hey, England. I hated my time there. You see, we were to stay with host families; the host I stayed with was a twentysomething guy with black-and-white checked pants who got the (mostly accurate) impression that all the American kids wanted to do was go to pubs, since the drinking age was only sixteen. I was unassertive, so I was bored. I got dragged from one dingy, smoke-filled pit to another; as others inebriated themselves, I slouched in corners and tried to sleep. People treated me as an infant because I found none of this interesting. My host was furious with me. I avoided people as much as I could. On a couple of occasions, I slipped off, to wander my own way through London. I always found my way back; I’m fine with direction, so long as I have no one to confuse me. This did not stop people from panicking, since, after all, I was the infant of the group. I weathered the abuse, as those moments were all the peace I had.

Now I live on my own. I’m in a city I enjoy, in a state I generally don’t. Although the place is still new to me, I have come to own it — or some piece of it. It’s home in a sense that I have not had before. When I go out, it is to familiarize myself. To learn, to incorporate. To explore. To claim more. To give myself more right to be here. This is a mundane task, and a subtle one. It involves climbing steps and admiring rusted metal. It involves watching old Japanese men build towers of rocks in the rising tide that by all reason should not balance the way they stack them. It involves riding sixty-year-old streetcars just to go west a few blocks. It involves finding stores I like and never entering them, so that I might one day. Small things. Sincere things. The grandiose rarely factors into life.

I am always confused when people ask me what there is to do, here. How should I know? I only live here. I know they’re not looking for tourist spots, because that stuff’s easy to find. I know they’re not interested in the things I’m interested in, because if they were, they wouldn’t have to ask — or they’d be more specific. They’d ask, “So I forget — what museums do you have around there?” or “Where can I find some good pizza?” or even “So where did The Maltese Falcon take place?” These are people with interests, and therefore interesting people. When someone asks “what is there to do?”, what it seems to translate to is “I’m bored, so where can I go to get drunk?”

If that were the question right off, at least it would show interest. It would show some decisiveness. Although I don’t identify with it, it’s a question I can repect as far as it goes. What am I to make of this euphemism, though? What does it betray when someone equates “doing something” with getting piss-faced? Beyond a lack of imagination? What am I to make that I am expected to understand the code? What are the set of assumptions at play here? To be frank, this kind of scares me. Not for my own sake, mind. It’s just: are people really this boring? I don’t look much outside my own circle, so I don’t have much basis for reference. I start to think maybe I really haven’t been missing much, the last twenty-six years. And I start to understand aspects of culture that I kind of wish I didn’t. Or to think I do.

See. If I tend to hide, I figure it’s just because of the way I operate. It’s my own fault, my own decision to wall myself away like this. I just work best that way — and, you know, I do. Things like this, though — they make me question why I really do it. To wonder if I really do have a choice in the matter at all. Is there no way back for me? Was there no other way I could have gone? Can I be so far removed?

If you have to ask what there is to do, you will never really know. Especially if you ask me. Please don’t ask me. Ask me where to find fudge, or where to rent an obscure movie. Ask me where there’s a midnight show, or what’s a really pretty place to watch the sunset. Maybe I won’t know. Maybe I will. Maybe we can find the answer together. Just know what you want out of life. Show me I’m not alone.