Into the void...
“That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead.”
-Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
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2009-07-06
6:13 p.m.
It's a little hard to type today. I somehow managed to slice my finger open over the weekend with the foil seal from a sour cream container. It hurt like a bitch, and it left a half-inch slice on the tip of my right index finger. Despite the irritation, though, it's kind of neat. Even now, I can look at it and see the skin on each side pulling away from the center with a deep red line of blood way at the bottom that looks strikingly like a river at the bottom of a ravine.
You wouldn't believe how often you need that finger, and every goddamn time I use it, it hurts.
Oh well. There are worse things.
I'm actually writing today because I had what I'm considering to be a rather surreal experience. First, you have to understand that I rarely say what I'm actually thinking. Even if I want to say it and try to say it, I often can't say it unless someone really pushes me. Generally, that means someone has aggravated me to a dangerous point. It's not good to aggravate me to that point.
I'm never sure what I’m going to do.
In any event, I left the T station and went to cross the street to the pharmacy. Of course, there were two activists with Save the Children binders right in the damn way. These people are an infection in Boston. First, it was MASSPIRG. Then, it was Greenpeace. Now it's Save the Children.
Everybody wants my money.
It's not that I'm against charity. I'm not. I donate rather frequently to charities. I feel very strongly about being generous, but I am NOT going to give money to someone on the street just because they're wearing a Save the Children T-shirt and holding a Save the Children binder.
I just want to get where I'm going.
I want to say, “Leave me the fuck alone,” but then I tell myself that these people are probably not trying to offend me. So, when the first one approached me, I smiled and said, “Not today.” The other one approached me, and I said, “No, I’m sorry.” I kept walking, crossed the street, went to the pharmacy, and congratulated myself for being nice but assertive. You have no idea how difficult that is for me.
Then I had to leave the pharmacy.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I would have to cross the very same spot in the opposite direction. When it finally did occur to me, I was still congratulating myself for being nice and assertive, so I figured they would probably remember me and leave me the fuck alone.
But no.
A third activist in the very same spot came right up to me and was WAY too pushy. I kept walking, but I looked right at him, and, because he had pushed me beyond caring, I looked right at him and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t like children.”
This, we all know, is true.
In my head, he stopped and stood open-mouthed, staring, dumbfounded in my wake. In reality, he said, “That’s okay, me too.” And I was the one open-mouthed and dumbfounded. It never ceases to amaze me how the things I say may or may not affect the people around me. This chain of events completely confounds me. As I walked away, he shouted after me, “It’s okay. When you’re ready, we’ll talk about children.”
What am I supposed to do with this? How am I supposed to react when I see these people? I can’t ignore them without feeling guilty. I can’t always lose them by being polite. Apparently, I can’t even antagonize them. I do not know how to process this information. The only thing I feel confident about is the fact that I was right not to give them any money.
Save the Children, my ass.
