I had a funny experience a few minutes ago. I was walking out of the women’s bathroom in McDonald’s, and a middle-aged man was walking in the direction of the bathrooms. He stopped for a moment when he saw me, and my chest immediately tensed up, and I was thinking Oh, he just clocked me, I’m about to get confronted and hate-crimed in the lobby of the McDonald’s, and my eyes darted to the gray-tiled floor. Then he stepped to the side, smiled at me, and waved me forward. A classic, Midwestern “Ladies first” gesture. I stammered out a “thank you” and scurried past him.
I was relieved. I heard a voice in my head scolding me—the voice of the rational part of my brain, reminding me that ninety-five percent of strangers in public spaces do not give a shit about you, and you should stop freaking out every time you encounter one.
Throughout my college life, I’ve prided myself on my ability to connect with strangers. In New Haven, I’m stopped pretty regularly. I shared cigarettes on a street corner a few times with two guys from Turkey, and we taught each other basic vocabulary in our languages. I talked and walked for half an hour with a man who wanted to enlist me in some sort of a drug ring, and the conversation steered around to his family. I get occasional texts from a dude who once stopped me in the middle of the night to tell me about his space-pirate-rock opera (which, as far as I’ve heard, is still very much in the ideas stage).
It’s usually men who approach me, and I don’t say much to them—just enough to get them to start talking. I enjoy it. Listening to people talk about their mothers, their Irish rock opera alter ego (named Mr. Bhagg O’Diks, if you were wondering), etc. It makes my day feel full, like I’ve absorbed a little bit of life from other people’s experiences. It makes New Haven feel a little more like home.
But it’s also pretty obvious that these men have been reading me as a man, too. The cashier at Popeye’s shouts out my name every time he sees me (“Hey, it’s my boy J.D.!”). It hasn’t been a huge issue, because I know the scripts (“Hey man, what’s up?”), but it leaves me feeling a bit wounded. Imagine the feeling of a single, small needle pricking your chest. It’s the feeling that I’ll forever be trapped in these scripts, trapped in this version of myself where strangers read me as male.
I know, of course, this isn’t true. The rational part of my brain reminds me, again, that first impressions are shallow by nature. My last trip to the airport involved a polite abundance of “Miss”es directed toward me, and some TSA agents visibly bewildered by my ID and body scan, all despite the fact that I thought I looked Supremely Clockable that morning. I, like, have tits. The rational part of my brain knows that this Clockability Business occupies way too much of my headspace. I’m getting better about it.
This same part of my brain also tells me that shallow first impressions have ramifications. Like, I probably shouldn’t sit on unfamiliar street corners at 2 a.m., basking in the night breeze and half-waiting for a stranger to stop and say hello. A few weeks ago, two men followed me most of the way home through empty midnight streets, calling after me. I should probably cut out my old habit of leaving parties unannounced, stumbling home drunk and alone. Not that these were ever particularly smart things, but the risk-reward calculation has gotten grimmer.
All of this is to say that I’m at a bit of a crossroads in my relationships with strangers. The polite man at McDonald’s reminds me that most people are pretty normal about things, that strangers’ perceptions of me are more accurate than I give them credit for. The TSA agents, in their own abrasive and unpleasant way, also remind me of that. But by this same token, my relationship to New Haven’s midnight streets has to change, and there are things I’ll miss.
If it sounds like I’m mourning—well, in a sense I am, but it’s contained within a larger celebration. If I didn’t mind being a vessel for strangers in the past, it’s because I struggled to conceive of myself as a subject in my own right. I collected others’ stories, I kept them with me, but I gave them nothing in return, and the whole business always felt a bit exploitative as a result. I used to drive my coworker A----- home after closing shifts at Taco Bell, about two years ago. He told me all about his life: his daughter, his mother, his past jobs, his parole troubles, etc., etc. But I don’t think he ever learned a single real thing about me, because I just didn’t see myself as a real person when he was in my car. He was one of my favorite coworkers, but he never got to meet me. No fault of his own.1
When I was thirteen, I was standing in the front of the line for standardized eight-grade state testing. A lady looked me in the eyes and said “Come this way, ma’am,” and I was like Oh, cool! That’s me! Then, she led me to my desk, and she said “Go ahead and take a seat, sir.” I barely registered that she was talking to me, but I did as I was instructed. It took me a few more years to realize that I can be a “ma’am” if I want, that I’ve been one in substance for quite a while, that I actually kind of need to be one if I ever want to feel like I exist. If this means I have to relearn my relationship to streets, to the ritual of the late-night walk, then yeah, I’ll take it.