Sincerity

A man sat across from me, and looked at me with a white imperturbable face, an expression I had learned many years ago to mirror on my brown dolly face.

Part 1: nebulous racial ancestry

I’m futzing with my locker at the gym. Through the mirror, I can see the other side of the lockers: a woman is rolling up towels and putting them in a paper bag. Three towels. She places a piece of striped fabric on top of it. I’m certain she’s stealing when she places a rolled up towel under her coat. I’m also racially profiling her: well-off white girls are often kleptomaniacs. Then she snaps her head up, and catches my gaze in the mirror. Beat. We both laugh. I shouldn’t have been watching her.

But my mood changes when I weigh myself in the corner of the locker room. I’m fat. I feel an aching need to tattle on someone. So I take myself to the front desk and say to the attendant,

“Are the towels here free?”

The attendant doesn’t catch my drift. His voice cracks as he explains that towel service is complimentary. I want to be more direct and explain that there’s a crazy white bitch stealing towels, that I’m fat, but my interest in the entire situation begins to fade. I recall that I haven’t retrieved my bag yet, so I give the man a sardonic thumbs up and retreat back to the locker room.

The klepto is showering now. I know this because I hear the water running, and I see her paper bag on the locker room bench, next to a pair of headphones, her sneakers, and a little leather bound journal.

I pick up the journal. I take it to my locker, put it in my backpack, grab the rest of my things, and leave. There is neither a rush of adrenaline or an ache of guilt.

On the subway, I thumb through it:

March 3rd

It was the second day of my period and I wished for nothing more than to lay naked on the concrete and singe my belly. But I knew that would cause a scene. I settled for sitting outside at the cafe near my apartment that I didn’t particularly like, in my own privileged way, because I felt like the baristas made too much small talk, I didn’t like how they knew me by name, and I didn’t like the communal style seating.

A man sat across from me, and looked at me with a white imperturbable face, an expression I had learned many years ago to mirror on my brown dolly face.

A few hours later it dawned on me that he was attractive.

I walked to the park to try to find the colony of escaped parakeets. I was desperately jealous of them, as they had achieved in their lives and lineage everything I felt too impotent to do myself. Every so often when sitting out I’d see them: flashes of emerald against the sky. A strange chirp that shamed the pigeons. I had thought I had known where their nest was, but I was incorrect. I came to the post I believe they lived in. Instead of my amazing parakeets a sparrow pushed down and twigs into her home above the lamppost. She had ugly, pink, hollering babies. A crow eyed the scene from an adjacent park bench.

Dejected, I walked home, and continued to menstruate.

March 5th

I had a dream I was flying with a connection in Atlanta. I don’t know where to– probably home. It was a small plane. The seats were wooden. I had a ballooning feeling in my stomach that indicated I may have to pee. The plane began its descent. I could hear the engine sputter. The entire vessel began to flip in the air. Violent, horrible figure eights. Miraculously at the moment of death, I was teleported to the TSA queue at an airport in Kansas.

Rather than relief, though, I was acutely aware that I was, indeed, dead. This was further confirmed when I checked my ticket, which did not reflect that I was now somehow in Kansas, but instead indicated that I had landed in Atlanta a few seconds ago. The TSA line was empty, so I bashfully approached the agent, unsure if I wanted to betray the fact that I was dead, but certain that there was something I could tell Delta customer service to have this leg of my ticket transferred from Atlanta to Wichita.

– Hi, I’m here but I actually just landed in Atlanta.

I showed him my ticket. The rest of my dream I forget.

Waking up from it, though, I wasn’t sure if it was good news or bad news. The positive read could be something about second chances, life after death– that there’s more at the otherside, always a reason to keep traveling forward. The negative read, though, would indicate that I’m an apparition in my own life.

It would make sense if I was an apparition. Afterall, I commonly found myself in competition with fairies, pixies, sirens, ghouls, monsters, etc. Especially if they’re bodacious or well shaped.

Now I’m confused, even a bit racially offended, because this girl referred to herself as “brown dolly faced”, but I’m certain she’s white. But I guess white people have more sub categories than I’m aware of. Maybe she’s a shepardi jew or from one of the countries in Europe I’d never go to. In fact, that makes sense to me, because Europeans are famously pick-pockets, and this girl is a kleptomaniac thief.

At any rate, I dislike this woman’s writing so much I feel compelled to destroy her journal. I follow this impulse immediately. I rip out a page, twist it into a cigarello, and rip it starting at the tip. I let the little pieces fall on the subway floor, which is dirty, so it’s no harm.

Part 2: the white imperturbable face

On my way home from nothing of particular interest, I notice a girl of nebulous racial ancestry ripping apart her diary. It’s typical to see (and ignore) someone having a mental breakdown-- but based on how she was groomed, and what she was wearing, I could tell she wasn’t unhoused, which nearly compelled me to intervene.

If I was the male romantic lead of a movie, perhaps I would have sat down next to her and said “let me guess, bad break up?”

But then, where would that leave me? Talking to a borderline personality victim for two subway stops? I didn’t actually want to talk to anyone today, even if it was a pretty girl in a vulnerable mental state. The good thing was that there was a never-ending supply of pretty girls in this world, so no need to engage with a difficult one (for no reason).

She ends up leaving by the next stop, which relieves me further, because I really couldn’t have done anything.

I tweet:

the problem with new york is that every day you’ll meet the most tragically unsaveable foids

My stop comes up.

Part 3: the brown dolly face

I want to do something I’ve never done before, but I don’t know what that ought to be, so I steal three towels from my gym. Unfortunately, it still feels as everything feels-- my heart doesn’t race, my legs don’t give out, I don’t break a sweat. It isn’t until I catch a woman’s eye in the mirror: she sees me, fully, in that moment, a puff of air escapes my lips, and my toes curl a little bit. There’s also a strange hotness on the back of my neck. I can’t breathe. She can’t either.

Then as quickly as it happens-- after we laugh and come down and look away from each other shamefully-- it ends-- and she disappears from the locker room without closing her locker. I stand still for a moment, unsure what to do, but somehow washed with comfort. For a moment I consider looking in her locker. Or leaving her something. I wonder if there’s anything of value in this gym I could steal for her. There isn’t, other than the towels, and I had already pressed my luck in that department.

I touch myself in the glass paned gym shower. I wish that there were more secret moments between two people.

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