Thursday, April 27

Budding Nihilists

My seven-year-old English student and I did numbers yesterday: I said a number, she wrote it out. It went all right at first, but after a bit she got bored and started writing a bunch of extra zeroes at the end of her numbers. Then she started answering my spoken numbers with the German equivalent of "Doesn't exist!" and just drawing a slash mark on the paper.

I made the mistake of finding this riotously funny.

"Doesn't exist, doesn't exist, doesn't exist!" she insisted. Then she marked all of her previous numbers with the same slash, giggling and singing, "Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. All wrong. Zero!" She wrote a 'zero' at the top of the page, then decorated it with more slash marks.

"Zero percent?" I asked, playing along.

"Zero percent. Exactly." She continued making slash marks on the paper and singing. "Numbers don't exist, paper doesn't exist, pen doesn't exist, pencil doesn't exist, hand doesn't exist."

There is no spoon, I thought. "Why don't you imagine they do exist for a while so we can keep doing numbers?"

"Imagining doesn't exist." She drew a thought bubble with a slash in it. "See? Doesn't exist, doesn't exist. Everything is a BIG! FAT! ZERO!" Which she drew.

"At the end.." (she turned the paper over) "there's only... meeeeee... anddddd.. YOU." She wrote these two words out in large letters as she said them.

Then she slashed out "you," which I found particularly chilling.

Thursday, April 13

Taking In the Night Air

A fifty-something woman, heavyset. Floor-length leopard-print fake fur coat, pearls, teased hair, blue eyeshadow to the brows. She is planted in the first seat facing backwards on the bus. "It's only a little bit of fresh air," she says. "Can't we just have a little bit of fresh air?"

A forty-something woman, very short. Fanny pack, ripped jacket, jeans, home-cut hair. No makeup. She is standing next to the seated woman but still isn't much taller. "Excuse me, my girlfriend is SICK. We need the window shut." She shuts the window, straining to reach the handle.

"Fresh air is healthy, it's good for her. You can get off the bus and take the next one if it's so important to you." Fur Coat reaches up and pulls the window open again.

Fanny Pack gestures over to her girlfriend, another forty-something with teddy bear plushies hanging from the backpack draped over her motorized wheelchair. "She's sick, what's wrong with you?" She shuts the window. It's COLD outside. My girlfriend is SICK, she's in a WHEELCHAIR, she - "

"Oh, nonsense, that has nothing to do with it." Fur Coat pushes the window closed and stares at Fanny Pack. "It's only a little air, everyone on the bus needs air. Why don't you sit down and stop yammering? You're making a scene."

Fanny Pack pushes her way to the front of the bus angrily and begins rattling off her complaints to the bus driver, gesturing wildly. The man across from Fur Coat reaches up and shuts the window. "There's no point in making such a big deal out of it, ma'am, let's just close the window."

"It's only a little air!" Fur Coat stands up and opens the window. The man holds it closed. She pulls. He pushes. They both strain at the window, Fur Coat mumbling, "No.. no! Let go! The window can stay open!"

Fanny Pack moves back and takes her seat next to her girlfriend. The girlfriend watches the other two struggle with the window for awhile. "Oh, leave it," she says at last. "She doesn't understand. She has no sympathy for other people."

The man drops his hand, and Fur Coat yanks the window open triumphantly, then takes her seat again. "It's because you're so big and fat, you don't know what's good for you anyway."

The bus erupts into shocked laughter. "Shameless!" mutters the girlfriend, shaking her head. "Absolutely, absolutely shameless! It's unbelievable!"

A punk kid with a mohawk and a pit bull tells Fur Coat to shut her trap. "Shut my trap? Who are you to go around telling people to shut their trap? I don't have a trap. I can call the police, you know," she adds as he and the dog push around me to get to the door. "That's right, go on. I wish you a pleasant evening!"

Finally the bus driver turns around and shouts at everyone to be quiet. The bus drives on, Fur Coat and the young man continuing to mumble insults at each other while Fanny Pack and her girlfriend console one another in whispers and stare hatefully at Fur Coat. All of them are still at it when I reach my stop.

And you know, not one of them ever stopped using the polite form of "you."

Thursday, April 6

Pillow Talk

"Sometimes when I'm talking to you I don't feel like it's really right."
"I'm sorry if I've been cold these last days. I've just found myself at a total loss for words this week. I don't know why."
"Not cold. I wouldn't say cold. It's something else."

It's a quarter to four in the morning. You're stoned; I'm drunk. The table between us is littered with beer bottles, cake crumbs, backgammon pieces. My housemate is passed out on the couch next to us. The soundtrack to Broken Flowers is on the stereo. We've been in here for almost six hours.

"It's like I have nothing at all in my head."

Earlier today I sat down next to an old woman on the bus. After about fifteen minutes she looked over at me and mumbled something. I didn't understand her German so I smiled politely. She said it again. I stood up and asked her if she wanted to get off at the next stop. She just looked at me and kept mumbling. I sat down again. I pulled my Confused Friendly American face and told her my German was not very good. She told me the bus driver would understand.

"No no, I don't think that at all, do you?"
Not just with you, with my housemates too. Everyone, I just have nothing to say."
"With your housemates? What?"
"I don't think I understand actually what you mean."

After about five minutes I realized she was saying "please have the bus driver call a doctor; I have a heart condition." When they pulled over to wait for the ambulance, I tried to apologize for misunderstanding her, but she had already passed out again. I got off the bus and cried for half an hour. I wasn't sure why.

"It's just like.. It's like the proper communication isn't there."
"Proper communication?"

I tried telling you this story earlier as an apology for why I didn't have anything to talk about. It turned into a rant about how I didn't think I was especially good at anything. I wasn't sure I believed any of it but I knew all of the German vocabulary for it and it felt like it could sort of pass for meaningful conversation. I still felt stupid and self-indulgent as soon as I had finished.

"Like when I try to just chat with you I can't really say what I want to say."
"Oh, I get it. Proper communication. Of course the proper communication isn't there if I can't even understand the German for "proper communication." I think about that all the time here, with everybody."
"How so?"

I have to stare directly at your lips when you talk in order to understand what you're saying. I wonder if you notice.

"I don't know, it's like I have no control over how I sound. Not just like when I can't understand anything. It's like.. you know how you can choose one word or another, and give the sentence sort of one direction or another, give it slightly different meanings? I can't do that, I feel like I have no personality here. In English I feel like I have a good vocabulary. And the sentences I do manage to finish in German, they're all so blunt. I can't.. what's the word? hold myself back?"
"In America you're more of an introvert?"

I come back to the living room later to retrieve my cell phone and suddenly I have you pressed against the door frame and we are kissing violently, painfully even. Your hands are inside my shirt, clutching fistfuls of my skin in a way that makes me feel self-conscious and fat. I bite down on the place where your neck meets your shoulder and suddenly realize I am thinking about someone else. You ask if you should come back to my room. I tell you you can't.

"Not introvert. It's just like I don't use these little words that people put in to make the sentence sound more polite. Everything is like "give.. me.. that. now." It's not who I am. It's like I'm beating people over the head.

Your girlfriend lives in Japan. You showed me her picture once. You call her and tell her every time you cheat on her. She always forgives you. I wonder if she thinks you're a good kisser. I can already feel my lips starting to bruise.

"I dunno, I just thought of that because you said you can't say what you really want to say.

For a second I want to tell you I love you. Then I wonder why I would think that. I end up getting annoyed with myself and leaving you alone in the stairwell. My roommate never stirs from the couch. I find my cell phone back in my own room.

"And, you know, I feel that way, like, all the time."