Waiting

A problem with me getting up early in the day is that it leaves that much more time for anxiety to churn up. This was in play earlier, on the bus. Someone sitting across from me was mumbling continuously. I could not make out what he was saying but I took it to be a prayer, or a memorized recitation.

Normally situations like this do not especially bother me but this guy made me nervous. He had a searching look in his eyes that suggested he knew what he was saying and that he thought some entity or force not present on the bus could hear him.

We got off the bus at the end of the line and walked the same direction for a couple of blocks. That’s when he started looking my way. I couldn’t say if he was really looking at me or if I just happened to be in his line of sight. That summoned thoughts I’ve had for months now about the concept of seeing something, or being seen. There is no evidence of the transaction, and as almost anyone will agree there are times when your eyes seen an object or a situation but your mind either does not let it register or else thinks those eyes saw something altogether different. Since deliberating over this matter in my mind I’ve taken note of how often I and others say we “see” something or that we “looked” for an object or a person. That act of seeing is more than just fleeting. I find it as elusive as consciousness itself. We take consciousness for granted but no one has proven that it even exists.

The mumbling man’s eyes made moved away from me but the river of words flowing from his mouth never abated. He turned around and inexplicably started running, reaching not quite the speed of a sprinter but moving a lot faster than would seem appropriate on a crowded midtown sidewalk. This was on Second Avenue from 60th Street to 58th Street, where he disappeared into a crowd of people.

Normally I can ignore things like this but something about this particular guy made me feel he was about to come unhinged, that he had limited control over his actions. Nothing came of it but it was enough to stoke some anxiety in me. I spent the next couple of hours waiting for panic to surface in force but it never really did. I had panic pills at the ready.

One of my earliest New York memories is from late 1990, soon after I landed here. I was at a McDonald’s (yes, I used to eat that shit, but no more) on Amsterdam Avenue when I noticed a 50-something looking woman sitting next to me talking in full voice and in my direction. She said something about working 60 hours a week and earning every dime, speaking so clearly in my direction that I asked her to repeat herself.

She may have heard my words but she never stopped delivering what I quickly discerned to be an incoherent monologue about nothing that made any sense. Her eyes looked at me with what I interpreted as a signal that in her mind she knew what was going on and how out of place she looked sitting there alone talking out loud to herself, but that she had no control over it.

I quickly returned my attention to a Quarter Pounder or whatever nasty gruel I used to eat at that place. This was about 27 years ago but even then, at a much younger age and with limited experience in such things, I managed to recognize the situation for what it was without feeling nervous or even sympathetic. There was nothing I could do about it but no risk to me, either.

Today was different. That dude mumbling like he was, and with such a concentrated and concentrating look in his eyes, made me feel like a fate from actions beyond his control would inevitably befall him and possibly me as well.

We parted ways at Second Avenue and 58th Street, at which point I imagined him looking at me the way he did, or simply looking in my direction, was enough to establish a meaningful connection — for him, that is. Had he memorized my face and committed himself to me? Evidently not, unless he trailed me with great stealth.

I went to the 181, not expecting anything in particular but just because clearing out the mail is something I should do once in a while. There were grade school and high school alumni newsletters, both which I discarded after checking for updates on anyone from around my graduation years of 1982 and 1986. There were none.

I realized later that I neglected to check the pages with recent deaths. I never used to look for that until one time I just happened to notice that someone I sat next to throughout grade school and some of high school had died. He was 40-something. His last name started with U, and on account of the alphabeticalness that characterizes so much seating in life he was right behind me or right next to me for the 6 years I was at that grade school. Our neighborly seating assignments happened throughout high school as well but not as often as in grade school.

For all that proximity I never knew the guy, who I thought gave off an air of anger and silent resentment toward everybody. My mother often made fun of him in a way only she would do. She thought it was remarkable that throughout grade school and high school this kid never did anything outside of regular coursework. No Chess Club, no bit parts in the theater groups, nothing to show for his time there except passing grades which I would have guessed put him right about in the middle of the class rankings.

Thus mother was especially amused when the senior year yearbook was published and this person’s name appeared in the index just one time, linking to the page number of his portrait. In that index his name was spelled wrong. Mother thought that was hilarious, a sentiment I never quite connected with but I let her have her laugh. Pretty much every single kid in the yearbook had at least two page references in the index, linking to their portrait and whatever extra curriculars in which they engaged. But this kid only ever had one page number next to his name.

Having barely known Mr. U. I recognized how strange the appearances might have looked when, after he died, I contacted someone from school who this person and I both knew, and who remains to this day very active in alumni affairs. This person attended the funeral but all he could tell me about what happened was that it was a heart attack. A little bit of online sleuthing revealed that he had lived in a trailer park in central Florida, and from what I found it looked as if he’d gone on to become some kind of a rebel, going against anything I thought I knew about him as being kind of a drab, malcontented drifter. He had tattoos all over himself, drove a motorcycle, grew his hair long, and all in all turned into the sort of person you might not expect to have attended sheltered Catholic schools from Kindergarten through high school.

Then again maybe you would expect that. I don’t know, but most people I’ve maintained any connection with from those days look like older version of whoever they were in school.

But then I did not really find all that much online about Mr. U., so what little I did discover might have created a false impression of how he really turned out.

There is one memory of Mr. U. that has stayed with me. He did not talk much in class but when he did he often came off as either lying outright or just exaggerating certain details. In one instance a teacher was leading the class in a discussion that had something to do with unexpected accidents or pratfalls. Mr. U. raised his hand and described someone he knew who was just walking along one day when he slipped on something. According to Mr. U.’s account this fellow did not just injure himself. He slipped into a coma and woke up weeks later in a bodycast.

Nobody in the class believed this and for months if not years to come U. was peppered with questions like “How’s your friend in the bodycast doing?” He never responded to these questions with words but I saw his eyes and face grimace to reveal that being caught in a lie was humiliating to him, but that he had no intention of learning a lesson from this and telling stories free of fabrications. For him being caught meant he had to continue lying about other things to maintain the illusion of the other wacky stories he told.

He, like a number of other people I’ve encountered in life, had a lot of lies to keep track of. We all do, though, don’t we? I think lying is fundamental to the fabric of our species and has been since long before fake news was suddenly decried as if it was something new.