I walked up to the mailboxes at the same time as another guy. I’d never seen him before but he must live at the apartments. As he turned the key to his box, he looked over at me and said “How was your day?”
I thought at first that he must think I’m someone he knows - I mean that was an odd first thing to say to a stranger. So I turned my face full towards him and pretended I hadn’t heard. “What’s that?” I said.
Even though he could clearly see my face now, he still just repeated what he’d said the first time. Not wanting to be unnecessarily rude but tired from my workday, I just said “Not bad, you?”
“Oh, not too bad”
After a pause, I repented and added “One less day till the weekend.”
“Yep, that’s right,” he said. “Take ‘er easy now.” Then he walked off. Just a friendly guy.
Very different from the streets of NY, where you don’t even make direct eye contact with people - it would be seen as aggressive the same way dogs do. Just kind of glance over at them, then look away again. Any stranger that speaks to you is mentally unstable or wants something. It’s strangest on those subway trains where the seats directly face each other, just a few feet apart. You could reach out your arms and touch but still you pointedly look away and say nothing. If you were to say something as casual as I like that shirt, the other person would think you had a mind to steal it from them. So you pretend to ignore each other.
The ignore factor was taken to a whole ‘nother level when I worked as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As in most museums, there’s a guard posted every few rooms and we didn’t say anything to the visitors unless directly addressed - just shuffled around a little and watched what went on. And said “Hey, don’t touch that,” every now and then. Since there were no other distractions, and the art didn’t really change much, we watched the visitors - knew what each one was carrying and which room they had come from, and if they were going to be trouble. I learned to make conclusions about their temperament, the circumstances of their youth and upbringing, their philosophy of life, and their future financial prospects - all with just a glance.
But they never took much notice of us; the uniform just made us a part of the furniture. We walked like silent ghosts through the crowds for hours at a time, just waiting for the next break to go down to the canteen and have a conversation with a person. Often, if you were posted next to another guard, you’d wind up talking. It didn’t matter what you talked about or whether you knew or liked them. Sometimes, you’d have spent a long time talking to one of the other guards but when you saw them the next day, they didn’t even make eye contact or say hello. As if talking had been done in a moment of weakness forced on them by the virtual solitary confinement of the lonely museum guard job. It wasn’t like they actually wanted to talk to you in real life. Sometimes I’d see someone in the hallways or on break and couldn’t remember if this was a hello person or a not-hello person. I’d see them coming and just played it safe. Gave them the nod: I know you, I see you, and that’s as far as I’m going.
The nod’s a reliable one. I’m gonna go home now and practice, while checking my mail.
They did a story a little while ago on NPR’s This American Life about which power a person would opt for if given the choice between flight or invisibilty. They said that it was surprising how quickly people made their choice - as if they’d been thinking about it for a long time.
They would definitely be right in my case - I used to have a very realistic recurring dream in which I would be gliding through the air, drifting gently downwards like a single feather on the air currents; then bouncing back off the ground right before touching it - as if someone had blown upwards from below the feather. Like a rock skipped across a river. Or like the earth was a trampoline. Or a parachute with springs. Usually I don’t even remember my dreams but this one was crystal clear. Went on for years; every now and then.
Flight - that’s all I’d want, too. I don’t want to be Superman - that’s just too much with the super-strength and the super-speed and the heat-rays from the eyes and the super-cold-breath. I mean, really, get the hell out of here. It’s unrealistic, implausible; just ridiculous. I’m for Hawkman. Can’t do nothing but fly. And not only that - he uses a sword, shield, and mace to beat people with. Not even a super-gun for him. Just the ancient laws of mortal combat and weapons that force you to go right up and look your enemy in the face. Mano-a-mano.
Soon as I can start flying, I’m gonna work out a little bit, take some Tae Kwon Do, and read up on the laws and statutes of Asheville and Buncombe County. Then, just fly around over the mountains with a metal trash can lid in one hand and an empty bottle of champagne in the other - ready for wacking. If I see anyone stepping out of line: boom, that’s it. No questions. You don’t mess with Hawkman.
I used to work at Unto These Hills in Cherokee NC, just down the road. Spent summers acting and doing backstage work at the outdoor drama about the Cherokee Nation. That’s where I met my wife; she was a dancer and choreographer there. It’s also where I first came to know Asheville; we’d drive up on our day off just for a change. Always thought it was a cool little town in the hills.
It was a pretty good deal working there. You didn’t get paid much - so mostly the cast and crew were people in college or just out of it. The theater is on a hill - and out of view of the audience on the same hill are cabins for the more senior staff, dorms for the rest (a boys and a girls), a cafeteria that serves two meals a day, a pool where people like to skinny dip, a canteen where dance, theater, and music shows are put on every Saturday night, a grotto with a stream running through it where parties are sometimes thrown - pretty much a little self-contained community. (This should all be past tense - they’ve made some changes since I used to work there.) But at the time it was like a little hippie artsy summer retreat. The actual job at the play was only 4 hours a night so you could sleep as late as you wanted and there was a lot of free time. You could just hang out and explore the town and the mountains with people you’d just met who had the same interests that you did. If you felt like it, you could do creative projects in your spare time. It was an idyllic sort of life for a young person in the arts. All year long I’d look forward to being back on that hill with the hill people. You couldn’t wish for much more.
The only thing left to wish for was rain. A lot of rain. Rain in buckets. If there was enough rain, the show would be cancelled and we’d have the night off. But it took a whole lot of rain for that to happen. Often we’d be doing the play sopping wet under the stage lights and the audience would have ponchos on and umbrellas up and the show would go on. During intermission we’d sit backstage and smoke cigarettes and watch the rain fall and wonder where all the fireflies had gone to. On the PA system would be the intermission music and we’d half listen, just in case they said the rain was going to win tonight.
One night during my third summer, I was sitting out there on the porch backstage while the rain came down in sheets. Intermission was about over, it was almost time to get back to work. Suddenly, I heard a commotion and a couple of my friends came running down the steps and grabbed shovels and rakes. The PA said there would be a slight delay before the play resumed. What he didn’t say was why: the latrines had overflowed and there was a river of raw sewage coming down toward the stage. It had been a big audience that night and the combination of them all using the restrooms during intermission and the heavy rain had made the septic tanks overflow. I said Holy Shit, grabbed a rake and ran after them.
It was dark on the side of the theater, just across the rail from the audience seating. The house lights were on and the crowd was still milling about - most of them didn’t know about the overflow. It hadn’t got to us yet at the bottom of the hill but we could smell it through the rain, knew it was coming. So we got in its likely path and started quickly digging a trench to divert it away from the stage. I’ve never seen people work so furiously, moving with the speed of dogs, throwing up dirt. I guess trying to avoid being covered with raw sewage will do that. I joined in. There wasn’t much talking - no need for it. As I dug, I didn’t often look up but could hear the sound of others, working all around me in the darkness, digging into the hill. The foul flow came closer and we saw that it wasn’t going to hit our trench, we were slightly off - so we rushed even faster to create an intermediary channel to the trench. The closer the river of shit got, the faster we dug. The murmurs of the crowd wondering why the show hadn’t started back up yet, the stage lighting not quite reaching us as we worked in the dark, the rainwater falling from the trees overhead, the muddy earth flying through the air, the desperate sidelong glances to see if it was here yet, the sounds of metal scraping into dirt - it seemed to go on forever. A couple of times I almost got my foot shoveled into. It all lasted maybe 10 minutes.
Eventually we managed to turn it to the side, most of it. But we’d had to step in it a couple of times - no one escaped unstained. After the show we took off our shoes and walked back up the hill to the dorms in our bare feet. First stop the washing machines, second stop the showers.
The stage was cleaned up good as new by the next night. No sign of what had happened the night before except the new trenches on the hillside. The play continued as before. It’s a good show; I recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet. But if you do go and if it’s raining, please - try to hold it.