I resorted to long hand. I left the house in the pouring rain and headed for a place of Milk and Honey. [It’s actually called that, but I drank coffee instead.] I brought a print out of chapter six to date and gave it a careful editing and started writing. Six new pages later I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. Still am really.
I left because a man left a backpack and ran out of the coffee shop. A clean cut white man with all the trappings of privilege. He asked if me and another anonymous coffee shop surfer would we be there for a while, dropped an expensive looking computer bag, and hustled out. He didn’t even wait for a response. He didn’t buy anything or even look towards the register. When he crossed the street and started walking down the opposite block, he slowed and began tucking in his shirt as he moved out of view. Yes, I watched him go. Maybe he hasn’t been in Brooklyn long. You just don’t do that. Who am I to him? And frankly, in this day and age I’m no more likely to carry a package on plane for a stranger than I am to watch a bag. Paranoid? Maybe. Is that a true representation of myself and my actions? Nope. I’ve watched a lot of bags for a lot of strangers over the years in a variety of locations and always ALWAYS turned down invitations to be a mule. [That’s another story.] Something must have hit me differently this time.
Most of my emigrant neighbors and friends of color are treated with suspicion on public transportation and in many other public and private spaces. It sucks. The pervasive culture of fear erodes trust in our shared institutions.
I was faced with a choice: Do I let myself think the worst of the kind of person whom no-one usually suspects? Something about his manner just made me nervy and on edge. Or, do I tell myself to get over it, tamp down my anxiety, and keep on drinking coffee and scribbling away?
I gave the backpack one last look and glanced around the place and decided that maybe I really could do with an afternoon run. I feel a little silly, but I don’t regret it. I guess the better thing to do would have been to say “No, you really shouldn’t leave your bag here unattended.” But after the fact (and his fast exit), I decided not to infect my overblown imagination regarding what the backpack could contain on my fellow coffee drinkers in our little gentrified haven. Frankly, I doubted anyone would share my sense that something was off. I’d “camped” enough for the day any how.
The run was lovely. Then I got to fight with the bank about a wire transfer to Turkey for a very long time. Again. That killed what forward momentum I had, besides entering edits during the discordant hold music. I had clear forgotten my little bout of paranoia earlier, until I came to this ritual confession of the contents of my day.
I keep wondering why I might have thought something was off. What was the trigger?
The owner of the previous establishment to occupy that space was the victim of a mob-style execution. The body was dumped in nearly unidentifiable condition a few states away. Actually, it was found quite close to where SDA’s parents live. Maybe that.
Maybe something else entirely.
Maybe I was just angry at his thoughtless (and largely correct) assumption that his privilege would let him drop a bag and walk away from it with no consequences.
I’m really glad the “trick” of writing by hand worked to get the words flowing in a continuous manner. My learning disability also means my fine motor skills are crap. I doubt anyone but me could decipher the scrawl.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 