Villains

I was walking down Essex Street this morning on my way to the south end to get a coffee. It’s one of the dodgier streets running through the financial district towards Tremont. The sidewalks are narrow and in disrepair and it’s common to see someone panhandling or pissing in a doorway. I’m accustomed to walking in the road, striding with purpose, eyes forward – I’m going somewhere and I’m very busy so don’t talk to me. My boss and mentor Rowena used to call it her “New York Walk.” It’s swaggy. It can feel really good. This morning I heard a familiar refrain when I was about half way down the street: “Ma’am…ma’am…excuse me, ma’am…” I’m used to hearing it and I’m used to ignoring it. The Doppler effect of a human voice rising then fading as I pass it by.

But today it just got louder. I looked behind me and there was this guy – big-ish, dressed in ill-fitting layers of clothes – stepping off the sidewalk and coming towards me. I kept walking, and the voice kept getting louder. “Ma’am…excuse me, ma’am, do you have a dollar…I just need a dollar to…”

I turned around, planted my feet, and put my hands in my pockets, holding tight to my wallet that hasn’t had cash in it since 2005. “No. And don’t get any closer to me.”

I spun and walked away. I could hear that he wasn’t following anymore. I saw a car pass by, the first I’d seen all morning. I wondered – if this guy had kept following me. If he’d started to chase me. What would I have done? Could I have run towards this shiny car, banged on the window of the respectable-looking driver, and yelled at him to help me? He would have stopped, right? He would have intervened on my behalf, wouldn’t he? He’d have been able to tell by looking at me that I’m the good guy – I’m the normal one. I’m not usually wearing sweatpants at this hour and it hasn’t been that many days since I washed my hair. I’m someone who deserves help. You can see that – right?

Or maybe he would he have thought that I was crazy. Or begging. Or sick. The one thing that’s for sure is I’m just another stranger who’d breathe on him the second he rolled down his window. And what could be more dangerous right now than that?

I’ve read a number of articles that try to make a big-picture, silver-lining argument for the moment we’re in: this disease presents us humans with a common enemy. And there’s nothing quite so effective as a common enemy to unite us – to make us look past our petty differences, put partisan squabbles aside, and start working as one team again. I was never the biggest fan of Hemingway, but he nailed the response for this one: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

I think this virus has made all of us the villain. Microscopic dead matter that hooks into our humanity and weaponizes it against everyone around us. Daily headlines that hook into our brains and poison them. Everyone is dangerous. Everyone can hurt you. You’re feeling lousy? Assume you have it. Feeling fine? You’re probably a quiet carrier. Each uncovered cough is an act of violence. Going for a run without a mask is tantamount to both suicide and voluntary manslaughter. You’ve been feeling fine for five weeks and want to go home for Easter? Cool, have fun killing your parents. That’s the narrative. So our deliberate behaviors change. We keep our distance. We step off the sidewalk when we see someone coming. We dress like bank robbers to go to the supermarket.  

But something else happens, after a while, when our behaviors change. Our instincts change. Seeing a person – any person. every person. – signals “danger.” Makes us turn. Makes us cross the street. Makes us run. Repeated behaviors turned habits are hard enough to shake. Instincts? Shaking those is something else entirely.

I feel my behavior changing. I don’t walk up Summer Street anymore. The sidewalks are lined with the same personalities as always – the woman who sits with her umbrella and chatters at the birds, the spare change newspaper guy who intermittently barks out commands, the older men who skulk in the alleyway in front of Yvonne’s. But there’s no other life around to make that suffering seem smaller by comparison; there’s no ordinary bustle or car horns or friendly conversation to drown out the crazy. The Downtown Crossing pigeons don’t hobble around underfoot like they used to. They fly straight at you, and might smack right into your face if you don’t duck to avoid them. They’re still fat. But no one’s feeding them anymore.

I feel it getting harder to interact with friends through screens. Whether it’s Zoom get-togethers or social media commentary or text threads. I know I should be grateful to see that so many buddies are making masks. I should read the outbreak-related charts and graphs and data that get texted around. I don’t know why it feels so hard to banter about grocery shopping woes and sterilizing workout equipment. But honestly, I just don’t want to read about or talk about disease and precautions and warnings and worst case scenarios anymore. Which…doesn’t leave much to talk about. I should probably just open the damn graphs.

It’s not usually my instinct to pull away, or turn inward, or duck out of conversations with people I care about. It’s not like me to not show up and not reply. I don’t like feeling pissed off all the time. I hate feeling lonely. It’s been a long time since I haven’t had a goal for what’s next.

I don’t want to become my own worst enemy.

So. On this dreary, rainy day, here’s the best analogy I can manage. It’s another rowing analogy. But hey, the world has gotten tiny and I’m hard up for stimulus. There’s something that almost always happens when you’re rowing a team boat with a coxswain who’s either brand new or who’s racing a course they’ve never been on before. They call the race wrong. The familiar markers of their home river are gone, the current’s slowing the boat down more than anticipated, and they get disoriented. They call a final power ten strokes to get to the finish. Every woman in the boat hauls on the oar as hard as she can, knowing exactly how much she has left to give, so that the only thing left to do after the tenth stroke is to collapse. You take that final power ten together to nudge your bow over the line…but you’re not done. The coxswain’s voice comes over the speaker, sometimes with an apology, sometimes not, and calls another ten. For real this time. Just ten more and the race is over. Probably.

I was in a boat once where the first “final ten” got called with 400 meters to go. We had to do four of them. If you want to transform relatively civilized women into murderers in the space of 100 seconds, this is a pretty good way to do it. We came off the water shaking, as much from fury as fatigue. That’s what this moment feels like to me. Withstand this shit until mid-April and then it will end. Actually, just get through May and it will stop. You know, hopefully by the end of summer this will all be done…

I feel it again. Fatigue and fury. All over. But here’s the thing about that race, as hellacious as it was – we didn’t die. We didn’t kill our coxswain (she was WAY too loveable). It was ugly as hell, but we made our way to the finish line. And after we spent the afternoon bitching over beers and the evening pounding Advil before going to sleep, we woke up the next day. And we went to practice. And we rowed together. And the next weekend we raced together. Our instincts held up – drop the blade in, push, send, finish down and around, breathe. Again. Again. Again. Our behaviors stayed human – I remember my tallest teammate carrying our cox up the dock on her shoulders after we won. And we came off the water feeling like what we had always been – a team. But a little more aware. A little humbled. A little more grateful when things went right.

It still feels too overwhelming to think about where the finish line is in this mess. It doesn’t seem productive to imagine all the different ways life might look down the line. But “ten more” – phone calls. runs. coffee breaks. blog ideas. push-ups for that dumb challenge. – that feels doable. And then ten more after that. And ten more after that.