Failing to Make Up for Lost Time
I had something fairly long and, no doubt, smart to say about corporate anthropology, colonialism, and anthropologists putting out for the military, but I lost my draft, it’s well past midnight, the topics are getting old, and Anne Galloway and Dustin Wax have already said pretty much everything I’d wanted to say (though, I wish Galloway’s critique of Tett had been a little more severe).
I offer, instead, an anecdote:
The past couple weeks, I’ve been seeing precious little of my girlfriend, Erin, due to her involvement in the production of LiP Magazine. We live in San Francisco, and LiP’s office is in Oakland, so during these intense weeks, the general pattern has been that Erin’s left her paying job Thursday evening and taken the train to Oakland, where she’s stayed to work on the magazine through the weekend until returning to work on Tuesday. Theoretically, Erin sleeps at another LiPketeer’s house, but it seems that really she and the others don’t do much sleeping at all.
Last Saturday, I went in to help with proof-reading, bringing with me a vegan mocha raspberry cake to feed the troops. On the train, I sat across the aisle from a woman who was reading a glossy, full-colour magazine, open to an advertisement displaying a sandy beach and some unusual rock carvings. When we got to the BART Powell Street stop, a middle-aged white man in a sports coat and tie came in, and set next to the reader. He was well-shaven, cheerful, and he appeared to be upper middle-class.
‘Ooh! Where’s that?’ The woman looked up at him with a courtesy smile. ‘I’m not sure. It’s just an advertisement.’
‘I love those things because they always give you places to dream about. You know?’ She nodded, but didn’t respond, and returned to her reading.
‘Where are you from originally?’ ‘Philadelphia.’
‘Where’s that?’ She looked up, I think to check his face for signs of jest. ‘Pennsylvania.’
‘Ah. East Coast, yeah?’ She nodded.
His attempt at a conversation seemd to be floundering, and he thought for a a couple minutes. ‘Philadelphia’s known for its pizza, right?’ ‘No… I don’t think so.’
‘That’s right… That’s right… it’s New York. You’d think they’d have good pizza there with all those Italians.’
More silence.
‘You know… I’ve never really had a good pizza.’
6 December 2005 at 07:16
I like this story. I’d like to be able to fully identify with the woman. I can easily see that she was a polite person, dealing as well as she could with social overtures that she had not invited and did not welcome as wonderful when they came uninvited.
But, really, I identify with the man. In real life, that would be me. I’d be trying way too hard. And getting further behind the harder I tried.
I’d try to be charming and friendly and end up being socially inept creeping towards offensive and bordering on the illegal (there are anti-stalking laws).
I’d be saying things that made me sound like I had racist undercurrents because I wasn’t thinking straight in my scramble to make a connection.
… and it occurs to me that the only reason I wouldn’t actually BE that guy on the train in reality this very time in my life is because I have a girlfriend and that makes me less needy right there on the surface of everything.
… then it occurs to me that this stumbling about the world of social connection/no social connection is what actually got me that girl.
… for every 1,000 women on the train who don’t find my ineptness at all charming, there was this 1 who did. And she is awesome. And we did connect. And the 999 false starts fade so quickly and completely into memory when you do make that connection.
Somewhere in all that is the source of the pathos in your story.
Good story.