But I've been sleepwalking so much, I don't remember dreaming

[sovay]

I had an unpleasant encounter a couple of weeks ago in Davis Square. I was angry about it for days, even though it takes longer to describe than it did to occur. I was walking to meet a friend at Porter Square Books, reading Nicholas Stuart Gray's The Apple-Stone (1965) while navigating around pedestrians, street signs, and parking meters; I was on the block of Elm Street between Amsterdam Falafelshop and Goodwill when I met a man coming the other way. We're not talking some kind of collision course. In keeping with the intermittent rules of American foot traffic, I was on the storefront side, while he was closer to the street, and it was a relatively clear stretch of sidewalk—specifically, he had no one on either side of him, which is how I know he did what he did deliberately. When we were just about a stride apart, he stepped directly into my path. It was like being body-checked. I had no time to dodge. I had to stop short or run into the chest of a total stranger who took up more space than I did and as I stood there on the bricks, he leaned forward and said into my ear, "Sorry about that, baby." And then he stepped around me and walked on. As creeper moves went, it was pretty brilliant. No touching, no profanity, deniable as all the best microaggressions, maximally gross. I wanted to yell after him, but it had been such a startling invasion of personal space that I had no idea how he would react: keep walking, turn around and curse me out, try to smash my face in. And I had a friend to meet. So I kept walking and was angry for several days.

Today, I was not having a good afternoon. I had left the house in plenty of time to get to my doctor's appointment in downtown Boston, but the bus had completely ghosted on me—it arrived both late and Not in Service, with no successor scheduled until well after the point at which I needed to have caught a train—and my efforts to pick up a taxi at the stand near the ex-Star Market came to nothing when the driver made eye contact with me and then drove away. I was going to be late if I walked to Sullivan Square, but I couldn't think of a better plan. So I was just passing the fire station on Broadway when I realized a male voice was shouting at me from the street. It took a moment to register: maybe it wasn't me he was shouting at, odds were against him shouting anything that would improve my mood. It was the driver of a municipal garbage truck. He was very definitely addressing me, because he smiled and repeated himself as soon as I saw him. What he was shouting was "I love your hair! It's awesome!"

So I shouted back, "Thank you!"

Dudes who whine that women's dwindling patience with street harassment means it is no longer possible to compliment a strange woman in public, please take note: it is completely possible, even during a five-second flyby at the wheel of a garbage truck. His comment was enthusiastic without being objectifying; it did not imply that I was put on this earth to be a sexual decoration or that I owed its author anything for his discernment in appreciating me as such; it was not anatomically involved. "Awesome" is not a carnal adjective. It was unexpected. It made me feel better.

And then a taxi went by me and I flagged it down and made the train and was not even late for my doctor's appointment.

After the appointment, I got a bagel with cream cheese and hot-smoked salmon belly from the Boston Smoked Fish Co. at the Boston Public Market and finished Jean Potts' Home Is the Prisoner (1960), of which I need to find a more permanent copy than this attractively pulp-covered but sadly disintegrating Berkeley pocket edition. After I got home, I spent the latter part of the afternoon lying on the couch with rotating shifts of cats and reading David Goodis' Dark Passage (1946), of which I need to find a print copy at all—I didn't expect to find a complete text freely available on the internet, but I'm not complaining. Now I want to rewatch the movie. (I am amused that the book stops exactly where I would have ended the adaptation, on a note of hope but no guarantees. Hollywood, of course, goes one happy ending further.)

spatch just got home, bringing me a pork-filled tamal from Tenoch, steamed in a banana leaf, with mole poblano on the side. I am going to ward off the cats—who got their own dinner an hour ago!—and enjoy how much less my evening appears to be sucking than the first half of my day.

P.S. selkie, that is indeed a fine and accurate translation. It's in the first person in the original Latin, so a working translation might look like "I'd rather my friends sucked me than my enemies face-fucked me," but it sounds more proverbial the other way.

Comments

[choco_frosh]

a fine and accurate translation

Hexameter?

[sovay]

Hexameter?

Iambic senarius. One of the basic meters of Roman comedy; Terence used it a lot. It's six feet of iambs, in this case a lot of long syllables, several elisions, and a bit in the second metron that drove me nuts until I double-checked my options and remembered that a dactyl or anapest can be substituted for anceps + long:

mālīm mē‿amīcī fēllēnt quăm‿inĭmīcī‿irrŭmēnt

¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ / ¯ ¯ ¯ ˘˘ / ¯ ¯ ˘ ¯

I did the whole thing out by hand first. Somewhere in the world exist people who can scan Latin prosody by eye, but I think I retain that ability only for hexameters. I got college flashbacks out of it, at least.

[asakiyume]

You do have magnificent hair. I'm happy that someone knows how to compliment you on it not only in a non-assholic way, but in an actively good way.

[sovay]

I'm happy that someone knows how to compliment you on it not only in a non-assholic way, but in an actively good way.

Thank you! It really did improve my afternoon.

[jesse_the_k]

Thank you for sharing this.

I tend to offer this sort of complement when I'm in public--carefully avoiding the carnal adjectives--and I appreciate your reinforcing that it's not creeper behavior.

[sovay]

Thank you for sharing this.

You're welcome.

I tend to offer this sort of complement when I'm in public--carefully avoiding the carnal adjectives--and I appreciate your reinforcing that it's not creeper behavior.

I really don't believe it is. There is just a large population of people in the world who cannot distinguish between complimenting and creeping and are actively disinterested in learning.

[lilysea]

When we were just about a stride apart, he stepped directly into my path. It was like being body-checked. I had no time to dodge. I had to stop short or run into the chest of a total stranger who took up more space than I did and as I stood there on the bricks, he leaned forward and said into my ear, "Sorry about that, baby."

Urgh urgh urgh.

I am so sorry.

Christ, what an arsehole.

[sovay]

Christ, what an arsehole.

Thank you. (That is an appropriate icon.)

[lilysea]

Yes, an appropriate compliment to a total stranger is one that would be appropriate for a man to give his mother/sister/aunt/grandmother/brother.

"That's a great dress!"

"That's an awesome backpack"

"I love how you've decoupaged your briefcase!"

[kore]

Yeah, and hair, dress, backpack, briefcase, &c &c., aren't body parts either. Well hair sort of is, but not as a wossname, secondary sexual characteristic.

[sovay]

Well hair sort of is, but not as a wossname, secondary sexual characteristic.

Yeah. It was not like a drive-by shout-out to my ass. Which, the last time I encountered one of those, turned immediately into cries of "fat bitch" when I did not respond favorably. It was one of the most Reddit moments I've ever experienced in real life.

[sovay]

A compliment is like a social transaction.

"Transactional" was one of the words I almost used when describing what the garbage truck driver's compliment wasn't.

The dude in Davis Square didn't even bother to offer me anything, other than high blood pressure.

[swan_tower]

A friend and I were at a concert once -- well, we were sitting out in the lobby of a concert, because we'd forgotten to bring earplugs and the lobby was the right place to be to enjoy the music without them -- and a guy demonstrated all the right ways to compliment strange women in public: he bopped over to us, halted a non-invasive distance away, crouched down so he wasn't looming over us, said "I just wanted to tell you that I love the skirts you're wearing!," and then after we said thank you, bopped cheerfully away. A++, would be complimented again. The attention to space and positioning helps; complimenting something that is distanced from the actual body helps; expressing admiration in a non-sexualized manner helps (i.e. there's a world of difference between "I love your skirt" and "you look great in that skirt").

It helped that I would lay cash money on him being gay, but a straight guy who pays attention to fashion could have done the same thing and it wouldn't have been creepy.

[sovay]

"I love how you've decoupaged your briefcase!"

That is an excellent compliment. I hope someone, sometime has said it to you.

[lilysea]

Thank you! ^_^

No, but mainly because I've never had a decoupaged briefcase! ^_^

[sovay]

No, but mainly because I've never had a decoupaged briefcase!

What are you waiting for?

[kore]

I love how selkie has a #sonya tag for things just of that nature. And other neat things.

Someone described it well but the fucken wildfire haze gave me a headache so I can't remember it exactly -- but it's like the difference between someone demanding something from you, or taking something from you, and a gift. "You have beautiful hair" is on the gift side. Some dude demanding your space and attention either physically or verbally is not the same thing. Altho I can't think right now so that's probably not terribly convincing.

[sovay]

I love how selkie has a #sonya tag for things just of that nature. And other neat things.

It makes me very happy. And always turns up good things.

"You have beautiful hair" is on the gift side. Some dude demanding your space and attention either physically or verbally is not the same thing.

The distinction makes sense to me. Thanks for the articulation!

*hugs* for the headache.

[selkie]

Well, since LJ fell to the communists, or the opposite thereof, there has to be a place to put the internets one finds. I try to be discerning. I have failed at being apolitical.

If you're going to walk around Boston you need a really good hex for people. Clearly. Something with boils.

[ethelmay]

I have occasionally had a statement directed at me that could have been a gift by its phrasing, but in fact was deployed as a method of demanding my attention. That I don't care for.

[sovay]

That I don't care for.

That's the form of street harassment discussed above: compliment proferred as leverage, retracted when not reciprocated with attention, admiration, out-of-nowhere sex scene, etc.

[ethelmay]

But the scenario first described above involved a "compliment" like "nice ass," which I think most people perceive as inherently aggressive coming from a stranger. I was proposing that even a compliment that could be a pleasant one under other circumstances could be, for instance, yelled almost unintelligibly out a car window to make one jump, or said in an unpleasantly meaning tone, etc. The distinction is perhaps not very important.

[sovay]

I was proposing that even a compliment that could be a pleasant one under other circumstances could be, for instance, yelled almost unintelligibly out a car window to make one jump, or said in an unpleasantly meaning tone, etc.

I was thinking of the latter example, though: when strangers say you're beautiful, but mean a threat by it. (I hadn't thought of compliments yelled aggressively out of car windows because I think I always assume, especially if I can't really make out what they're saying, that that's abuse.)

[ladymondegreen]

I am glad the scales have balanced a bit from that first repulsive encounter. Also that there are positives like salmon belly, books, cats and especially spatch.

[sovay]

I am glad the scales have balanced a bit from that first repulsive encounter. Also that there are positives like salmon belly, books, cats and especially spatch.

Thank you. They really did help.

[gwynnega]

It never occurred to me that Dark Passage was adapted from a book, but of course it makes complete sense that it would have been.

[sovay]

It never occurred to me that Dark Passage was adapted from a book, but of course it makes complete sense that it would have been.

It's a good book! The movie is in fact a very close adaptation, barring some plot condensing and a color theme that doesn't really come through in black and white. (It's alluded to in dialogue, if I remember correctly, but there's no chance for the audience to make the same revelatory connection as the protagonist without seeing a piece of characteristic bright color in the background of several scenes—the only reason I'm sorry there was never a Technicolor version of this story.) I discovered David Goodis last summer with The Wounded and the Slain (1955) and immediately wanted more of him, but I can't afford Library of America editions and he doesn't seem to show up in used book stores much. I'm not surprised. I wouldn't get rid of my copies, either.

[julian]

A) what a freakin' jerk.

B) Hey, good compliment, compliment giver!

C) now I want Boston Fish Market's bluefish pate thing. Next week, perhaps.

[sovay]

C) now I want Boston Fish Market's bluefish pate thing. Next week, perhaps.

I have not yet had their bluefish! I can vouch for all forms of their salmon, however. So can Autolycus and Hestia.

Re: A) and B): thank you.

[starlady]

What an asshole.

[sovay]

What an asshole.

Considering our total interaction took, again, maybe ten seconds, it was impressive.

[cmcmck]

Maybe it's something about dustcart crews?

I remember being amused by a poster on one in Paris and when I lined up to take a shot of it as it went past, the guys pulled the truck to a better spot and all piled out to line up alongside while I got the pic of it and them.

Made my day- although that isn't difficult in Paris! :o)

[sovay]

I remember being amused by a poster on one in Paris and when I lined up to take a shot of it as it went past, the guys pulled the truck to a better spot and all piled out to line up alongside while I got the pic of it and them.

That's excellent! Maybe it is.

[thisbluespirit]

I'm glad you had the second encounter to at least balance at the former a little. (But, urgh, nevertheless. /o\)

[sovay]

I'm glad you had the second encounter to at least balance at the former a little.

Thank you. It did feel like that's what it was doing.

(But, urgh, nevertheless. /o\)

Those are totally appropriate reactions!

[davidgillon]

Grrr! on the arsehole.

The dynamics are different with sexes reversed, but I had something similar, bar the sexual overtone, a couple of years ago. There's a spot on Rochester High Street where the pavement widens to about 20 feet, and as I got to there, wheeling in the chair on the road side, the only other person anywhere around was a young woman coming the other way on the shop side - so about 15 feet between us. She deliberately cut diagonally across the full width of the footpath in order to force me to change direction, then carried on the way she had been going. Arsehole.

And your hair is awesome.

[sovay]

She deliberately cut diagonally across the full width of the footpath in order to force me to change direction, then carried on the way she had been going. Arsehole.

Oh, blech. I'm sorry you had to deal with that!

And your hair is awesome.

Thank you.

[sporky_rat]

I have always found the garbage truck folks to be pretty decent. Good to see it's not just around here!

[sovay]

I have always found the garbage truck folks to be pretty decent. Good to see it's not just around here!

I think it is wonderful that this is a widespread trait.

[lillibet]

Wanted to offer solidarity for the confusion and rage of those awful moments. Hope it doesn't longer long.

[sovay]

Wanted to offer solidarity for the confusion and rage of those awful moments. Hope it doesn't longer long.

Thank you. The random drive-by pleasantness and talking about it, actually, is doing a lot to defuse.