I was riding my bike in Back Bay yesterday a little after noon. I was headed down Dartmouth, towards Copley Square when one of those Back Bay slacker-temp type jaywalking schlubs sucking on his jumbo iced coffee, plugged into his ‘Pod, stepped out in front of me without looking first. Boston needs a Rudy Giuliani. But more on that in a minute.

I swerved to avoid him, of course. Since he had not looked in the direction of traffic before crossing, and therefore was not aware I was already right on top of him, I swerved right, behind him. But at the last possible moment he saw me, and, startled, staggered backwards. I had to slam on the brakes, which sent my back wheel up, and me flying over the handlebars.

So there I am on my back in the middle of Dartmouth Street, arms and legs akimbo, my bicycle lying on top of me. I look up at this guy looking down at me. He’s like, “oops, my bad.”

I don’t know which was worse: his stepping cluelessly out in front of me, or his looking down at my mangled form after causing me to crash, and quoting “Clueless” to me.

So that set me off. First of all, people: “my bad” is not an apology. Unless you’re, like, three years old, and you’ve just pooped your pants. But not when you are a thirty-something office temp who has just nearly killed someone through your zombie jaywalking on your way back to your data entry job from Dunkin Donuts with your fifth coolata of the day. No.

You might not have been aware of this: “my bad” actually reached a critical mass yesterday afternoon, but this noxious example of rampant anthimeria has been gaining speed for years. Although there’s some confusion about its origin and etymology, the likeliest culprit is, unlikely as it seems, Manute Bol, the impossibly tall Sudanese NBA player whose native tongue is Dinka. He reportedly used to say it whenever he flubbed a pass. It apparently spread through the college basketball subculture (such as it is), emerging in the print press in ‘89 (first in the St. Louis Dispatch, and then, days later, in USA Today). From there, in the mid-nineties, it made its way into TV (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and movies (Clueless, where it is, coincidentally, used by a character who has just caused a cyclist to crash). By the noughties, it had become the punchline in late night comedians’ monologues, which is where most of corporate America gets what pseudo-original thoughts it has. I’m quite sure that when Mr. Bush is finally indicted for war crimes his mea culpa will come in the form of “my bad, hehehe.”

The expression has layers of nuance, of course. The wiki-site, urbandictionary.com, which lets visitors identify, define, and vote on the most accurate definition of slang terms, offers this consensus definition of “my bad”:

A way of admitting a mistake, and apologizing for that mistake, without actually apologizing:

“I did something bad, and I recognize that I did something bad, but there is nothing that can be done for it now, and there is technically no reason to apologize for that error, so let’s just assume that I won’t do it again, get over it, and move on with our lives.”

Ruder than apologizing, but with the same meaning: a flippant apology.

The number two definition, which also garnered several “amens!”:

(n.) A combination of an apology and a dismissal. Basically, saying “oh yeah, I did that, but I don’t care”.

Persons of an older generation can find this quite annoying to hear when expecting an actual apology.

That definitely sums up how I felt about it, although I do not consider myself a “person of an older generation.” And the pathetic thing is that the schlub who said it was probably my age, too.

So there I am on my back in the middle of Dartmouth Street with this pudding standing there sucking on his iced coffee staring down at me. “Dude, my bad.” I just tore into him. I told him in the future he might want to look the other way–the way traffic is coming–before crossing the street. I mean, I don’t get it. Somebody could’ve been seriously injured here.

He sneers at me, mumbles, “dick,” and schlubs off across the street, leaving me battered, bruised, broken, and in disbelief.

Not really. I was lucky there’s a little hill there, and I was going uphill at the time. If I’d been on the other side, heading downhill, I probably would’ve broken my neck. So I was bruised all up and down my left side, and a little sore afterwards, but not too much worse for wear. And I wasn’t really in disbelief, either, I just like alliteration. The whole thing was all too believable, unfortunately. You’d actually expect it in Boston.

Which is why we need Rudy Giuliani. And not just for the jaywalking, either. Drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians all need to seriously shape up. Streets should be color-coded. Cyclists should have dedicated lanes, as should buses and cars. Traffic signals in areas with heavy pedestrian traffic should be modified, with shorter waits for pedestrians, who should be allowed to cross intersections diagonally (which means red lights in all directions for auto and bike traffic when pedestrians have the “go”). Cars, bikes and pedestrians who violate traffic rules should be aggressively pursued, and excessively fined. This will wound Bostonians’ rampant sense of individual exceptionalism and entitlement, but in the end it will make our streets much more livable.

(Speaking of livable streets, there’s a Street Social this afternoon in Cambridge starting at 5:30 sponsored by Livable Streets–click HERE for details.)

There’s room for debate, but I think part of the problem is the suburbanization of the city. And I mean attitudewise. Because a city is not just a place, it’s a distinct state of mind. A set of attitudes and values often at odds with those of the suburbs.

One thing every city has is a double-life. You either get that–and celebrate it in your own life in the city–or you should really just move out to the ‘burbs where you don’t need manners or social skills to get around, just an SUV and a credit card.

For those who would like to set up shop in the city, you should understand the unique spirit of cities. The secret life of cities, if you will. We all know that cities are inconvenient to get around, that they’re full of menacing crowds, multiple barriers on our way from point A to point B. But to those with eyes to see it, these barriers are passages to the secret city.

Not a hidden city, mind you. This second life of the city is an open-secret. And it opens up when you do. And when you grasp that everything and everyone is significant. And that you must strive always to be where you are. Be here, now.

When I enter a subway car I always think, “what if something happens here? What if my last moment on earth is here, in this subway car, with these people?” Because the last moment is The Moment. When the present is finally undeniably present and accounted for. When I walk onto a subway car, it’s like: I am here, now. Funky as it is. Everything that happens her and now is significant. There is no throw-away moment, no throw-away encounter with a fellow traveler, even that one there, groping his way along in the dark from one coolata to the next. My encounter with one of them yesterday could have been the death of me, after all. Careless, disconnected, coolata-fueled. It’s a deadly combination.

This secret life is made up of all the little interactions we have with one another, however careless and seemingly casual. They all play a role in our fate. They’re all significant, without exception. That sounds ominous and scary, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s about connectivity, after all. We are a part of each other’s stories. At the time of their telling. It’s a conversation to which we have to bring a respect of the other, and a genuine curiosity about the nature of this extraordinary organism of which, however different we may be from one another, we are each a vital part.

Not to sound too evolved, but I rarely see hints of awareness of this whole here, though I’m always on the look-out. Seems today we Bostonians are more likely to think of ourselves as impermeable, autonomous units, never mingling our auras gracefully, generously, like fellow travelers, but banging and bashing into each other like bumper cars, on our way to nowhere. We’re “in” our ‘Pods, with our urban armor to protect us. This may be a function of fear: the fear of potential violence so often associated with race, or the fear of affrontery so often seen in highly class-conscious cultures.

When your city is little more than a glorified bumper car course, you’re going to get banged up occasionally. I understand that. If that’s how it is, that’s how it is. But when you bash into me, please, please, whatever you do, just don’t say “oops, my bad,” or I will be forced to bash back.

“Boston officers shoot at suspect who fled stop in stolen SUV” and “MBTA officer, suspect exchange gunfire at T stop”.

Now, there have been times I have been tempted to stand up and fight for the rights of decent, well-behaved commuters, and say something to some young punks who are acting up on the platform. But you know that part of what’s going on in any such situation is a kind of dare–it’s a potent if primitive combination of intentional provocation and intimidation, and the fact is, a lot of these thugs are spoiling for a fight. And if they’re looking for it, they’re likely armed as well.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned the time last summer I was on the Orange line and a big gang of thugs busted onto the train, staring people down, and I ended up standing next to one, who muttered to his buddy, “I just wish someone would bump into me—I just want to beat the shit out of somebody.” I quietly made my way to the opposite end of the car.

You can bet not a one of them paid their fare, either. That’s just one of the many perks of membership in a band of marauding thugs.

Of course, there’s nothing you can do about this sort of thing, except move quietly to the opposite end of the car if you can. You do the math in your head when they storm in. You’ve got ten minutes to your stop. You can endure it. And why give them what they’re looking for? They travel in packs—or sometimes “swarms” as they’re calling it in the news now. I mean, did you see the security camera footage of the guard getting “swarmed” by a gang of young thugs on the news yesterday? If you stand up to them, who’ll back you up? Nobody, is who. Nobody wants trouble, except the troublemakers themselves. But who wants to sit there in silence and be intimidated like that?

I would say that the problem is probably not as bad as the press makes it out to be, but the numbers don’t lie. In every category, Boston crime rates are worse than the national average. Everybody knows the murder rate was up 34% in 2005. Aggravated assault, which is something much more likely to happen to just anybody in the wrong place at the wrong time, is off the hook.

Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times about the “bewildering” nature of the new surge in violent crime. I know I have banged on a good deal about eye-contact, but you’ve got to be careful these days: “mean mugging,” which, according to the article is ghetto slang for giving someone a dirty look, could get you killed.

When I was visiting my Aunt Mindy from Indy on St. Armand’s Island a couple of months ago, she told me to write an op-ed piece about conscripting petty criminals. I was like, uh, OK. You know, it goes against some of my gut convictions, but I do think a compulsory national service corps could help with the problem of youth violence, which often results, I think (perhaps simplistically), from lack of purpose, direction, connectivity with a positive community and cause, and plain old garden-variety boredom. Plus lack of prospects and hope of a better life, particularly relative to what we see on TV or in the movies, which also seems to some with violent tendencies to justify violence towards others unlike themselves.

I’m not pinning this on minorities, either. Take this thing at Duke. Whatever happened between that stripper and those Lacrosse players, one thing is for sure: it was sordid. Neither party is coming out of it squeaky clean. I heard yesterday one of the guys, who’s gone to the best, most expensive prep schools, and whom everyone says is a great student and team player, was arrested last year on a trip to Georgetown for assualting a man after taunting him with homophobic slurs. Then there’s the email from one team member, sent the day after rape accusations were made public, “announcing that the following night he planned ‘to have some strippers over’ and would be ‘killing the bitches’ as soon as they walked into his dorm room….The e-mail…notes that, after the strippers were killed, they would be skinned while the author was ‘cumming in my duke issue spandex.’” None of which proves that the young woman who claimed to have been raped was. But it would not surprise me. I certainly don’t doubt for a minute that the players taunted her with racial and misogynist slurs, though.

The picture that arises of the Duke Lacrosse team ain’t pretty, no matter how you slice it. It reminds me of the culture of “careless people” of privilege F. Scott Fitzgerald documented in Gatzby. Sometimes we forget: privilege leads to forms of violence just as surely as privation. It’s not poverty that’s to blame in our time.

Anyway, I think a real, functioning national service corps without the missionary overtones of the Peace Corps and Americorps, could do wonders. Nowadays the volunteer service corps, unfortunately, tends to draw people of privilege who sometimes go into it for the wrong reasons–to bolster their resumes, for example. And working abroad for many years, I ran into my share of Peace Corps volunteers whose attitudes towards their host cultures was downright insulting. As for Americorps or City Year, or whoever they are, whenever I see those kids on the T with their bright red jackets I feel like, what the hell? I think they should ditch the jackets, personally. Doesn’t it make you feel like “the natives” with these brave souls in their bright red jackets risking life and limb to “civilize” us, or something? We know you’re from the suburbs, but, please, try to blend.

I’m from the school of, if you’re going to do good in the world, skip the bright red jacket or the hairshirt, drop the megaphone, and just do it.

I could see the usefulness of uniforms with a conscripted army, of course. And I’m all for it. And if you made the uniforms cool enough–have Piggy-D, or Po-Diddly, or whatever the fuck his name is, design ‘em–a little beret for the lads, a sash for the ladies–you’d have a movement on your hands. The trick is to give them something real to do, not to exacerbate the problem by piling boredom on boredom. The danger is that pinheads like the pols in Washington, would get ideas about using conscripts to clean their houses, cook their meals, and chauffeur them around. Gotta make sure the rich don’t abuse it.

At any rate, I have a feeling it’s going to be a long, hot summer, and probably a senselessly violent one, too, unfortunately. What to do?

It’s been a rough week in Mennonnoland, let me tell you. Wednesday my downstairs neighbor, without warfning, decided to secure her network with a password. I, of course, have been piggy-backing on hers since my roommate moved out, so I was shocked and not a little hurt by this move, let me tell you. Not to mention, it’s a bit sadistic. It’s like someone who’s been handing out crack on the street corner, getting everyone hooked, and then just suddenly stops showing up. It’s like, now you’ve got the whole neighborhood hooked, you can’t just drop it. It’s not about you anymore.

As a long-time wireless freeloader, I’d almost rather do anything than pay for internet access. It’s like paying for porn. Not when people are giving it away. You’d have to be a fool. Now, I know what you’re thinking. That I’m one of thoooooose people. I probably cheat on my taxes, too, right? Next I’ll be feigning cancer to get donations for a Caribbean vacation or pretending I’ve had sextuplets for tea and sympathy, or faking my own death for the life insurance money. But, y’know, it’s out there, in the air, for the taking.

Anyway, I thought, hmph, so that’s how it is, eh? And I hopped on my brand new bicycle and peddled my heart out on down to the Boston Public Library and headed straight for beautiful Bates Hall, where they have wireless for the masses. Much better than that old apartment, anyway, right? Well, come to find that, unlike when I was here during my last wireless crisis a year or so ago, you have to sign on to the library’s portal with your library card number and pin.

Now, here’s where it starts to get ugly. I have confession to make, and I hope you will all be understanding, my gentle readers. I have library fines dating from 2001 amounting to $50.05. I lost my card long ago, and they very rightly refused to give me a new one until I paid up.

So I was stuck. It’s Karma, of course. I could tell you the whole story of the card, the books, the fine, but it’s very long, and very, very sordid.

Suffice it to say, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and today–Saturday–I was able to log on with my own laptop (though not from home), for the first time in a few days.

And I will have more to say about the T presently…

I have this very sexy writer friend who has discovered podcasting. So she’s podcasting erotica for the masses now. She told me the other day that one of her secret fantasies was that on the T she’d be sitting next to someone listening to one of her racy podcasts. Rrrroowwwr!

I think it’s racy enough reading “Savage Love” in the Dig on the T. The truth is, people read all kinds of smut on the subway. It’s scandalous, really. But for the most part no one seems to mind. People do get a little nosy sometimes, though. I mean, I’m one to talk. I like to see what my fellow commuters are reading as much as the next guy.

But I’ve been more keenly aware of it lately, since for the past week or so my heavy T reading has been Roger Shattuck’s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, and I always see people trying to read the title from the cover. It’s a little embarrassing, because the title and the cover kind of look like it could be some kind of sleezy potboiler, referring in the title to “knowledge” in the Biblical sense, when in fact it’s straight-laced lit crit from a well-respected, thoughtful, and sometimes prudish octogenarian (actually he died in December ‘05, and was in his seventies when he wrote the work in question).

I just finished the next-to-last chapter (I was tempted to say penultimate there, but I thought it would sound too snooty)–anyway, the climax of the book is Shattuck’s very frank discussion of the Marquis de Sade, with some unexpurgated excerpts from Justine and Philosophy of the Boudoir. This is not erotica, it’s straight-up porn. Shattuck admits that “pornography we shall always have with us. It serves a purpose and in its traditional forms poses no serious threat to decency and morals.” He goes on to say, “the healthiest reaction [to it] is usually laughter, not outrage.”

But Sade takes it too far, he says, and illustrates the point with references to the horrendous Moors Murders in the mid-sixties in England, and Ted Bundy’s killing spree in the following decade. Both cases involved unspeakable crimes, and murderers who claimed to have been influenced by Sade’s philosophy and works, which became widely available only after loosening of obscenity standards in the ’60s in Britain, France, and the US. (Nowadays with the world wide web, we can hardly imagine codes as restrictive as they were before that time.)

Sade’s rehabilitation among academics, marked in the 20th Century by his inclusion in the canon of great works of Western literature, essentially undermines everything the canon has come to represent, according to Shattuck. It has also paved the way for the mainstreaming of Sade. And while the book was published several years before Abu Ghraib, I think Shattuck would have seen that as the ultimate expression of Sade’s triumph over Western Culture. Quoting 19th Century English Historian Lord Acton, he sums up the Nietzschean ethos of the age we live in: “The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.”

As the title suggests, Shattuck’s study opens with the story of Prometheus, who, according to the Greeks, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man, for which he was bound to a rock, his liver eaten out by a vulture, repeatedly, forever. Try to do a good deed, and that’s what you get.

But that’s not the end of the story. According to Hesiod, Zeus was so hopping mad he’d been tricked that in retaliation he sent Pandora, the first female, with her “box” (ahem) to tempt Prometheus’s gullible little bro Epimetheus. Being the first stupid het, he took the bait, and upon opening her dowry discovered an endless supply of “grief, cares, and all evil,” which nicely canceled out all the mod cons Prometheus had managed to win for humanity. Ouch.

Then of course, there was Adam & Eve. The snake. The forbidden fruit. Crrruuunnnccchhhh. And now we’re stuck with the Marquis de Sade and Desperate Housewives. What can you do?

QOTD: What are you reading on the T, my naughty little minxes and metrosexuals?

I can’t even imagine how much those new and appallingly useless electronic signs at Downtown Crossing must have cost. Why not just put up an old-fashioned sign that reads: “No smoking.” Not that everybody doesn’t already know smoking’s prohibited. I mean, who doesn’t know that? And you probably can’t read if you don’t, anyway. And if you’re smoking down there and you do know, what good’s it do to have a sign flashing you’re not supposed to? It encourages it, is what it does. And why not flash it in Portuguese and Hindi and Cajun and Farsi?

And what else does the flashing sign say? “For info go to www.mbta.com.” Oh, thanks. Here’s an informative sign that very urgently tells you to go elsewhere for information.

And I’m absolutely sure no useful information will ever be conveyed by this flashy signage. But whatever.

Yesterday I was at Downtown Crossing for the evening rush hour. When I got to the platform, it was packed. And at least three trains came in the opposite direction, so, of course, when finally one lumbered in on my side of the tracks, it was obnoxiously crammed full of commuters. I decided to wait for the next, but you know how people are on Friday afternoon, wanting to get home and all. They were acting crazy. There was one creep on the platform with a briefcase shouting into the car: “move! Move your fat asses! You could get four more bodies in there! Move it!” And he was serious. I mean, he wanted to go home. And I can understand it, but come on.

There’s definitely a hierarchy of evils here, and making a spectacle of yourself in public is higher on the list of sins than not scrunching in sufficiently to allow someone who is making a spectacle of himself onboard. But the sense that entitlement trumps physics was also richly displayed in the incident. Several people simply would not allow the train to leave, although they could not get all the way in. I mean you’d think this was the Fall of Saigon, or something. Wait two freakin minutes, and there will be another train. What’s the emergency?

When finally the train was able to pull out, the wingnut who’d been making a scene, ran along the yellow line, knocking on the window at the passengers who had not heeded his orders to get their attention so he could give them all the finger. And the thing of it is, this freak was with two colleagues. Can you imagine working with somebody like that? I wonder what business they were in. They all three were middle-aged schlubs with briefcases, in their Dockers for dress-down Friday.

None of this excuses the irregularity of trains at rush hour, mind you. There is definitely malicious intent involved on the part of the T. I mean, one last slap in the face on a Friday just to show you who’s who and what’s what, right? But have a little dignity, people. Acting desperate only encourages them, after all.

As expected, not long after another train came, and it wasn’t nearly as packed. It was crowded, yes, but then it was rush hour on a Friday. You’re not gonna have the train to yourself. One thing that bugged me instantly when I got on—and I will admit up front it’s probably just me—was this tall dude who had a hand-held DVD player about the size of a book he was watching. Why does this bother me? I mean, it was about the shape and size of a book, and people reading books on the T definitely don’t bug me, so why should someone watching a DVD with headphones?

I don’t know, maybe it’s that 64% of twelfth graders are below proficient in reading. 26% are below basic. And according to Richard Restak, neuropsychiatrist and clinical professor of neurology at George Washington University Medical Center, author of Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain’s Potential, a kind of user’s guide to your brain, watching TV really does turn your brain to mush. Alzheimer’s has been linked in studies to excessive time spent in passive pursuits, like watching TV. In fact, one particularly rigorous study compared seniors with and without Alzheimer’s, and found that “the only single activity in which Alzheimer’s patients on average significantly outperformed their counterparts was watching television.” Maybe someday it will be an Olympic sport, too, just like everything else. Links between too much TV and obesity? Aggression? ADHD?

But then, why should I care whose brain turns to mush in the end? For me, there’s something else to it. It’s that disconnect from reality. More than that, it’s a defiant disconnect. A repudiation of shared reality, of the concept of “here” and of “now” in which I have tremendous faith.

There’s such a wealth of stimulating reading out there, too. At the same time this dude was watching his DVD, I spied this chapter heading in a course packet the guy next to me was reading: “Situations and Circumstances Conducive to Sexual Intimacy.”

I’m just saying, reading can be informative and fun!

COINAGE & KARMA. I got a free ride yesterday from JFK and I still don’t know why, but I wasn’t gonna ask. The token lady was outside her little booth, standing at the open gate, and I had my dollar out to get my token, but I guess she didn’t want to go back into her little booth to get me one just then. I consider it karma for a wait I had a couple years ago on the orange line, for which I wrote an email to the MBTA to get my fare reimbursed, and was told to go fuck myself.

THE EYES HAVE IT. I have definitely noticed that now that we’re officially into Spring, people are perking up a little. There’s been more eye contact out there in the last few days than there’s been in the past six months put together. People are funny. It’s still tentative, sometimes slightly teasing, rather curious than cocky at this point.

I spent many years in Budapest, and people there always make eye contact, and often stare brazenly on the subway. The staring used to bug me, but you get used to it. The eye contact on the street always gave me something to think about, though. On the one hand, it gave every outing an air of possibility, because each little interaction was a tale of its own, pregnant with possibility–visions of romance and violence, fantasies of intrigue–where did she come from? Where is he going? Was that an invitation in her eyes? Was that a threat in his? That’s what I have always loved about city life–that’s what’s missing from the suburbs. Fact is, in the suburbs, even if you make eye contact it’s in a familiar and thoroughly domesticated setting, like the supermarket or the post office, or the drive-thru from the safety of your car–and lacks that primal frisson of connection—and that vertiginous moment of “right now, if I look again, everything could change. Right now if I don’t look away, everything will change.”

Returning to Boston, I found it bugged me that you’d be passing somebody on the street and you’d be looking at them and they’d be looking at you, but you’d get about to where they were in focus, and they’d shift their gaze to the sidewalk. This is before there was any possibility of making real eye contact, mind you. Of course, in primates, the sustained gaze is a sign of dominance, while avoidance is a submissive or deferential gesture.

But here it seemed a sort of wholesale conflict-avoidance. The fact that the potential interaction was aborted seemed also to argue that people you encounter on the streets of Boston, for the most part, feel that conflict is the most likely outcome of interaction, at least with strangers on the street. Which is not so surprising, seeing as Boston is a city with a population widely stratified along social and economic lines. There also seems to be a lot of self-segregating due to race, class, and age, which is not so unusual, either. I think there’s probably more eye contact amongst strangers in cities that are racially and economically less stratified, more homogeneous.

Of course, psychologists and sociologists have a lot to say about these things. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin –Madison studying autism found that “in autistic subjects, the amygdala — an emotion center in the brain associated with negative feelings — lights up to an abnormal extent during a direct gaze upon a non-threatening face.” It could be that Bostonians have hyperactive amygdalas. Only compulsory mass MRIs can tell us for sure.

In New York City, in the days after 9/11, some psychologists-about-town, and at least one journalist(“gawker” Alex Kuczynski) noticed something: “In acts described by psychologists and sociologists as subliminal bonding consistent with wartime, instead of averting gazes when a stranger stood close, many New Yorkers made eye contact. The cultural historian Neal Gabler, who walked Manhattan’s streets for three days after Tuesday’s attack, said that New Yorkers have always cultivated the blank face. “It is an immunity mechanism, an emotional tax that you pay when you live in New York City,” he said. “Now, people have left it behind and are looking at each other with a different kind of civility, looking for some kind of contact.”

Kuczynski quotes Dr. Gordon Bower, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, on the result of millions of years of evolution in facial expression: “We are now able to pass on an emotional contagion, where one sad person can through their body and facial language pass on sorrow and grief to hundreds of other people,” he said. “It is an empathic, imitative response that even little children have.” Indeed, eye contact is so elemental even newborns seek it out.

But, yes, there are real dangers—but mostly inconveniences—associated with eye contact. I can’t deny it. I remember when I lived in Portland, Oregon. There was this big pockmarked homeless Indian in my neighborhood. I was working nights and he used to hang out in a doorway on my way to the bus stop. He was usually three sheets to the wind by the time I was getting to work. He was always very aggressive, demanding money or cigarettes, and because of his usual state of inebriation and his formidable stature, I found him threatening. I crossed the street to avoid him when I could. Whenever he accosted me I flashed him a look and grunted something. But one night I decided to just ignore him completely. This is something a lot of people do with beggars and bums on a crowded city street, but the less crowded it is, the more likely you are to provoke more of a reaction by ignoring them than if you just go ahead and acknowledge them. This was definitely the case with the pockmarked Indian. He flew into a rage, cursing me, throwing an empty bottle, shouting “Hey! HEY! I said ‘HEY!’” Demanding I acknowledge him. I didn’t. I hurried off to the bus stop, and made a note to try a different route from then on out.

Since that unpleasant incident, however, I always make it a point to acknowledge beggars, but I still don’t give them money. For many of mendicants it’s kind of a “gotcha!” game. If they can catch your eye, even for an instant, you lose, and owe them a buck, or whatever. This may be because of the empathy that eye contact seems naturally to engender. But I’ve been on skid row myself and never resorted to begging, so I feel like my empathy for the situation they’re in does not preclude a certain lack of sympathy for the solution they seem to have come up with.

Another danger in the city is that it seems like it’s mostly crazy people who aggressively seek out eye contact. I passed a mischievous-looking guy near the Pru yesterday, and knew I was in for something if our eyes met (but probably even if they didn’t). All it took was a glance as he was passing, and he barked: “John Lennon! Imagine!” at me. I laughed, and without breaking my stride, shouted back: “Double Fantasy, baby!” and passed without incident. He shouted over his shoulder back at me: “You got a fat wallet!” But what he took for a wallet was actually my leather-bound Moleskine notebook, which I often keep in my back pocket.

IN OTHER WORLDS. Anyway, at JFK there were two Asian students, one looked like one of those happy fat Buddhas, talking with great enthusiasm about some computer role-playing game. The whole way to Park Street. You know how people who are really into that sort of thing are. I mean, they can bang on forever about the different characters, their morphology, and their magical qualities. And listening to them, you’d swear it was all very real.

At Broadway, it probably was, an interesting character got on. He looked like he was maybe a Vietnam Vet, wearing what looked almost like a sort of paramilitary uniform. He had on those strangely-fitted pants your school custodian used to wear, the ones that were made out of indestructible rayon. Sensible shoes. A black SWAT-like vest, with some sort of walkie-talkie-like devise attached that would issue bursts of static at fairly regular intervals, prompting him to minutely adjust the volume with controlled competence. He wore a black baseball cap with the emblem of the Dept. of Public Safety Texas Rangers on it, pulled down so low you could not see his eyes, and, in fact, his bearded face was completely obscured. He may have been wearing Unibomber shades, too. Still, I felt like he was on our side, somehow.

Watching him, I thought, aside from the fact that his trousers are too short, and are exposing his white and red-striped (but matching) tube socks, he’s in an absolutely airtight world of his own construction there. OK, to some extent we all are, but his was hermetically sealed, with its own set of signs and symbols intelligible to none but him.

Then, the next stop, a mother got on with four little boys, all around fivish, sixish, sevenish. I think three were hers, because they looked just like her. And they were all lovely. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Squirrely, but in a Beatrix Potter kind of way. The crazies shrank from them immediately, of course, but the boys themselves were so completely good-natured and innocent, they didn’t shrink back from the crazies.

You could tell riding the T was this big adventure for them. And they were bold explorers, watching the goings on with fearless, utterly unselfconscious, good-natured curiosity. And genuinely cute kids are few and far between, let me tell you. But all four of them were delightful.

10,000 JOANS.After the gym I dropped into the Boston Public Library. There’s an exhibition, 10,000 Joans, upstairs in the McKim Building through June 15th. The exhibition, consisting of Joan of Arc memorabilia I guess you’d call it, hints at something, but with no program, brochure, or guide accompanying it, and very little explanatory signage, you’re left to sort it out on your own. There are guided tours, and I’m interested enough in the subject matter to take time out for one. (The exhibition’s title is a bit misleading, though. The number of Joans on display is in the hundreds, not thousands. I think the ten thousand figure comes from the complete collection, impossible to display, obviously, all at once, in the gallery space available.)

Because, truly, the story of Jeanne d’Arc is such a compelling one on so many levels: religious, yes, but cultural and political even more so. Americans don’t always get the deep, enduring significance of national saints in Europe. Sainte Jeanne is, of course, patron saint of France, and as such a symbol of French history and identity on some levels. Does the exhibition explore this? I couldn’t tell.

One thing the exhibition hints at is the incredible appeal and the richness of the material devoted to her story. Up to the present day. But here again, an exhibition of this size can’t even hope to scratch the surface. It did not include any reference to the French military’s helicopter Carrier that bears her name, Jacques Dror’s distinctive Art Nouveau-inflected church in Nice (that has been nicknamed “the meringue” by local critics), or depictions of her by cheeky French artists Pierre et Gilles. This is partly a limitation of an exhibition of an idiosyncratic private collection rather than a more systematic exploration of any certain theme. As a collection of artifacts it’s interesting enough, I guess.

One of my favorite books that takes Joan of Arc as its subject is Michel Tournier’s Gilles et Jeanne. By the way. In fact, I’d recommend about anything by Tournier for a good read.

My, but this has turned into some kind of lengthy discourse, hasn’t it? I will have to save my observations of my orange line journey home for another time. Until then, au revoir, mes petites grenouilles.

Met a friend who’d just returned from Israel in the People’s Republic of Cambridge yesterday. It was kind of an overcast Winnie-the-Poo style blustery day, which I like. My first memories were of days like that–I can’t say whether it was early spring or late autumn, but the pleasure I take in inclement weather is due to a kind of emotional atavism. It’s like liking Paul McCartney and Wings, who I learned the phrase “inclement weather” from, by the way. You remember the song, “With a Little Luck”:

There is no end to what we can do together.
There is no end, there is no end.
The willow turns his back on inclement weather;
And if he can do it, we can do it, just me and you.

I can’t say whether this is, objectively speaking, a good song. It’s inextricably tied to the mystical, blustery, happy-sad days of my childhood. I will say I’m grateful it was Wings on the soundtrack of my early days, and not, like, Billy Ocean.

Speaking of. We went to John Harvard’s Pub to hang out yesterday, and it was, like, eighties night, or something, and all my worst memories from high school came rushing back. Eighties nostalgia should be illegal. It was a decade without merit. And the music reflects that. But for those poor children of the Eighties, I guess Wham! is their Wings.

So we’re sitting there aghast, reliving the audio car crash of the eighties over and over, and my friend’s like, all that’s lacking is Billy Ocean’s “Get Out of My Dreams, Get into My Car” and sure enough, next thing you know, it was booming from the sound system. I think the chorus bears quoting at length:

Get outta my dreams
Get in to my car
Get outta my dream
Get in to the back seat baby
Get in to my car
Beep Beep, yeah
Get outta my mind
Get in to my life
Ooooooh
Oh I said hey (Hey) you (You)
Get in to my car

After all that desperate entreaty, did she ever actually get in? I don’t think she did. He’s still begging for it on the fade-out, isn’t he?

Whereas Sir Paul manages to get his rocks off in his pop song: “Can’t you feel the comet exploding?” Yeah, baby.

Anyway, the New England Flower Show’s going on at the Expo Center at the JFK/UMass stop. So when I got on the train there yesterday afternoon, you had quite a few passengers who looked like they don’t usually take the T getting on. Gingerly, with wide, sort of frightened eyes. And then they look at you sort of pleadingly, like, “please don’t hurt me!”

It’s hard to believe, when you use the T more or less daily, that there are really people who never do. Public space can be a scary place when you’re not used to it. And even when you are. There’s danger everywhere, from germs to bad behavior to the constant threat of bodily harm. It’s a wonder it works most of the time. I mean, it’s pretty amazing that people from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds can all share the same train without incident for the most part. But I can see why SUV-suburbanites would be sceptical.

I brought along some reading that turned out to be somehow appropriate. I subscribe to The Atlantic Monthly, although for the last several years, since its neocon editorial shift, it’s been consistently irritating. There’s apparently a class of people out there who think it’s still 1954, and they all write for The Atlantic. There was a big brouhaha in the last issue on the subject of good girls giving blowjobs. For the trust-fund chicks in question a blowjob’s about the only meaningful job they’ll likely ever have. I say put ‘em to work!

In this month’s issue there were seven(!) lengthy letters to the editor on the subject of teenage knobgobblers. It’s supposedly an epidemic now. Ever since it was on Oprah. But come on. What happens to people when they have kids? Are their memories of their own teenage years automatically erased? I can tell you, and this is probably TMI, but when I was a teen, I didn’t have any trouble getting it, either. I don’t think it’s anything new.

The author of the piece, Caitlin Flanagan, laments: “What girls are discovering, to their infinite heartbreak, is that boys will happily agree to any form of sexual experimentation a girl cares to offer [duh], but will reserve certain honors for the girls who build power in the ancient ways.” It comes down to what evolutionary psychologists call the “Madonna/Whore dychotomy”–but our children aren’t learning about evolution in school, unfortunately, so they’re missing out on some vital information here.

She goes on: “If you want a boy to invite you to the prom, or to treat you well, or to speak highly of you to his friends, or to spend long hours thinking about how he can work his way into your heart—if what you want from him is courtship, romance, and respect—the very last thing you should do is ambush him with a sexual favor.” But what if you just like giving head? Help me out here, girls? Is it possible you could enjoy it? I had a girlfriend in high school who sweared she loved it.

Caitlin concludes: “That girls no longer know this to the marrow of their bones—that this knowledge comes to them in a slow awakening of misery and shame—is testament to how badly our culture has failed them.” Wow. It’s worse than reefer madness! Reminds me of the Victorian-era cartoons depicting the “two paths”:

So, girls, think twice before you give that first blowjob. It could lead to a life of complete and utter dissolution. And boys, for God’s sake, stop touching yourselves!

Anyway, we stopped into the Harvard Hillel Center before the pub, and, always on the look-out for free T-reading material, I picked up a copy of the Harvard Mosaic(a review of Jewish Thought and Culture)–although I see here that an annual subscription actually costs $25.65, which is $12.82 per issue. I wonder why I thought it’d be free?

Anyway, I guess that means I cadged a copy.

I wanted it, particularly, for an essay on “The Debate over Circumcision and Conversion in Nineteenth-Century American Reform Judaism,” which seemed like it would be ideal T-reading for the trip home, and was! The big question Reform Judaism was grappling with in 1843 was whether converts to Judaism should be snipped. In the able hands of author Lora Dagi, the debate reads like a thriller. It’s pretty riveting, let me tell you. Will they or won’t they snip it? The answer’s yours for $12.82.

too-toooot!

There were a couple of interesting things in this week’s Dig, though the so-called “style guide” was not one of them. The sad thing about fashion these days is so much of it is so self-consciously unfashionable. And just a note to Ys or Nexters or whatever they’re calling you nowadays: be beautiful while you’re young. You have the rest of your life to be ugly. And you will be, trust me.

What I liked in this week’s Dig was “Oh, Cruel World!” which was relevant, as it so often is, to our mission here at T-rage! It was addressed: “Dear T riders clipping their nails in front of me,” and can be summed up thusly: “knock it the fuck off.”

Of course, there’s no question that clipping your nails on the T is mind-bogglingly appalling behavior. But I would add brushing your hair and eating to the list, too. I’m not trichopathophobic (if you are, you can go here for help), but there is something somehow slightly unsettling about a stranger combing out her hair next to you. Why should hair and nails cause us to recoil in disgust? For an interesting discussion of the matter, see William Ian Miller’s The Anatomy of Disgust . Whatever the cause, we all know the horror of finding a hair in our food.

But why eating? Well, eating as public spectacle is itself a recent evolutionary development. The restaurant dates back to just the 18th century. When people think of the modern restaurant, with individual tables, menus, and so on, most think of Monsieur Boulanger, of sauce fame, who opened one in Paris in 1765. By the way, Boston has the distinction of being home to the first restaurant in the Americas: Jullien’s Restarator, which opened in 1794.

When you look at the giant leap mankind took with Boulanger & Co., not to mention the millions of years of evolution that went into utensils, paving the way for necessaries like tables and table manners, fast food is as giant a step backwards for mankind. Here’s the thing: eating ain’t pretty. Especially ripping animal flesh from the bone. I’m all for it, but it ain’t pretty.

And if there is one rule I hold to steadfastly and believe wholeheartedly society should heed, it is this: by all means, unsightly things should be hidden from public view. Enough is enough. I know I’m turning Le Corbusier and all of modernist art and architecture and modern culture itself on its head here, but as Yeats once wrote (I have quoted him fondly before in this context and will again, no doubt): “The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told.” This is why most people don’t have sex in public, too, by the way. Because most of the time (and there are exceptions) sex is almost as disgusting to watch as eating. If you don’t believe me, get your camcorder out and shoot yourself doing it. Alone or in a crowd, doesn’t matter. You’ll see what I mean. Only thing is, you may want to shoot yourself afterwards, too.

No personal grooming, no eating, and please, no sex on the T. I mean, monkeys do these things in public, not people. Precious little sets us apart, let’s not forget that.

Speaking of. The other interesting feature in this week’s Dig had to do with porn star and hedgehog Ron Jeremy’s appearance at Northeastern. Talk about unshapely things. I have never seen this particular porn-hedgehog in action, and have no desire to, whatsoever, but I have to say I admire the guy for following his dick to its logical conclusion. 1,800 porn flicks he’s been in. Bravo.

(I was gonna do another picture here of human carnivores in action, but you can imagine it on your own, I’m sure.)

I have been trying to keep my bad mood to myself these past few days. I tend not to want to, like, inflict it on innocents. But obviously your mood colors your perception of things. I get in one like this, the world starts looking like something from a James Ensor or Otto Dix painting. Which is what it really does look like, I’m sure, only most the time I’m willing to overlook it.

Today it wasn’t quite as bad as all that, but it was still ridiculous. People looked like something out of a Dickens Materpiece Theater miniseries. Like from this latest one, Bleak House. They looked like they should have names like Dedlock and Bucket, Smallweed and Skimpole and Snagsby and Mrs. Pardiggle. I’d much rather they looked like characters from F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hemingway. You know, with names like Jake (everyone in Hemingway was named Jake) and Nick and Daisy. Instead you get Hortense there in those disturbing pea green leggings and Little Esther in her grubby uggs.

And on my way home, a genuine Bumble the Beadle sitting right across from me. I mean, I got on at Downtown Crossing, and there’s this rotund Level III on the other side of middle age with creepy seventies-style sex-offender glasses and a disarmingly windswept pompadour sitting across from me digging into a bag of popcorn, like he’s watching me like I’m a blue movie. Seriously.

I guess I’m as bad as the rest, when it comes to being looked at. Sometimes I like it, but sometimes I don’t. It depends on who’s looking, and how. I don’t know if every society and civilization has some taboo about looking. I mean, I think there’s probably some version of the evil eye in every culture, but the evil eye is about looking with envy at someone.

There’ve been a number of cases recently about looking. That seems to be the whole justification for the military’s DADT policy. Soldiers don’t want to be ogled in the showers, like ogling ever hurt anybody. The internet is another thing–there are people, like in the Big Brother reality show, who consent to be watched 24 hours a day, even by night-vision cameras. They seem to have embraced life in the panopticon.

But it’s the invisible audience that emboldens them. Unseen is the key. Can you imagine Big Brother (or any of these reality shows) with a live studio audience? It would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? Still, there are those for whom even an invisible audience is anathema.

Back in 2002, according to the New York Times, a federal judge in Chicago ordered a group of individuals and video companies to pay more than $500 million to 46 athletes who were filmed in college without their knowledge by cameras hidden in locker rooms and showers. The lawyer for the “victimized and embarrassed” (and now millionaire) athletes (who were, of course, granted anonymity by the courts) claimed that the tapes had been sold as pornography. “They clearly were trying to appeal to people watching these films for sexual satisfaction.” Each was to receive a cool eleven million— $10 million in punitive damages and $1 million in compensatory damages —for their trouble, which makes them all tied for the best-paid porn star in the history of porn.

And since the advent of the internet there have been numerous bans on camcorders at high school athletic functions, because, as one soccer mom explained a few years ago to the Guardian, video of their kids could end up on the internet, and some sicko could… well, you know, use it for private, untoward purrposes. The child and his or her parents may never know. Here the image is the victim. The image is our doppelgänger. But once unleashed on the internet, it’s on its own.

I just think it’s interesting, the power of looking.

And I was feeling it, with this creepy old Level III looking at me like in those old cartoons where someone’s starving and they look at someone else, who suddenly turns into a giant fried chicken leg, or a big ol’ T-bone steak or something. That’s what I felt like sitting there across from him. Like a giant slab of meat.

Which is why I’d just spent an hour in the gym. Which is the irony of it, I guess.

Ever have one of those days when everything and everyone looks shabby and you just want to go somewhere spotless? Or is it just me? It can’t just be me.

Anyway, yesterday was such a day. Everyone on the train seemed to be an un- or under-employed and shabbily-dressed middle-aged beardo. There’s one guy like that I’ve seen a couple of times on my way into town from JFK who always sits at the front end of the first car, curled up in a corner seat scribbling in a notepad. I mean, he’s curled up in a fetal position practically. And this is a man in his late thirties, probably. Talk about age-inappropriate. Time to leave the womb already.

Of course, I have an instant dislike of anyone who puts their feet on the seats. It’s one of the most inconsiderate, offensive things you can do on the T, and God knows there are about a million inconsiderate, offensive things you can do on the T. I don’t get it, personally. And it seems like when someone does it, they sort of look around the car defiantly. Like, “yeah, I’ve got my muddy boots up on the seat. Whatchu gonna do about it?” It’s provoking behavior, isn’t it?

A couple summers ago I was on the orange line on my way in from Stony Brook, and there was a fat, mean-looking Latina sitting across from me and my roommate. And she was eating cherries out of a plastic Safeway bag, and throwing the pips on the floor, and each time she threw one on the floor she made sure to look up and give us the evil eye, like we were the ones acting like assholes. She was sort of daring us to say something, and clearly poised to retaliate should we decide to do so. I mean, who wants any of that?

But back to the beardo with the scribble pad. He was a little like that. He would look up from his scribble pad to see who had noticed his exquisite eccentricities. You can’t but stare at sods like this, is the unfortunate thing. And staring at them makes them think they’re worthy of attention. But it’s got nothing to do with merit. I mean, you ever see someone have an epileptic fit in public. People stop what they’re doing to observe the spectacle slack-jawed. They can’t help it. It’s the rubberneck gene.

And this guy was like a car wreck, somehow. I mean, he had that car-wreck aura. He’s one of those tiresome crazy people who knows he’s crazy. Kind of like Andrea Yates. I don’t know who’s crazier, people who know they’re nuts, or people who don’t. I think in some ways people who know they are have lapped those who don’t.

One thing is for sure: crazy people who know they’re crazy are more tiresome, because they want to draw everybody into it. I mean, if knowledge truly is power, you’d think knowing you’re crazy would empower you to, I dunno, take your meds or something. At least make an attempt to act normal. I mean, manage it somehow. but this sort of somewhat self-aware “hey, lookit how crazy I am!” shtick. Irritating. I mean, “look at me curled up on the T with my big, muddly clodhoppers on the seat scribbling in my notepad like a nut!” Well, bravo. How very original.

My idea of heaven is a sanitarium. I think of Prince Muishkin. I’ve always thought The Idiot had a happy ending. Off to the santiarium for an endless vacation. In Heaven everything is white, just as people imagine. There are no TVs, maybe off in the distance you can hear a radio, but all they play are accordian waltzes. The lamps are old fashioned. No skittering, nervous fluorescent lights. It’s summer, and gets dark late, and the lights are dimmed at night. They comfort you. There’s a big window, across from your bed, and an oak tree outside. There is a courtyard, and sometimes the nurse-angels wheel you out in the early afternoon, if you cleaned your plate at lunch, and you can feed the sparrows and the pigeons, talk to the squirrels, whatever. There’s an old gardener, who’s very kind. He’s the only one who sometimes you talk to, but he doesn’t expect you to say anything. He may ask you a question, like ‘lovely weather, eh?’ but you don’t have to answer. He’ll smile at you (in a nice way), and tell you a story, leaning on his spade, about when he was a boy. You love his stories. They never go on too long.

The beauty of it is, you can sleep just as long as you like, and nobody disturbs you, and even if you have a visitor, which you don’t often, you can close your eyes. You don’t have to talk to anyone, and you can listen or not, as you choose. No one expects you to understand them. And after a while you don’t. You never really did, you were just pretending to. Now you don’t have to. They make sounds like the birds, or some of them like the squirrels. Maybe they are speaking a different language. No matter. In the divine sanitarium you are taken care of. You don’t bother yourself about whence come your meals, or whether the nurses get a fair wage. Everything is white. Everything is clean. Everything is taken care of.