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holding hands
2008-Sep-19, Friday 11:23 pmAround 4pm today, I handed off the pager to my cohort at work. Freedom! For a week, at least, I am no longer tied to my computer so that I can deal with calls that come in. I'm hoping to attend a Bear visit to a local drive-in theater tomorrow night since I don't have obligations at work.
So today as soon as I came home from work, I changed clothes and then walked out to the bus stop to catch a ride to downtown Minneapolis and the 19 Bar. I brought a book with me, but I didn't do much reading. It's late enough in the year that it gets dark early at this latitude. I did manage to talk to 3 strangers though. That's good progress for me. One of them was a man about 20 years older than me who also had long hair. The other 2 were less intentional on my part but equally welcome.
A semi-closeted asian woman named Gigi (soft G pronunciation on both consonants, jzhi-jzhi) asked me if this was always a men's bar. At the time she asked, she was the only woman present. That was unusual. She said that she appreciated my talking to her tonight. One of the things that I like about the 19 Bar is that it's often a lot more "integrated" than that. I let her know that things would improve later in the evening. She was visiting from a local community college, intending to meet other women from the University of Minnesota who were supposed to be holding a social event at the 19 that night. They showed up much later, and Gigi managed to visit them for a while. Good for her!
While she and I talked, a semi-closeted man from Wisconsin joined us. He took a few breaks to the back patio to smoke, but it was a nice trio of conversation for a while tonight. They both left sooner than I did, but I eventually headed out to catch the bus back home. While waiting at a bus stop (leading into the subject for this post), I noticed the numerous couples walking around downtown Minneapolis tonight as they held each other's hands. I remembered a moment, some 2 decades ago, back at Texas A&M University during my "crash and burn" phase.
I think it was 1988. The two shrinks (yes, there were two during the one session. i was a serious basket case at the time.) who should have put me in an institution against my will but they didn't for unknown reasons, they asked me what I thought of the couples that I saw walking around campus. I told them that I was angry. It was, I think, the only instance when I used an emotion-word to answer them. I had more anger than necessary at the time, because of the various shit(s) that I had to deal with back then. I told them that I was angry at them, because I knew that I would never experience what they all took for granted, walking in a crowded area without concern about their status.
Back in college, I hadn't yet ever successfully dated anyone. But I still plainly knew that I wasn't going to be like other people. My only two attempts to date in college resulted in some profoundly bad experiences. The first, he turned out to be a compulsive liar. The second, he left for reasons that I have never understood even 20 years later.
There's no anger now, when I watch people hold hands. I don't know an emotion-word to describe what I do feel though. It's not really envy. It's definitely not jealousy. It's definitely not anger. What would be the word for the emotion that slaves felt 200 years ago in America when they saw "free" people roaming the same countryside and the slaves wanted to be free too but knew that they never would experience that feeling?
It's a complicated concept. I don't know a word for it. But 20 years later, I still haven't held hands with someone I wanted to be with, disregarding my surroundings and just enjoying the company.
*waiting impatiently for the pizza to arrive*
So today as soon as I came home from work, I changed clothes and then walked out to the bus stop to catch a ride to downtown Minneapolis and the 19 Bar. I brought a book with me, but I didn't do much reading. It's late enough in the year that it gets dark early at this latitude. I did manage to talk to 3 strangers though. That's good progress for me. One of them was a man about 20 years older than me who also had long hair. The other 2 were less intentional on my part but equally welcome.
A semi-closeted asian woman named Gigi (soft G pronunciation on both consonants, jzhi-jzhi) asked me if this was always a men's bar. At the time she asked, she was the only woman present. That was unusual. She said that she appreciated my talking to her tonight. One of the things that I like about the 19 Bar is that it's often a lot more "integrated" than that. I let her know that things would improve later in the evening. She was visiting from a local community college, intending to meet other women from the University of Minnesota who were supposed to be holding a social event at the 19 that night. They showed up much later, and Gigi managed to visit them for a while. Good for her!
While she and I talked, a semi-closeted man from Wisconsin joined us. He took a few breaks to the back patio to smoke, but it was a nice trio of conversation for a while tonight. They both left sooner than I did, but I eventually headed out to catch the bus back home. While waiting at a bus stop (leading into the subject for this post), I noticed the numerous couples walking around downtown Minneapolis tonight as they held each other's hands. I remembered a moment, some 2 decades ago, back at Texas A&M University during my "crash and burn" phase.
I think it was 1988. The two shrinks (yes, there were two during the one session. i was a serious basket case at the time.) who should have put me in an institution against my will but they didn't for unknown reasons, they asked me what I thought of the couples that I saw walking around campus. I told them that I was angry. It was, I think, the only instance when I used an emotion-word to answer them. I had more anger than necessary at the time, because of the various shit(s) that I had to deal with back then. I told them that I was angry at them, because I knew that I would never experience what they all took for granted, walking in a crowded area without concern about their status.
Back in college, I hadn't yet ever successfully dated anyone. But I still plainly knew that I wasn't going to be like other people. My only two attempts to date in college resulted in some profoundly bad experiences. The first, he turned out to be a compulsive liar. The second, he left for reasons that I have never understood even 20 years later.
There's no anger now, when I watch people hold hands. I don't know an emotion-word to describe what I do feel though. It's not really envy. It's definitely not jealousy. It's definitely not anger. What would be the word for the emotion that slaves felt 200 years ago in America when they saw "free" people roaming the same countryside and the slaves wanted to be free too but knew that they never would experience that feeling?
It's a complicated concept. I don't know a word for it. But 20 years later, I still haven't held hands with someone I wanted to be with, disregarding my surroundings and just enjoying the company.
*waiting impatiently for the pizza to arrive*