Something that never fails to surprise me, no matter how many times I notice it:
Strangers in transit are often willing to tell you intensely personal things about their lives.
Damon (my roommate/one of my two BFFs) and I were on the bus with our bags of groceries today when a man (in his fifties, perhaps? Late forties? He had the kind of voice that sounded like every word was squeezed through some kind of strainer in his throat and was a huge effort to pronounce) asked us how close we were to Armitage (one of the major streets that goes all the way through Chicago). We told him. He answered a cell phone call: something about a wake. He then turned to us apologetically and informed us calmly that his mother had died and that the reason he needed to get to this particular street was to find a church at which to hold her funeral.
This is only one of many similar incidents - the guy in the airport who told me all about his divorce and his estranged son, the woman in the bus station who told me about her abusive husband - these stories weigh us down, and we are afraid to burden those closest to us with them, I suppose. When we are in transit, we are freed of our contexts for a small amount of time, and the stories come spilling out.
brandon [email] said at 6:19 PM 01-28-2006: Or maybe it's because they're batshit crazy in the first place and full of lies. I'm not being glib, as soon as anyone on the blue line started telling me some sob story with details to spare, I scanned their person for a bag of dead pigeons.
Sometimes, though, you've been rebuffed so many times by family or you've leaned on them too heavily in the past and they refuse to listen. And whatever it is gnaws at you like swallowed, burning charcoal, so you just have to get it out and who better than strangers who for the most part will give you that altruistic space we give all strangers but deny our loved ones, so you can vent however briefly.
jess [email] said at 6:23 PM 01-28-2006: Yeah, that's true.
Also, the 'places of transit' theory explains some things about the Internet? Eh?
The batshit-crazy ones usually want something. This guy appeared to be in a hoarse and damp state of shock. All there was left was to be honest. Or dishonest, perhaps, but that seems less likely, given his general approach. I don't think he would have said anything if he hadn't received that phone call. Who knows.
Speaking of honesty and dishonesty, have you been following this whole fake-writer thing? Dishonesty as publicity stunt?
brandon [email] said at 6:51 PM 01-28-2006: The Oprah/Frey thing Or the JT LeRoy stuff?
The Frey stuff... I think it's unfortunate, but, not a huge surprise given who he is. And, it's like that story about the CIA intercepting interlibrary loans, common sense tells us that there's something not right about the narrative, common sense tells us that you can't get on a plane in the U.S. if there's a hole in your cheek, you're bleeding and you're so fucked up that you're blacked out in your seat.
The LeRoy stuff is different though.
I read about that on Slate or Salon earlier this month, but haven't followed it. My opinion about that sort of thing was set by Leon Carmen which I thought was shocking when I read about it in the NYReviewofBooks in college - it remember it making me angry. But it seems to have started a vogue. I'm against it. I think as a prank it's ok, or if it's so blatantly obvious that you're a liar (e.g. you're a self-proclaimed ex-junkie and your story smells to high heaven) or as long as you give your readers a wink and an out, even if it's on the level of the Book of the Subgenius. But, in the case of deliberately marketing your story as a true/nonfiction memoir, assuming and exploiting a minority status or a status that's been historically exploited, not to make a joke or even make a point, but to make money that's fraud and as far as I'm concerned, a criminal act.
Anyway. Playtime at work is over. I'm going to NOLA tonight for Mod Night so I won't really respond more. It's an aggravating subject, but I only have so much anger.
julie [email] said at 8:45 PM 01-28-2006: The people who do this must not have Killoggs. Without these blue & white pages to use as personal confessionals, maybe the bus is the next best thing.
