Grave Optimism

A computer’s voice warned us all of the unlawful hazard of smoking in the subway station as I descended concrete steps covered in the mucky grey of city winter. There were two thoughts on my mind. Primarily, I was reflecting on the significance and purpose of technology that mimics human speech. My second thought, a little more whole, was that snow is a lot like white underwear as it also does not offer any refuge for dirt. My trains of thought abruptly switched tracks when I noticed Bill lighting up a cigarette and, perhaps a little too proudly, blowing the smoke out into the catacombs.
We made eye contact as he exhaled. He was wearing a once-blue-now-slate wool cap that sat on the top of his head slightly askew the way an old school construction worker might reluctantly wear a hard hat. In his non-smoking hand was a brown-bagged bottle without the cap. His oversized jacket was rotten.
Though I did not know Bill by name at that moment I had a feeing that he was going to introduce himself.
His breath, ailing and alcoholic, came before him in waves and made me immediately think of Camus’ Oran. He wanted to shake hands. I obliged. I do not believe in germs. His fingers lacked density and his eyes, glaucomic, were the color of paint, Picasso’s blues and blacks, cast off the brush and diluted in the wash pan. They searched my face wobbling in their sockets. Everything about him wobbled.
“You’re a good man”, he said in indirect thanks after we exchanged some more pleasantries. A girl with headphones on, flowers stitched into her hat, a guy with a mountain climbing parka and jeans, and a woman in a fur jacket all seemed to give me a glance of sympathy. But once I realized he was not looking for money I was almost happy to talk to him.

What seems like a number of years ago (seven to be exact) I used to know people in Boston but I have never been good at keeping in touch. In an attempt to reconnect I went to the Fleetcenter (now the BankNorth Garden) to see if any of the guys I worked with were still around. Not only had the name changed but the contract for the security company had changed as well. There was no one left there that I had called a friend. Having no other means to contact anyone that I knew I surrendered to what ever random encounters might come my way adrift in this population of over half a million people.
At other times in my life, when I was not on a forced sabbatical from drinking, meeting new people did not seem so difficult or daunting. Not interested in any personal “issues” here, only the reality that when sober I find it undeniably more difficult to get acquainted with random people. In fact, I believe it some what true of myself to say that outside of work, school and the bar scene I have not developed any skills, per se, in making friends. And after three months without peer connection I realized, for only the second time in my life, that I was lonely.
Because of this genuine unfamiliarity with both loneliness (I’ve almost always been able to entertain myself) and non-situational socializing I found myself at a loss. My only friends being so distant I was reduced to taking up much of their busy time with digital communications. And though the best part of my day is (even still) the hour I spend talking to Sarah over Skype it is no substitute for the real deal. As heartening as these conversations can be they are tinged with the bittersweet especially with regards to one element of human interaction that I hold most dear. That is ones vibe.
(Aura, human energy, karma perhaps are all other ways to articulate this idea. It would require a great deal of explaining and research that I am unwilling to explore to fully explain what I mean here. There are likely better words than all of the above to conceptualize what I basically mean to be the presence of peers. I just happen to like the word vibe.)
It was during one of these conversations with Sarah that a genuine solution presented itself. We had been speaking about my search for a job and/or a volunteer opportunity. Previously, she had suggested checking out an internet resource called Craigslist. As we talked I checked it out again. Perhaps because it is located in the upper left corner of the page, perhaps fate (though I’m no fan), I took note of the personals. In her unique clairvoyant-down-to-earth way Sarah pointed out the “strictly platonic” classifieds and suggested that perhaps I might find someone to hang out with there. I decided to give it a try.
Posting a classified ad was an unprecedented event in my life. I was not sure how to approach it. Entitled, “Looking for good conversation” my stab went approximately as follows;
Recently moved back to the Boston area to find that the friends I had here have moved away. Looking for someone who is up for hanging out over tea/coffee, maybe a movie and generally just some good conversation. If you’re 420 friendly it’d probably help to smooth things over.
I got three responses. One person was looking to sell me some weed, and two were females. The first girl to respond, once I gave her the skinny on my situation over email, decided, I think, that I was not the right addition to a group of friends that she could have more authentically referred to as an entourage. Then there was Linda.
It took a few awkward emails, then a glance at our respective facebooks to confirm we were both relatively sane (relative sanity being the single most important characteristic when dealing with folks that (even once) use personal adds). We made plans to meet at a Starbucks near her place but ran into each other on the street where she suggested, quite in sync with my own thoughts, that we go back to her place and smoke a bowl. The rest of the night was convivial and good-humored. Linda listened to my stories and she told me some of hers. Child of flower children, her perspective was as refreshing to me as a crisp organic apple (for example, her insights on the history of advertisement and corporate processes have inspired me to rethink my conspiracy theory of planned obsolescence vis-à-vis multiple blade razors). But in short, the vibe was grand.

I’d be lying if the conversation I had with Bill were as equally gratifying. Bill was not a flower child. He was a machinist. When he told me that the only thing I could think of to say was that he had a skill that many people lack. Then he told me he served on the USS Arizona in the Korean War. So I said that was incredible (I did not tell him that I had gone to Korea to be a drunk). He told me his kids lived in California as he wiped a snotty nose. I told him that they were better off without the cold. He told me if they ever spoke to each other they would kill each other and it was then that I had nothing to say. He bit off the filter of his cigarette in anger. Flakes of tobacco stuck to his lips like dead leaves stuck to windows after a storm.
In all this soul barring I noticed a particular habit of speech. After everything he said Bill would trail off with the phrase “I know, I know” (emphasis on the ‘I’). This sort of habit is likely a symptom of some diagnosable psychological disorder with a complex name that if translated directly to real speech would be called old, drunk and lonely. I couldn't help but begin to plan an escape.
Just before the next train arrived the intercom gave it’s no-smoking warning again, distant and indifferent. “Fuck them”, he said pointing upwards speaking with half cigarette still smoldering “I know, I know.” He was not speaking directly to me at that moment and I took it as a cue to leave. But as I got on the train and took a seat between two people I didn’t know and can’t remember I wondered if what he thought he knew was the same as what I thought I knew.
If he was thinking along the lines of we’re all out here alone then our thoughts were headed in the same direction. Except I’m not old, drunk and lonely, not yet. And I don’t intend to be. As singular as I know we all are, as seriously punishing of character our society and cities can be, as indifferent as natural law will always remain I also know that these realities, balanced not for the sake of balance but for balancing (to attempt to quote the Tragically Hip), must also contain that love and companionship we all seem to seek.