I started writing this in an email to my Mom, realized I kind of wanted to share it with Dad and Becky and Kate, realized that they might not have time or interest to read the massive thing that it was becoming, dithered about whether this was too personal or unnoteworthy to post on the blog, and eventually it wound up here.
No preaching this week, just a what-happened with a few stream of consciousness thoughts thrown in.
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I got my hair cut on Sunday. As usual for right after a cut, I look like a man. Ah well, I'll have some curls back in about ten days. But a little girl on the bus yesterday, not more than seven at most, said my hair looked cool. I appreciated that a heck of a lot more than when a random guy in a Central Park restroom hallway who said my hair was beautiful. I think the difference between those two approaches stands out to me because it's in such sharp contrast to something that happened at St. Francis Xavier on Sunday.
First of all, the people organizing the volunteers this week were nasty. I was serving the elderly and disabled, busing tables, and getting drinks. When I got in line to get a second course for someone who didn't have a second ticket (SFX counts meals served for planning purposes, and the usual person just tallies up non-ticketed meals on a clipboard), the person monitoring the pick-up line told me I couldn't do that and demanded to know whether the person who'd sent me looked disabled. What a jerk! Later, when I went to get seconds for someone else without a ticket and I hurried to say "they're in a wheelchair," the person got all snotty with me for getting snotty with them. I flatter myself that my snot was more justified.
Worse than that, though was G. Not only did he get short with a regular volunteer for not jumping to get sugar--she usually gets it later, when the coffee's moved from provided-with-tray to self-service--he started yelling at her. When he needed people to line up, instead of calling out for telling a few clusters of people at once like most sane human beings would do, he grabbed arms and started dragging people into place.
I'm not done with G. yet, but I need to describe the incident that started this post for that bit to make sense.
There are always a couple of people who complain about the food, and one grizzled old white guy with a big grey beard was complaining there was no meat in his spaghetti sauce. He was trying to get attention and most of the once-and-one volunteers were passing him by to inform the long-time regular volunteers, as they'd been advised to.
When I passed him a second time, the man across from him was holding a young woman volunteer by the wrist. Her arm was extended straight--she was leaning over and not in. In full disclosure, this second was black with very dark skin, maybe mid to late thirties (though I'm sure being homeless impacts apparent age) and she was white with light hair and about my age. Unlike the near-stereotypical bearded homeless guy across from him, this man didn't look any more homeless than most rumpled college students.
I don't remember exactly what I did, but I think I walked up and said something like, "Sir, please let go of her." She quickly said that it was all right, and she looked and sounded calm, so I let my raised hackles settle. The man's reaction was angry: "I'm just holding her hand! What's the matter, don't you know how to hold hands?" That made me angry, because that was not what holding hands looked like.
Still, the man's anger was justified in that it probably looked like--no, actually, I was stepping in to "rescue" the white girl from the black man. I was more consciously aware of the gender dynamic than the racial one, but that doesn't mean that both weren't present and powerful.
The man very quickly started trying to get a rise out of me: "What's the matter, you jealous that I'm holding her hand?" I figured this was a stab at the haircut in the "only lesbian women have short hair" line of stereotypes. Since the young woman had said she was fine, I walked away. Normally I'd have apologized to the man for my mistake, but I don't remember if I did. I probably didn't.
The young woman later thanked me for stepping in and said that she'd talked to that man before, so she was used to the wrist holding. Maybe he likes holding onto people because he doesn't get much human contact, being homeless. Heck, I feel like i'm getting more touchy-feely when I'm with family because I don't touch many people these days. It's not important or salacious touches I'd like more of, just taps on the shoulder, fingers on the arm, quick hugs, shoulder nudges, pats on the head--you know, slight or even silly things that show people you're comfortable with them. But I'm not a very touchy-feely person to begin with, and the people I know best at this point are the people I work with--not exactly appropriate office behavior.
Anyway, I thought the the man would forget me, but the next time I passed he asked (not kindly) if I wanted him to hold my hand. When I said, "no thank you," he started asking what my problem was, didn't I have someone to hold my hand, I needed to have my hand held more often. Typing this, I realize that might have been what he was aiming for with the "jealous" comment--the "women hate each other when a man is involved" stereotype. Whatever.
I wasn't about to avoid this man for the rest of the day. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't exactly boldly going wherever I felt like it--I don't like conflict, and I don't like baiting people who clearly just want to insult me. As I patrolled the tables for empty trays to clear, I'd alternate rows so that sometimes I would walk down the aisle to which his back was turned. Of course I didn't do that every time, so once when I passed he assured me that he didn't want to hold my hand, that I looked too masculine, yeah, that's right, I was too masculine for him. How unfortunate for me. (Heavy sarcasm on that last.)
Remember how I said I wasn't done with G.? Well, another ridiculously nasty thing he was doing was telling those of us busing tables to hurry people up to get them out of there to make room for others, even going so far as to start taking trays that were clearly unfinished to make people eat faster. He approached me to tell me this while I was standing in a relatively empty space between two tables in the middle of the room. First he stepped closer than I would have liked, then, about halfway through his tray-taking garbage, G. reached for my forearm so quickly that he had his fingers almost wrapped around my arm by the time I twisted away from his grasp, took a significant step back, and deliberately frowned--though I didn't look right at him. Like I said, I don't like conflict, which mostly means I'm a coward about standing up for myself fully. I'm working on it.
I couple years ago, my nerves would have been shot by this point. I'd have been on the verge of tears and wanting to leave and not be looked at by anyone for a few hours. Instead I kept my anger at the nasty volunteer coordinators simmering on a back burner, smiled at people when I caught their eyes, had a chat with a recent immigrant and an aspiring actor, and, when I did think about my problem guest, it was mostly in bafflement that he was trying so hard to bother me--and a bit of mild wonder that it wasn't working. It's horribly narcissistic, but I do pause every now and then to be amazed at how much I've changed in just a couple years.
As the day wound down and the crowd thinned, that one man stayed on. A lot of people lingered over their food to talk to each other, rest in the warmth, just be around people who weren't hurrying them on their way, but he stayed longer than most. So, eventually, I asked if he'd like me to take his empty tray.
He said no--I hope G. was off twitching in anger somewhere--and said something along the lines of, "We're cool." I smiled, meaning it in the moment...until he immediately followed up by asking if I was "khosher," amending the question to "Hebrew" when I said I didn't follow any diets, and refusing to leave off until I'd "confessed" that, yes, I had Jewish ancestors on one of my grandparents' sides. He then started get me to say something in Hebrew, but since I've long since learned not to repeat words in a foreign language that I don't know the definitions of, I side tracked him by throwing out "Salaam alaykum." His response? "That's Islam!" I'm sure there's a whole nother post in that conversation, but the point is that we parted neutrally enough despite the major sins we had each, in each others' eyes, committed two hours earlier.
Only afterwards did it occur to me that he could easily have seen what happened with me and G. I wonder if he did, and if that had any bearing on how the day ended.
I'm not writing this because there's a moral to it or because I think there's redemption or a happy ending. Well, the guy who was complaining about the lack of meat in his sauce did eventually eat, so that was a win. I'm just writing this because it was a concentration of things that made me think, and hopefully it will make someone else think, too. I don't know what about.
I want to end by emphasizing that most of the volunteers and volunteer coordinators at St. Francis Xavier are wonderful people. I've made a few friends and I met my soon-to-be-housemate among the rank and file volunteers. Many of the coordinators have dedicated years and even decades of their lives to keeping this place running as it's expanded in service and scope. A few duds show up every now and then--remember the woman who was handing out cookies to the kitchen staff?--but most people are there to work and help. Volunteering is never straightforward and often problematic, but the people at St. Francis Xavier do the best they can, and they do it well.
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