After JazzFest I was in Mid-City. I had flashbacks. I never liked Mid-City, but I didn’t realize it. I loved New Orleans. I didn’t like Mid-City. Mid-City is a slice of Ann Arbor in New Orleans.
Then again, I might not dislike Ann Arbor. As long as we’re having revalations.
Saw someone I at JazzFest 2004 at JazzFest, but took a while to place the face. She was gone. Passed by the place where she stayed when I met her. Wandered into their yard. Asked for her by first and last name. Asked if I could wait for her. Thinking I was in New Orleans, I sat, waited, expected to chat with people. The woman I sat next starts off by asking, so are you stalking her?
This is a sensibility.
All men are inheriently preditors. All violence in the world stems from testosterone. All violence in the world can be abated if one of the parties would step down.
Thus, if you are attacked, don’t fight. That will only make it worse.
That is a sensibility.
Thus, when I’m asked if I’m a stalker, ha, ha, I’m supposed to take it in stride, because, you know, so many men are, and you can never be to sure.
She arrives. We get a drink at Liuzza’s. We’re getting on like gang busters. We return to the party. She introduces me to the host. She says, this is Alan, he’s stalking me.
My jaw drops.
I turn to her and say. I don’t find that the least bit funny. Now what am I supposed to do. I don’t have anything to say after that.
You see, it’s so common that men are stalkers, and if a man goes to the trouble to seek you out, that is stalker behavior. Oh, it’s normal too, but it’s big comedy for these people to pretend that it is a preditory and criminal activity, and for them it’s funny, because for them it’s a truth, because all the world’s ills are testosterone laden.
It is in part in part true enough, that people like this get more than their fair share of stalkers, because the self-respecting man steers clear of this sort of non-sense. More than once in Ann Arbor I’d heard women complain that Ann Arbor men were either bitter or passive. When you express intrest in a woman, and are met with the threat of establishing a criminal precident, you tread lightly. Quite lightly. You can hear someone telling someone else, someone told me he was a stalker, I don’t know who, or where, or in what context, but it was said.
And I’ve said it before, in Ann Arbor, you are stuck having to come accross as not a stalker, as opposed to having to come accross as fun, witty, or considerate.
It has been months upon months since I’d suffered a situtation that was so deliberately awkward. It was culture shock. I was stunned. I imagine that if I was born and raised in New Orleans, I’d say I’d never been so insulted in all my life. I spent so much time in Ann Arbor, however, that the insult is familiar.
It’s been months, though. The people I’ve met in New Orleans understand. They understand that when you only know one person at a party, you are going to feel uncomforatble. That if they are that one person, they are supposed to make you feel welcome with polite introductions. I’ve grown accustomed to graciousness. This sort of introduction is unimaginably rude.
Spent the rest of my time with this woman was spent barking at her, like Biff the dog barks at the postman. Got her to apologize, which she did sincerely, but couldn’t stop telling her what was wrong with her kind of people. It wasn’t until she’d gone that I realized how much that introduction humiliated me, and that I was barking at that sensibility.
The night I met that woman at JazzFest 2004, a man was shot in the head during a robbery. I was walking up on him when the police pulled up. This night, at this party, someone mused that knowing the victim, which they all did, he probably mouthed off to his murderers.
That stuck in my craw, too. I barked and barked.
What a sentiment. He should have followed procedure. Not that he deserved to be murdered, mind you, but you don’t mouth off.
Where is the outrage and thirst for justice? What is wrong with these people? Is blaming him their excuse for not accepting the burden of outrage?
I’m a stalker? No. It is simply that you are all prey by default.
How can you harbor these sentiments in a city as murderous as New Orleans? It makes sense to me in Ann Arbor, where violence is distant and abstract.
This I understand. That it is so much easier for these people to be judgement of the person before them, than it is to be judgemental of abstractions of people.
Which is fundimentally why I do not like these people. They are horrible friends. They will not take your side. In part moral relativism. In part because it means they see taking sides is an escalation. They might be a part of a confrontation. Except that they are so pathetic, they won’t take your side when you tell of someone they will never meet.
They won’t tell you to take a stand. They only validate you when you fall.
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