[LJ Idol 9: Week 15] The Questions Are ALWAYS Loaded
My undergraduate career was coming to an end, not with a bang but a whimper. My GPA was less than impressive, I had failed one of the courses I needed to actually complete my second major, the one graduate school I had applied to had rejected me, and I really didn't know what I was going to do with myself after I left. There was a cheap shared house and another summer of my old work-study job by day, and community theater by night, but the next steps were a big question mark.
So what are you going to do with your life, anyway?
I didn't know. Not school for a while. A job. And an apartment. And friends, maybe a relationship sometime.
My friend Rachael was moving up to Rochester, the nearest relatively large city, and said that she thought the apartment upstairs from hers might be open. It wasn't, but her landlord had one across the street: the entire second floor of a two-family house, two bedrooms, one bathroom, $450 a month. I thought that sounded good, and I talked my best friend - who was similarly at loose ends, not knowing what to do with himself next - into moving in with me.
How come you and Jason can't just get married...you know, like NORMAL people do?
My mother was the one who actually asked the question in so many words, and Jason's mother had asked it a little more gently not long before, and apparently there were a lot of people thinking it. A lot of people who missed the memo that "gay" generally means "not interested in marrying someone of the opposite gender." A lot of people I was sick and tired of telling, "No, we're NOT together, he's GAY, he has a BOYFRIEND!" (Including a recent ex-boyfriend of mine and yes, that WAS why he was an ex - he accused me of cheating on him with my gay best friend one time too many and I told him what he could do with himself and his suspicions and hung up on him. End of relationship. No loss, really.)
As if that line of questioning wasn't irritating enough, there was another that again, was said in so many words by my mother, but that seemed to be on a lot of people's minds:
So...uh...besides you and Jason and Rachael, are there any, uh, white people in this neighborhood?
I actually started answering, "Well, our landlords are a couple of white guys, and there's the maintenance guy who lives a couple blocks away..." before I realized what had just been said, and exploded in a fury of "WHAT THE FUCK, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST ASKED ME THAT, WOW THAT'S SO OFFENSIVE!" The neighborhood was a mix of working-class African American families, LGBT folks who were mostly white gay men, and students of one of the several colleges in the area. But it had a Reputation as a "scary inner city neighborhood" and I had been taught to be afraid of the inner city when I was younger.
The worst fears of the fearful came true perhaps two months after I moved in when a murder took place about a block and a half from my new apartment. There was some kind of interpersonal dispute, a young man came looking for another young man with a gun, aimed for him and hit his mother. But still, it was as my landlord had informed Jason and me when we signed the lease, "Look, this place still has a bit of a reputation. But I've lived here a long time and I know that if you aren't black, male, under 25, AND dealing drugs, or living with someone who is all of those things, you will not have a problem here." So being one Latino-passing-for-Anglo-white-guy who was just turning 25 and one just-plain-white-girl who would be 20 soon, and with no plans for dealing drugs, we weren't too worried.
Sometimes, though, I was afraid there. Walking alone at night was fine - this was my home, and the people knew me, and I swear the streets themselves knew I belonged on them, and the autumn leaves beneath my feet, and the summer rain and winter snowflakes catching on my tongue, even when I felt the urge to wander outside at 3:30 AM.
Walking home from work at 3:30 PM? That was another matter.
Honey, you lost? Do you KNOW where you ARE?
Always from a white guy in a fancy car, usually wearing a fancy suit, too. Always leaving me that mix of scared and infuriated that street harassment of any kind is so well-calculated to inflict upon its targets. That was the scariest thing about living in Rochester's Plymouth-Exchange neighborhood. The people who didn't belong to the neighborhood, telling me that I didn't belong there either. One of the more persistent drive-bys tried to offer to pay my rent "somewhere nicer" after I had angrily snapped, "OF COURSE I know where I am, I LIVE HERE and have for the last four years!" in response to his honey-you-lost? variant.
This was what the other white people, the ones who questioned the wisdom of my living "in the hood" never did get. I did not fear the guns or drugs that were supposedly everywhere on account of being a majority-black neighborhood in, well, you know, the inner city - my landlord knew the place well and I trusted him and his judgement. I did not fear the neighbors, regardless of appearance - in fact, it was a standing joke of mine that the only gang of black teenagers I'd encountered was the one that was kind enough to dig my car out when I got stuck on the side of the road in a Rochester blizzard. I did not fear the occasional loud drunk guy near the convenience store - I didn't bother them and they didn't bother me.
I did fear the white guys in expensive cars driving down South Plymouth Avenue, asking their loaded questions, telling me that I didn't belong because they knew they didn't belong and so they assumed things about me - either I must be lost and dangerously naive (and thus an easy target) or I must be some kind of loose immoral woman looking for drugs and sex in the wrong part of town (and thus an easy target). The idea that I belonged there simply didn't occur to them - I must have been there for them, looking all out of place, to turn them into heroes of some sort of rescue-the-damsel-and-then-have-my-way-with-her fantasy.
No thanks. To quote one of my favorite songs of the time (Ani DiFranco's "Not a pretty girl"):
What if there are no damsels in distress?
What if I knew that and I called your bluff?
Don't you think every kitten figures out how to get down...
Whether or not you ever show up?"
So what are you going to do with your life, anyway?
I didn't know. Not school for a while. A job. And an apartment. And friends, maybe a relationship sometime.
My friend Rachael was moving up to Rochester, the nearest relatively large city, and said that she thought the apartment upstairs from hers might be open. It wasn't, but her landlord had one across the street: the entire second floor of a two-family house, two bedrooms, one bathroom, $450 a month. I thought that sounded good, and I talked my best friend - who was similarly at loose ends, not knowing what to do with himself next - into moving in with me.
How come you and Jason can't just get married...you know, like NORMAL people do?
My mother was the one who actually asked the question in so many words, and Jason's mother had asked it a little more gently not long before, and apparently there were a lot of people thinking it. A lot of people who missed the memo that "gay" generally means "not interested in marrying someone of the opposite gender." A lot of people I was sick and tired of telling, "No, we're NOT together, he's GAY, he has a BOYFRIEND!" (Including a recent ex-boyfriend of mine and yes, that WAS why he was an ex - he accused me of cheating on him with my gay best friend one time too many and I told him what he could do with himself and his suspicions and hung up on him. End of relationship. No loss, really.)
As if that line of questioning wasn't irritating enough, there was another that again, was said in so many words by my mother, but that seemed to be on a lot of people's minds:
So...uh...besides you and Jason and Rachael, are there any, uh, white people in this neighborhood?
I actually started answering, "Well, our landlords are a couple of white guys, and there's the maintenance guy who lives a couple blocks away..." before I realized what had just been said, and exploded in a fury of "WHAT THE FUCK, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST ASKED ME THAT, WOW THAT'S SO OFFENSIVE!" The neighborhood was a mix of working-class African American families, LGBT folks who were mostly white gay men, and students of one of the several colleges in the area. But it had a Reputation as a "scary inner city neighborhood" and I had been taught to be afraid of the inner city when I was younger.
The worst fears of the fearful came true perhaps two months after I moved in when a murder took place about a block and a half from my new apartment. There was some kind of interpersonal dispute, a young man came looking for another young man with a gun, aimed for him and hit his mother. But still, it was as my landlord had informed Jason and me when we signed the lease, "Look, this place still has a bit of a reputation. But I've lived here a long time and I know that if you aren't black, male, under 25, AND dealing drugs, or living with someone who is all of those things, you will not have a problem here." So being one Latino-passing-for-Anglo-white-guy who was just turning 25 and one just-plain-white-girl who would be 20 soon, and with no plans for dealing drugs, we weren't too worried.
Sometimes, though, I was afraid there. Walking alone at night was fine - this was my home, and the people knew me, and I swear the streets themselves knew I belonged on them, and the autumn leaves beneath my feet, and the summer rain and winter snowflakes catching on my tongue, even when I felt the urge to wander outside at 3:30 AM.
Walking home from work at 3:30 PM? That was another matter.
Honey, you lost? Do you KNOW where you ARE?
Always from a white guy in a fancy car, usually wearing a fancy suit, too. Always leaving me that mix of scared and infuriated that street harassment of any kind is so well-calculated to inflict upon its targets. That was the scariest thing about living in Rochester's Plymouth-Exchange neighborhood. The people who didn't belong to the neighborhood, telling me that I didn't belong there either. One of the more persistent drive-bys tried to offer to pay my rent "somewhere nicer" after I had angrily snapped, "OF COURSE I know where I am, I LIVE HERE and have for the last four years!" in response to his honey-you-lost? variant.
This was what the other white people, the ones who questioned the wisdom of my living "in the hood" never did get. I did not fear the guns or drugs that were supposedly everywhere on account of being a majority-black neighborhood in, well, you know, the inner city - my landlord knew the place well and I trusted him and his judgement. I did not fear the neighbors, regardless of appearance - in fact, it was a standing joke of mine that the only gang of black teenagers I'd encountered was the one that was kind enough to dig my car out when I got stuck on the side of the road in a Rochester blizzard. I did not fear the occasional loud drunk guy near the convenience store - I didn't bother them and they didn't bother me.
I did fear the white guys in expensive cars driving down South Plymouth Avenue, asking their loaded questions, telling me that I didn't belong because they knew they didn't belong and so they assumed things about me - either I must be lost and dangerously naive (and thus an easy target) or I must be some kind of loose immoral woman looking for drugs and sex in the wrong part of town (and thus an easy target). The idea that I belonged there simply didn't occur to them - I must have been there for them, looking all out of place, to turn them into heroes of some sort of rescue-the-damsel-and-then-have-my-way-with-her fantasy.
No thanks. To quote one of my favorite songs of the time (Ani DiFranco's "Not a pretty girl"):
What if there are no damsels in distress?
What if I knew that and I called your bluff?
Don't you think every kitten figures out how to get down...
Whether or not you ever show up?"