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Dissonance
A guy with long hair enters the subway car and begins to tell us his story (in many more words than I am going to repeat here): I’m 67, sorry to say it, unemployed, need money, and it’s hard in the summer.
He’s the long-winded type who tries to wield his speech as a laparoscope to the heart. And he knows that with each unnecessary word, he’s making some of us increasingly uncomfortable, hopefully (for him) to the point of opening our wallets.
However, most of us never give money on the train, so it’s a losing battle. For fear of safety, questionable authenticity, and just because you can’t do it every time, I don’t. But it still wrinkles my stomach into a big ball of guilt. I’m sad for these people, even if they’re not genuinely in need.
Now there’s this guy across from me, we’ll call him Smug, listening thoughtfully and smiling, as if he’s the only one in the universe who knows the secret to curing humanity’s ills.
He digs in his backpack and removes $3 from his wallet, and puts the money in the guy’s cup, making sure all three bills are visible to everyone. The guy responds with a hearty God Bless You, Thank You, Have a Great Evening, giving the rest of us time to contribute.
And then Smug looks around waiting for same. And when the guy passes, no one else having opened their wallets, Smug starts in about the mortgage crisis. “The predatory whims of the people who knowingly sold bad deals to people all over the country…”
He focused in on the woman next to me, who was busying herself in her bag, trying not to be noticed, asking, “Can you believe how mortgage brokers sold a raw deal to America?” He went on and on about how thousands are going to lose their jobs, while the people responsible won’t be touched, and the rest of us go on living.
She barely looked his way, clearly uncomfortable, and yessed him until he exited, thankfully only one stop later. Then she turned to me, exasperated, “Because I don’t watch C-Span, right?”
I don’t really see what C-Span specifically has to do with it, but I get it, sister! Let’s say we READ, though, okay?
Evidently, she understood that the Smug was subtly targeting many of his comments at my Crate&Barrel bag, because she was feeling guilty and confided that she was headed to Paragon for a new tennis racquet.
And why should she feel guilty because this self-satisfied ass decided to conflate the issues and make this homeless guy (who I’ve seen and heard at least a dozen times*) the representative of the mortgage crisis?
Yes, we go on living. (Would he prefer we all die?) Yes, it’s unfortunate. Yes, as I said above and a million times before, I feel immensely sad when I see someone in a bad situation.
But this is part of the dissonance that comes with living in this city. People eat ramen every night, while upper Fifth is taken care of by personal chefs. People sleep on the street while those ramen-eaters snuggle into bed. And people beg for money while I hold a Crate&Barrel bag full of towels.
It may be sad, but it’s how the city works. And idiots like Smug, who choose to conflate the issues are only making it worse.
*This guy’s age keeps changing. The first time I saw him, he was 63, then 69, now 67. Is there a perfect age at which people will give you more money? Good for him for doing the research.