![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stranger On A Train...Platform
Aug. 22nd, 2010 01:41 amI just came home from an adventure in Red Hook, occasioned by my Wandering Gypsy Theatre friends' participation in a Burlesque-Pirate show on a Tall Ship from Philly (don't ask. Okay, go ahead and ask 8)
It was hilarious, interspersed with the kind of body appreciation that goes along with Burlesque. The Gazela is a three-masted schooner (I think) with both sails and a motor, which I loved the same way I love the Pioneer that cruises out of South Street Seaport. The times when I've been aboard sailing vessels driven completely by the wind are the times I've come closest to feeling "past shock".
Some unpleasantness on my trip home nearly drove my enjoyment completely out of my mind. During a wait for a train transfer, I was trying to stay awake in the one foolproof manner I have--I was eating a snack. Cue Some Jerk:
SJ (pointing, self-righteous): That's why you're fat.
Me (:::blink...blink:::...Okay, you've got one chance to apologize, a$$hole) EXCUSE ME?!
SJ: You heard me.
Me (That wasn't an apology): I heard you, I just can't believe you'd be that rude to a total stranger.
He may have given himself the last word--I don't know, because that's when I turned up my headphones (The doctor tells me the tinnitus will go away over time...).
When I'm this hurt, it feels as if somehow growing up was just something that happened to other people. Not people like Some Jerk--I mean people like my friends or more mature family members or strangers I meet every day who MIND THEIR OWN GODDAMNED BUSINESS...
It certainly doesn't feel as if it happened to me--grownups aren't supposed to get picked on by strangers for spurious reasons. I can't even take a seat next to someone else on a bus without ridiculous amounts of forethought.
It's a losing battle. All the support in the American zeitgeist is on his side, not mine. Everybody KNOWS that if you're fat, it's your own damned fault and your weakness of character. Everyone KNOWS that obesity is such an epidemic that every single fat person in America ought to be rounded up and sent to fat camps before we break the health care system (which would, of course, be in perfect working order if it didn't have to deal with us 8P ). Minding one's own business is a quaint, old-fasioned notion like not trying to have a phone conversation while conducting a business transaction in a store 8P 8P
Dear Some Jerk,
Kiss my dimpled a$$.
It was hilarious, interspersed with the kind of body appreciation that goes along with Burlesque. The Gazela is a three-masted schooner (I think) with both sails and a motor, which I loved the same way I love the Pioneer that cruises out of South Street Seaport. The times when I've been aboard sailing vessels driven completely by the wind are the times I've come closest to feeling "past shock".
Some unpleasantness on my trip home nearly drove my enjoyment completely out of my mind. During a wait for a train transfer, I was trying to stay awake in the one foolproof manner I have--I was eating a snack. Cue Some Jerk:
SJ (pointing, self-righteous): That's why you're fat.
Me (:::blink...blink:::...Okay, you've got one chance to apologize, a$$hole) EXCUSE ME?!
SJ: You heard me.
Me (That wasn't an apology): I heard you, I just can't believe you'd be that rude to a total stranger.
He may have given himself the last word--I don't know, because that's when I turned up my headphones (The doctor tells me the tinnitus will go away over time...).
When I'm this hurt, it feels as if somehow growing up was just something that happened to other people. Not people like Some Jerk--I mean people like my friends or more mature family members or strangers I meet every day who MIND THEIR OWN GODDAMNED BUSINESS...
It certainly doesn't feel as if it happened to me--grownups aren't supposed to get picked on by strangers for spurious reasons. I can't even take a seat next to someone else on a bus without ridiculous amounts of forethought.
It's a losing battle. All the support in the American zeitgeist is on his side, not mine. Everybody KNOWS that if you're fat, it's your own damned fault and your weakness of character. Everyone KNOWS that obesity is such an epidemic that every single fat person in America ought to be rounded up and sent to fat camps before we break the health care system (which would, of course, be in perfect working order if it didn't have to deal with us 8P ). Minding one's own business is a quaint, old-fasioned notion like not trying to have a phone conversation while conducting a business transaction in a store 8P 8P
Dear Some Jerk,
Kiss my dimpled a$$.
