another Sunday awash in sunlight

Do you believe? Is Ahab, Ahab? I am told that comparisons are odious. Buddhism tells me this. I cannot see myself in a funny white robe. I have little to say in response to White Whales or white robed proselytizers, except to note that sustenance somehow gets lost in this conversation.

Three formative hypothetical experiences that could assail you, white collar worker or above average college student or recently robbed Ohioan or devout Catholic ecclesiastical antinomian or jobless Omahan with large cirrhotic liver and translucent skin:

1) You (male) go into a public restroom, or perhaps a private restroom that can house three to four individuals at a time and has a high volume of traffic at this time of the day. You go into a urinal, do your thing, read the message on the urinal cake, finish doing your thing, walk to the sink, wash your hands, and look into the mirror for a few seconds, taking in your beautiful visage which you see often but never enough of. As you stare, another human male completes his own transaction by washing his hands and decides it necessary to break protocol. He utters a few words of small talk, something about sports or the heat of the office or another equally banal quip. Is he lonely? Do you attempt to answer him? I think not. I think you walk off, with a quick backwards glance to establish eye contact and avoid being completely rude. You are, most days, committed to some version of Midwestern Nice, and though you do not wish to speak, you do not wish to look like a jerk either. As you make your glance, momentarily looking away from the door but reaching for its handle, some other male, perhaps preoccupied with the idea of doing his thing in a few seconds, rushes into the bathroom, thereby causing the door to hit your face with sufficient force to cause a bloodletting all over your nice wrinkle-free white shirt, the one you wear on Mondays and Thursdays one week, Tuesdays and Fridays the next. Besotted with blood, and now having no inclination to speak to anyone ever again, you are no longer Midwestern Nice. You are no longer even Business Casual. To what metaphysical force do you go in order to seek some kind of retributive act? Do you ask this force to direct itself (or Itself, I guess you might want to say) to unleash its/Its fury on the talker, or the door opener?
2) You (female) are walking down the street, looking nice. It is one of the days in this month that you look nice without trying, and you know it. Your stride shows it to others as well, and though you may not flash smiles to anyone there is a glow, not maternal so much as young-woman-entering-her-sexual-prime, biologically speaking of course. As you walk, you mistakenly make eye contact with some male who is a) a jerk b) lonely c) ignorant of how it might feel to be sized up and consumed with the Male Gaze in such a way as to defy description. You speed up, but hear this man fall into step behind you. He walks sideways, looking at and talking to you, at first uttering relatively innocuous things about how nice a day it is, huh? and what’s your hurry, girl? You smile that embarrassed smile you have, no longer so unconsciously cognizant of how nice you look today. (And I here I must interrupt to admit that I have no idea what it feels like to be you, and I also must admit that I have probably succumbed to directing my own personal Male Gaze at a woman such as yourself, even if I do not remember ever giving chase in order to continue being sleazy. At this point, it’s hard even to finish this hypothetical formative experience.) But what do you do, after the embarrassed smile and the slightly faster stride do not rid you of him? You glance at him just long enough to cause him to lose sight of the sawhorse that sits in the street, blocking off the recently tarred section so no car attempts to park itself upon that space. He hits the sawhorse, falls into the tar, and is now the object of the Urban Public Humiliation Gaze of at least twenty five strangers. You walk off into the sunset, assuming of course that the workday is over and you weren’t in fact on your way to work, in which case you may be walking in the early morning light that seems to emanate from no particular direction.
3) You (person of either gender) are worried that when you take off your shoe so the Amish bootmaker Eli can measure your foot, it – your foot/sock combo – will smell. You untie your shoelaces slowly, whereas normally you would just slip off your sneaker because even this late in the game you subscribe to the theory that your shoes should never be too tight to slip off and on with ease. As you lift your foot/sock combo out of the shoe, you sniff hesitantly. Eli, of the Yoder clan, sets your foot on his notepad and traces its outline. He then begins to take measurements with a small cloth measuring device. You look around the room at the collection of leather and leather-oriented tools. You stare into the wick of the lamp whose light spits and flutters with electrified light. You wonder if Eli belongs to the same Yoders that Young Abe does, or if he is of the Old Abe Yoder clan. Hell, there could be a third and you wouldn’t even know. Eli finishes with your right foot, and you slip off your left shoe, momentarily forgetting the anxiety surrounding foot smells. And at that moment, you do smell foot smell, your foot smell, a particularly virulent kind. You want to crawl into a hole, or at the very least walk out of this wooden structure that lacks electricity and escape into the night. But Eli is kind and makes no gesture that signifies he smells the smell he obviously must smell. As he finishes with your left foot, you ask questions about his milk cow and his upcoming trip to Missouri to attend his wife’s brother’s wedding. He is done. You slip back into your shoes, then you try to get up too quickly. You lose your balance, and for a split-second you see yourself falling on top of Eli, who is still kneeling at your feet. But you regain your balance, after a small awkward movement of your arms that could be mistaken for the unconscious twitching that overtakes someone with Tourette’s syndrome. All is well. You shake Eli’s hand, say goodbye to his wife Esther, and return to your one bedroom apartment with a strange smile whose strangeness has nothing whatever to do with irony.