NTKOG #25: The kind of girl who, in an apparent desire to conserve body heat or show off her killer pheramones, stands really close to other people in public places. Like, will-show-up-in-your-dang-X-rays close.
I am: fiercely protective of my personal space. What? Couches were totally designed for an occupancy of one!
I am not: super into communing with strangers on any sort of physical or near-physical basis, as I learned with my failed experiment in hugging.
The Scene: Today, a treat: a medley of standing-too-close-ness, prepared three ways. If you choose to imagine this as a movie-style montage, may I recommend The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” for background music?
What? I just like to be able to watch your uvula dangle as we're talking.
First: Waiting at my T stop on the way to work, I approach the median, which is littered with commuters in their iPod and Starbucks bubbles, each the last survivor of their own personal nuclear holocaust. Or at least you’d think, given the grim devotion with which they avoid acknowledging each other. I scan my victims and choose to stand behind a quite pretty Indian girl wearing a silky orange blouse — one of the few brave survivors sans earbuds. I am so close I can tell you her brand of shampoo (Garnier) and that she might want to consider switching to moisturizing.
For a few moments she stands still — in no small part, I’m sure, because the slightest swivel in either direction would cause her bag to make contact with my person. Then a quick glance back at me. She takes a long pace forward, and I sway slightly in her new direction. She glances back again and takes a book out of her bag, managing, while she does so, to angle herself further away. I take the hint and fall back a few strides into my own morning-fake-apocalypse bubble.
Second: After work and a quick jaunt at the fabric store (where I ended up buying a silky orange fabric for my drapes — subliminal imprinting?), I waited to board a bus to Harvard Square. When I got on, the bus was filled to less than a quarter capacity, with several rows of empty seats. I plumped myself down next to the only other person in the back right of the bus. She casts curious sidelong glances at me while, stop by stop, the bus empties down to just her, me, and one other guy.
Finally she broadly pantomimes that she needs to leave, so I let her out into the aisle, where she stands for the next six stops. We end up exiting the bus at the same place, her rushing a bit ahead.
Third: Once at Harvard Square, I am about half an hour early for the class I am taking, so I look for a place to rest my weary, persona-space-allergic bones. On the shallow white steps of some puritan building or another, a couple sits alone, having a spirited conversation. Casually casting my eyes away, I settle myself one small step below them, only inches away from the man.
Unfortunately, it becomes quickly apparently that their conversation was of a private nature. He is a professor, it seems, and she is explaining in great detail the nature of family emergency that has prevented her from completing her work. As soon as I sit, she sputters out a few words in clunky, impeded phrases, then informs him that she has to run to another class, but they can finish their discussion later.
The man, however, appears unbothered, and remains seated for the next twenty minutes, while he and I both read. Not together, but kind of together, in an oh-the-enormity-of-humanity no personal space kind of way. It’s nice, a little bit, to pretend we are friends sharing a comfortable silence.
The Verdict: Good lord. This was awkward, but not as awkward as I’d imagined it would be. It turns out that accidentally lingering too close to another living person does not, contrary to popular belief, induce spontaneous respiratory shut-down in 100% of cases. In fact, people were, though weirded out, rather nice about it. Not even one snarled “Dude!” or overtly hostile grimace. Just lots of passive-aggressive pantomime — the same types that I perform on a regular basis in these situations.
It kind of makes me wonder whether other guardians of personal space go around, like me, wondering why everyone else seems so much more comfortable being physically close to strangers, and whether it is in some way cold and a bit inhuman to recoil from casual contact. And, I mean, I would ask people about it. But I don’t want to get that close.
Not That Kind of Girl 