How Clever One Must Be

You know that cold pit of dread that starts to form in your stomach every time one of your relatives starts proselytizing at the dinner table? Well I’m getting that feeling scrolling through my Facebook and Tumbr. Cute little visuals are slapped together, usually showing a frenzied group of brown people with absolutely no context to their state overlaid with bold text proclaiming that “Militant atheism never hurt anybody.” And let’s just take a moment and pretend that’s actually true (even though militant atheists in China, N. Korea and Russia, have indeed, hurt plenty of people for the act of practicing religion).

Even if it were true, so fucking what? If you really think “them brown frenzied folk” are angry because of Allah, either your mental laziness is a lot more acute than you think, or you’ve never actually taken the time to listen to one of those brown people. The 9/11 hijackers, while they invoked the name of Allah, weren’t going after American citizens because of ‘him’. They were going after American citizens because their own countries have been colonized and exploited. They spent their lives with their actions being dictated by a foreign land that shows nothing but utter contempt for them both through their media and through their policies. A country that has created hundreds of thousands of refugees and killed just as many for reasons that can be best summed up as “capital gains”.

That’s why they hated us. Most of the anger has absolute shit to do with actual religion. If you look across the region, similar “religious” conflicts (as the West likes to dismiss them) actually boil down to very understandable concrete actions that one group took against another due to land and resources. Sure, religion is always a nice excuse, but even if didn’t exist, boarders would still be fought over with the same level of fervor. Similarly, even if nobody was drawing cartoons of Mohammad, the Western media would still find a way to insult the culture they once exploited to enrich their own nations. Because it is imperative to show the Arab world as the savages we need them to be. After all, if we’re talking civilized and calm Arabs (i.e. the vast majority of daily Arab life), we’re talking about owning up to some pretty heinous shit. We’re talking about hundreds of years of murder and exploitation, which is still going on this very instant on the taxpayers dime. The West needs Arabs to be as awful as possible, otherwise we’ll start looking like the monsters.

But let’s get away now from actual facts that cause us to humanize and, in some cases, even empathize with the Allahu Akbar crew. Let’s get back to this never ending circle-jerk of rationality and logic. Which, funnily enough, usually only extends to the after-life. It so rarely seems atheists are willing to coldly and unemotionally examine the construct of race or gender within society. Instead, one will find plenty of atheists who are more than happy, giddy even, to hold onto some incredibly primitive opinions.

One pervasive thought I’ve seen in the atheist community seems to conclude that believing Jesus shows laughable brainwashing, but believing that black women are somehow less desirable than white women is just “a preference”. Yeah, sure, right, fuck yourself. This sort of emotional unpacking, sadly, requires a certain level of self examination and being open to the idea that you might have drank the kool-aid too. I find the vast majority of atheists I’ve come across are incredibly resistant to such ideas. In case you think I’m the one full of shit, do this: go into an atheist community filled with mostly white males and bring up two subjects: 1. Male privilege and 2. Racial privilege. Oh the way logic will twist when it’s their needs that are being sated.

But okay. Fine. You’re an LGBTQ supporter. You shirk the gender binary, appreciate and listen to POC, and you also think that relying on religion is totally a sign of a weak mind. So much so that you want to put up funny catch phases and picture everywhere saying just that. Fine. The thing is, I’m not even religious myself. But guess who is? Parts of my family. And I don’t think it is a “weak mental condition” that causes them to believe in Allah or God. I do not think they need to “grow up” or “get over needing to hold someones hand”. I actually think my Grandma was ten times as tough as any modern motherfucker you could lay out in front of her. I’ve seen that woman bash goat skulls in and pour the contents in a frying pan without blinking. She had very few illusions about life and death.

Yet my grandmother still held on to a certain level of cosmic comfort. Perhaps because life was so unendingly unfair to her. It blessed her with a husband she loved, had six children with, and then around the age of 36, her husband suffered from a traumatic brain injury. This trauma left him in a constant state of wanting to kill her. Did she leave him? No. With six children? She simply ran the house as usual and hid anything her husband might use to murder her with. Knives, pots and pans, wires, those all went to the neighbors house. Meanwhile some villagers took pity on her and she got a job cleaning a station house in 1940’s rural Syria. She did this for seven years, until the husband she had once loved so much finally died of his injuries. If she wanted to fall back on some Mohammad in her darkest hours, I dare some sniveling skinny white punk to tell her that she just couldn’t handle the “reality” of life.  

And that’s really the problem. Sneering, pretentious atheism takes away the human element of kindness. I get that there are heaps of religious bullshit out there. That dogma can and does ruin lives. Hell, it can be deadly. But the root problem is not some hippie in sandals talking about love, the root is the human condition which warps religion to fit their needs. Go after that. Go after the actual cancer. Do not, instead, downgrade an entire group to ‘inferior’ because they find comfort where they can get it. That is not only cruel, it’s inhumane and pointless.

One may be able to argue about their own rationality, but I don’t actually give a hot fuck about how logical you think you are. Be atheist. We’ll have a party. I’ll bring the punch. But stop with the snickering. You look like an asshole. And there is no amount of fantastical logic that will change that fact. So if that’s what you were going for with your cheeky graphic, then mission accomplished. But if instead you’d rather consider that not everyone had the same upbringing as you, with the same luck, schooling or status and that, perhaps, it would be best for you to take a step back and consider the entire spectrum of human existence before demoting entire groups to “children”…then we can talk. Until then, do I even have to bring up the incandescent bag of dicks I have on reserve? Okay then. Good day.

In The Dark

When I lived in Seattle, I rented in an older building with a view of a freeway overpass. All day and night cars would whoosh over it, heading to work and back home again. Sometimes the cars would line up, honking horns and shouting obscenities.

However, it was what was underneath that really caught my attention. A squatters camp had taken hold. Wedging themselves into nooks and crannies, about 30 men and the occasional woman called that overpass home.

Tent structures and elaborate cardboard homes with old sheets and plastic scraps for insulation dotted the edges of the chain link fence that surrounded it. I walked by on my way to work daily. I was never harassed, not even once. Sometimes I’d see young women walking in between the paper shacks, handing out lunches to the men who lived there. They were sometimes offered handshakes by the men, but I never saw any of these women looking uncomfortable.

Of course there was drug use. Late at night you could see lighter flames sparking up and being held to glass pipes. Occasionally a fight would break out and someone would storm off on a huff. Still, for the most part this didn’t impact my life as a resident in the slightest. They hung out in their world, I hung out in mine.

Yet I do remember one night in particular that woke me up from a dead sleep at 2am. It was the police, shining their spotlights and using their PA, demanding the men leave. It was a cold night, and the men, most of them similarly woken up, were both groggy and slow. This, of course, seemed to warrant derision from the Seattle PD. “Get moving” they squawked, “come on, get!”. As if they were talking to a pack of stray dogs. They shoved and wrenched the high and despondent from their sitting positions, threatening them and pushing them out on their way.

I wanted to yell out my window, “and just where the fuck would you like them to go?”. But I knew it was futile. The men eventually faded out into the blackness surrounding the police lights. Then, the trucks pulled in.

One by one they destroyed the homes and shoveled these men’s personal belongings into dump trucks. A blanket here, a mini-stove there. Possessions were picked through and laughed about. The policemen went home to their families and I eventually fell back into a fitful sleep. The next morning the sidewalks around the overpass were practically sparkling as I walked by. The callus inhumanity of the nights events hosed away by some 20 something in an orange jumper.

It always happens at night though. While most of the city is fast asleep and well out of range.
When witnesses to cruelty and violence are thin on the ground. When the oppressive nature of darkness adds just enough fear to keep your manners in check. People can disappear in the dark, you know. It can muffle your cries. So get in line and do as your told, because they’ve been given permission. It’s given in the form of teargas and rubber bullets, easily defensible and mercilessly deployed. Daytime is for civility. But remember to watch for those flashing lights after the sun goes down. Because they have not come for your protection.

I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate…who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Sadists Never Change

I hate football season for a number of reasons that are both selfish and inane. But there is one good reason to roll my eyes at this 'wholesome' American sport. It employs a number of sadists. Still none anger me quite the way Michael Vick does. Maybe it's because of the hysterical way fanboys and fangirls rally around him. "But he served his time!" they cry like petulant children.  "People who serve their time deserve a second chance!"

Please.

Are we really pretending that Michael Vick served some kind of actual penance for his unspeakable crimes? That a year and a few months is enough time to come to ones senses and realize that starving and torturing more than forty innocent creatures might have been a step in the wrong direction? It's ridiculous. But even more amusing is the entire notion itself. That time served means that society should always forgive and forget.

First it implies that people always do appropriate time for their crimes. I can think of a number of rape victims I know who would beg to fucking differ. Furthermore, the second chances one is given by society relies very little on ‘time served’ and more on ‘crimes committed’. For a child molester, “served his time” is rarely a reason given when advocating a second chance. In truth “time served” means about as much as "justice is blind".  We both know they are overly simplified concepts that rarely give light to true injustice.

Michael Vick tortured animals for shits and giggles. More than that he has admitted to personally drowning or hanging up to 8 dogs. 

To hold a squirming dog under water until it dies you must have a fundamental disconnect between moral society and yourself. There is no coming back from this shit the same way there is no coming back from beating and killing an infant.

The NFL has employed Vick again and Obama even called him to express some kind of ‘Congratulations’. Well fuck them both for that, really. Fuck them for being too short sighted to realize that people who torture and murder animals are sadists who don’t just stop killing because they got a slap on the wrist a few years back. He will kill again. He will torture again. They always do.

My own dog is a shelter puppy who was also abused before I got him. Loud noises leave him shaking, yelling makes him hide and anyone with a walking cane leaves him cowering. It has taken a lot of pointed training and rehabilitation to get him to the point where he can even stand to be alone for more than five minutes.

Dogs are incredibly selfless, loving creatures. If you can torture one, you can torture anything. You are dangerous, amoral and deserve to be locked up for a hell of a lot longer than a year or two. Which, by the way, is less than some pot dealers are serving. But hey, justice served, dude bro.

Why I Hate Reports on Air Travel

From the Huffington Post this morning: Quantas Flight Looses Pressure, Drops 26,000 Feet

The Boeing 737 was roughly 30 minutes from Melbourne when oxygen masks fell from the plane’s ceiling as the plane dropped from its cruising altitude of 36,000 feet to a whopping 10,000 feet.
The culprit? The plane’s air conditioning system. An airline spokesman told the AFP: “There are two air conditioning systems on the aircraft — one of them failed at the cruising altitude, that’s when they started to descend.”

Really? Really? So you’re telling me that the 737, an airplane that takes off around the world every few seconds, of which has been in some form of rotation for as long as I’ve lived (basically), can’t fly when the air conditioning goes on the fritz?

Bullshit.

This completely obfuscates how airplanes work in general. There is always redundancy, there are always backups. Oftentimes more than one layer. For instance, when it comes to hydraulics you need to break through four redundant layers at precisely the right time with an exact speed using specific pressure to render it unworkable. It’s actually considered statistically impossible unless you loose a whole wing—and in that case hydraulics aren’t your biggest issue.

So no, writer of article, I don’t actually believe that an air conditioning system (one of two) malfunctioning would cause the cabin air to just loose pressure all of a sudden and cause the plane to “drop”. Which—by the way—it is not mentioned if the descent is controlled or not. It is standard procedure to descend to an oxygenated altitude after a loss in pressure. There is a big difference, especially for nervous fliers, between ‘dropping’ 25k and ‘descending’ 25k. If you cannot write that out clearly—perhaps writing articles on aviation should be avoided.

Why do I even bother to visit that site anymore?

Why is Fox News Crediting Bush for the Revolution?

In a Fox News article that seemed to come straight from The Onion in terms of complete lunacy, Jennifer Griffin actually tries to credit Bush with the current revolutionary spirit running throughout the Middle East.
How? You might ask, was she able to much such an absurd connection? One quote and one suggestion. Literally. She hand picked on quote made by Condoleezza Rice in Cairo years ago:

“For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East — and we achieved neither, now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.”

And picks up a weak idea barely propagated by Bush:

The Bush administration’s argument was that if the people of the Middle East don’t have political freedom then Arab youth will be pushed into mosques where they are readily recruited by Al Qaeda.

And of course they mention Obama trying to “pick up the baton” with his monumental speech to the Middle East shortly after being sworn in. But of course, according to Ms. Griffin, this means nothing because he failed to mention Egypt at the State of the Union Address.

Sigh.

You know sometimes there is just so much stupid in an article you don’t know where to start. So I’ll do what
I can to work through the 10 foot high wall of shit Griffin has laid out.

If anything, Bush worked ambitiously to quell protest within the Middle East. Time and time again we watched him hitch his star to Saudi investors, selling some of the biggest munitions deals in history to our ‘allies’ (read: Dictators) within the region (which include Saudi Arabia and Egypt). This was, of course, not to arm the people but to arm the government against them.

While he talked a lot about freedom in the region, he also had a tendency to shirk it whenever it actually came about. For instance when Hamas was elected democratically the US declared unambiguously that it refused to work with a Palestinian Authority that included Hamas.

Funny. I thought supporting freedom meant you support the people’s decision. But I guess ‘freedom’ to Bush only meant electing governments he could exploit or profit from. Let’s also not forget to mention that during the years Bush was in office Al Qaeda had record years for recruitment. There were also music videos depicting an Arab pop star punching out the faces of Rice and Bush. Why, the Arab world hated Bush so much I have a feeling that if he sanctioned revolution in Tunisia or Egypt, the citizens would have flocked to their dictators with flowers just to spite him.

Does Griffin even realize that Bush’s name, in the Middle East, is now a curse word? To call someone ‘Bush’ are some fightin words. I know a Moroccan woman named Bouchera and just to piss her off, her husband used to say, “Hey Bush…..ra” from the other room. The family would laugh. Bush. Now that’s a joke.

And finally, to live under this grand delusion that Bush’s words somehow sparked a revolution is just like assuming Julian Assange’s Wikileaks sparked a revolution. It takes the accomplishment away from the people who deserve it and puts it in the laps of white men who could really give a fuck less what happens in Tunisia and Egypt.

It is misappropriation due to an inherent racial superiority complex. Ms. Griffin should be ashamed of such a hack piece of work. Nobody is responsible for the Tunisian revolution except for the Tunisian men and women that have fought vigilantly for their rights. To credit otherwise shows just what a lack of judgment Fox News possesses.

USA, USA

Sometimes on foggy French mornings I can’t help but miss the United States. I lived there for a huge chunk of my life and there is a lot to be wistful for. The food, 24 hour stores (oh god how I love the 24 hour stores!), general friendliness, national parks, NYC, San Francisco, cholas, pho huts, unironic flannel, casual conversation, Miami…I mean, yeah, I do love me some USA.

But my neighbor takes it to a whole new level. If such a thing exists he is France’s answer to the Francophile, he is a United Statesaphile.

As I type this he is blasting Kenny Rogers “The Gambler” from his porch where he is conducting a barbecue (yes, in winter). If it were summer there’s no doubt I’d be listening to his friends splashing around in his above ground pool. Next to said pool, his Hummer is parked. It is yellow. It has American flag dice hanging from the mirror and a California license plate in the window. He drives by blasting Johnny Cash.

When I first moved here from the US, I would walk my dog by his house every day. One evening I heard him singing Garth Brooks (The Dance) from his front porch. It was my first real look at him. A balding man in his mid to late forties, he sat perched in his rocking chair, dog by his side. “You like Garth Brooks?” I called out in English and he looked taken aback.

“What?” he asked in flustered French.

“Garth Brooks, you like him?” I say again, except now in French.

“Yes, I love him; he is a real cowboy I think. You’re American?”

“Yep.” I laughed “American enough to know he’s no cowboy”.

“Why would you say something like that?” He huffed, almost indignant.

“Because he’s a pop star now. You can’t be a cowboy and a pop star at the same time.” There was silence. He looked at me thoughtfully and he smiled.

“I do know something.”

“Yeah?”

His eyes got narrow and he hunched his shoulders over. He put his hands up in front of his chest, palms in, and begun gesturing back and forth like an old Italian nonno, “You fuck my wife? You fuck my wife? Are you tellin me you fuck my wife?” United Statesaphile leaned back incredibly pleased with himself. I could not stop laughing. “I love de Niro” he laughed in English. Apparently so.

Since then he has asked me to multiple “American” events. I declined today as it’s my first day off in a while and I have serious studying to catch up on.

But there is something profoundly excellent and simultaneously heartbreaking about him. He has a dream trip. It’s to rent a bright red Mustang and start in Phoenix. From there he will drive up the California Coast and into Oregon and Washington. He’ll shoot East and drive until he hits Yellowstone and then follow the circle back down through Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. It would be his first time ever visiting the United States. He explained one evening over a Heineken that his English was so poor he was embarrassed, and frankly scared, to commit to the trip. But one day he’ll start studying English again. One day soon. So he saves up what money he can and dreams. He watches old movies and talks about the day when he can smirk like Steve McQueen and ride into that burning sunset…

“You fuck my wife?!” He yells at me when I walk by with my dog.

“You talkin to me? Are you…talkin…to me?” I yell back.

He chuckles and leans back content. One day, into that burning sunset…

Just The Other Morning *trigger warning*

I caught the woman’s eye as the hand grazed under her breast. I turned away, feeling ashamed at not giving her modesty—but when I glanced back she was still looking at me. I felt indignant on her behalf and when it showed on my face her hard eyes flickered and her clenched jaw nodded ever so slightly. An acknowledgment of her internal fury. It was maybe two seconds, but that tiny connection has stayed with me ever since. I slid my boots on and when I turned around she was gone.

San Francisco International Airport has two full body scanners in the Terminal 1 security line I used. Scanners that they seem to delight in using.

I had heard the comments regarding the rock and hard place of American airport security. But it wasn’t until I was standing in line, removing my sweater on request, exposing parts of my body I would prefer not to, that I really understood it. Nonchalant Facebook updates of new TSA “boyfriends” had lulled me into complacency. But standing on the cold floor, half naked with the possibility of being groped by a woman that I did not know nor trust simply because she has similar genitals as mine, brought it all home with a bang.

It is too much. We are not safer. This is the Animal Farm. As I prepared to walk through the X-Ray my mind blurred much the same way it does when men on the street start following me. A sort of shocked panic that I can never expect nor anticipate. 

I breathed a sigh of relief as the guard waved me on. But as I was collecting my things I saw the woman behind me was not so lucky.

Every woman I know, every single one has lived through somebody touching her inappropriately, against her will, when she did not want them to. Whether it was in her dorm when she was too afraid to say no, by the overly-affectionate choir teacher, her uncle, her classmates or her boss. We all know that feeling. The one of intrusion and skin-crawling revulsion.

You can look at these pat-downs/nudie pics as one more heap on that pile. Won’t kill us, right? It will only stay with you for a while. That cupping of your crotch, that grazing of your nipple. It’s just another thing to smile through. Don’t you dare acknowledge that it is truly damaging, lest you look hysterical and weak. Don’t over react. After all, neverminding that plenty of us were abused sexually by women, it’s just a woman doing it. Surely a strangers hand prodding your mons pubis in a glass room in front of everybody shouldn’t leave any lasting emotional scars. 

This, mind you, is not even accounting for the amount of young men molested by other men who have found no other choice but to bury that shit so deep inside them, so much as a complaint at being fondled may feel like a confession of victimization. Just laugh it off, just swallow it. You’ll be fine. 

I cannot imagine flying in the US again, and for some time, I will have that privilege. But thanks to the countries inability to get their railway act together, for millions, there is no other choice. To get to meetings, to see their lovers, to go to school and to be with family. They must take that trip.

Ink has been spilled on this issue, and I do not have the answers to sate. I just have a feeling. One of deep injustice, of real sorrow and of genuine disgust. I have the remnants of a single moment shared, with a woman in great distress, who had to submit to a strangers wandering hands as the world, casually, strode on by.

Arab Activism: Brought to you by a White Man

According to Elizabeth Dickinson over at Foreign Policy and referenced as one of the top stories on the Huffington Post, one Julian Assange practically ousted the President of Tunisia himself. Oh sure, there was that whole self-immolation thing that started it. There are the myriad of fathers, sons, brothers, daughters, husbands and mothers risking, and loosing, their lives for a change in government. But we can’t bask in the revolution of a Muslim Arab nation for too long. No. Better to credit that white guy. Via Huff Po:

A cable released by WikiLeaks called Tunisia a “police state” and criticized Ben Ali for being out of touch with the people. This has fueled references to the current protests as a “WikiLeaks Revolution.”

Right. Because the college graduate forced to sell fruit and vegetables illegally until the government stopped him from even doing that was probably all over those fucking Wikileak cables. Gee, it wasn’t until it was uncovered that Tunisia was a “police state” that any well educated Tunisian lawyers had even fathomed it. Corruption? Here? Surely you jest! Never mind the blocked internet sites. Never mind having the same ‘President’ voted in with 80-99% of the vote every single time. Or the obvious censorship and dissapearing of fellow citizens. Why, until those cables everybody was just going about happily, minding their own business.

Certainly it is not possible that organized Arab activism has been on the rise across the Middle East. That it’s getting harder and harder to quell protests or stop news from invading once impenetrable police states. We cannot accept this possibility because this will cast Arabs, the majority of them being Muslims, in the role that Americans simply cannot abide them in: The Freedom Fighter. 

Sure, it was kind of okay with Iran. After all, they’re Persian and they don’t even speak Arabic and we fucking hate Iran’s government here in the US. Because, yeah, the Shah and stuff (I mean Holocaust deniers—what was I thinking?). But can you imagine what could happen in the Arab world if citizenry starts rising up and taking down the bullshit ‘Presidents’ and political leaders? Some of whom are only still in power only because US and European interests in the region keep them firmly rooted. Would Arabs devolve into uncontrolled, seething masses of anarchy?

Or perhaps it is the opposite that truly scares the West? The uncontrolled, powerless Arab is the cornerstone of Hollywood, bigotry, and scapegoaters everywhere. But what if Arabs were able to spark a movement that brought new peace to the region? No doubt growing pains would be dangerous, and tremulous times. But what if Democracy, real Democracy started to flourish within the Middle East. Created by Arab Muslims, Christians and Jews, for Arab Muslim, Christians and Jews. Would the West react well? Or would they spin it into another Brown Folk Gone Wild and demand UN Peace keepers in the region. “Tonight at 10 on ABC: Is the unrest in the Middle East hurting our mission in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

Watch the news very carefully in the coming months regarding Tunisia. Keep a critical eye and make sure you get your news sources from Middle Eastern journalists as well as Western. My guess is that the second Arabs begin to really organize and create, negative or dismissive press will begin. Or should the revolution fail, should the PM simply pull a bait and switch, be very wary about who tells you it is all for the best.

Today it’s Tunisia. But waves are rippling across the Maghreb, Mediterranean and Arab Peninsula. Citizenry is watching with baited breath.  They are praying for the safety of their brothers and sisters in Tunisia and whispering quietly, over thick black coffee, “Could this happen here?”

And it may. But it won’t happen because some Australian guy leaked a non-secret in a clandestine cable. Julian Assange may be a lot of things to a lot of people—but Mohammed Bouazizi is the only name you really need to know.

Into The Night

The sun is setting in the sky and my work here must be done. I gingerly put away all the materials I’ve used and set the alarm on the office. I take the elevator down to the private landing below and slip into the night. Freedom.

The air is fresh and the good citizens of the 7Th Quartier are walking just a little bit slower, talking just a little less hurried. They meander around as if in search for that one great cafe that they went to that one time with their friend while shopping for wedding shoes. I wish I had time to partake. I have to get home.There are dogs to be taken out, there is The Daily Show to catch up on, and if I could just get 20 minutes to watch Jon Stewart talk and eat my spaghetti bolognese very slowly, I’d go to bed happy.

The Réseau Express Régional, otherwise known as the RER station, looms before me. These are trains that take the daily workers to and from their homes outside Paris proper. They stop in the suburbs and carry on further still into the countryside. The RER-E will be what takes me home tonight. The RER-E has a special place in French society.

It is the train of Brown Folk, it is the train of the ghetto, it is the train that will take you to that place where those riots happened, once upon a time.

You step on and 90% of us are Algerians, Lebanese, Ghanaian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Pakistani, Indian and Others. The ethnic French, that is to say, the people that will never be asked, “Where are you from?”, crowd in next to us all. If they are taking the RER-E they are usually well integrated into not-white culture. They don’t shrink, or get scared or get up and move seats when one of us sits down next to them. Something I’ve seen on inter-Paris metros more than once.

The train rattles to life and whines out of the station. One quick stop in Gare du Nord and then it’s out of the city for the night.

 The graffiti scratched into the windows mars my vision of the passing graffiti painted on walls. I focus instead on the scratches themselves. I have to stare at something after all. Staring at humans was out of the question. Where we were headed, the 93rd, people didn’t automatically assume good intent from strangers.
And so we all gaze aimlessly. We find a spot with our eyes and we stick them there. Our stone faces reverting into tombstones. We become monolithic, unmoving, inhuman blocks that just want to keep to ourselves until the next stop. One glance can bring harassment. One glance up and a man is asking me for a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke.”

“Your number then.” I wave him off as if to say that he shouldn’t bother. He moves on. I sigh a relief. All he has to do is follow me off the train. It’s happened before.

I have a friend, Wafa, who doesn’t really accept the place society gives her. She has a certain amount of privilege as her father is a fairly wealthy Français-Moroccan. Even with the money he stays in the 93rd. The 93rd, the neuf-trois as it is colloquially called, creates much trepidation to outsiders. But her father refuses to budge.

Wafa is impeccable in her dress, polite, well read,  and known for making friend’s wherever she goes. From the sales ladies at Gucci to the souvinier hawkers sporting mini-Eiffel Towers, she’s always up for a chat. She will help anybody if they come up and ask her for directions and she is quick to point out unacceptable behavior as such. But even her face turns inward when she takes the RER by herself. When we’re together we are laughing. We’re a group. We’re safe together and will giggle all the way to Gare du Nord. But alone? There are no longer jokes to make. We turn to marble.

The Tram meets up with me at my station. It takes me further into the 93rd and drops me off two minutes from my house. I usually feel safe walking from the station. I just wish they hadn’t opened two bars nearby. In my area, bars aren’t the corner and neighborhood place where you can go and get to know your bartender. The bars here are for the dredges of society who insist on shooting whiskey from 1pm to 6pm. After which they stumbled down my street pissing in corners and I’m supposed to ignore them while I’m walking by and all I want is the spaghetti bolognese so I will pick up my pace.

I tap the code into my gate and enter my apartment grounds. My shoulders fall, my face softens and I can finally relax. My upstairs neighbor is outside. I greet her. She’s a lovely woman. A Jewish widow who invites me up to give her English lessons that often devolve into gossip. The man below me is an old retiered Air France pilot who refuses to tell me scary stories. He’s 85 and has terribly old fashioned notions about worrying the “ladies”. He thinks I’ll never fly again if he tells me such things, he might be right.

I say hello to the Armenian single mother who lives next door, she’s painting her hallway a pale yellow and her front door is wide open. “How’s it getting along?” I ask.
“It’s good, I like the color, do you?”
“It’s very calming.”
“Bouchera wants to see your hallway.” Bouchera is our Moroccan neighbor who just had a child. She heard a rumor that I painted my hallway bright green. That rumor is true. I also painted my living room bright yellow after deciding I wanted my house to resemble Havana avant Castro.

I hear her child, “Amara!” I call, “come give me kisses. What are you waiting for?” The seven year old comes bursting out around her mother. She is all eyelashes and olive skin. “Can I see Elliot?” she asks, kissing me on the cheeks. I let my dog out and the little girl and my hyper puppy jump around together on our floor.
“Okay, good night, see you later!” I finally call as my stomach is growling and it’s time to eat some serious food.

I prepare my dinner, buffer The Daily Show and watch feeling perfectly content. But that night I cannot help but wonder about the other tombstones. What has become of them? Have they come back to nice apartment buildings full of friendly neighbors? Have they returned to the projects crawling with drug dealers? Did they go home to abuse? To a loving husband? To an empty home? To their own dog? Where do these monoliths go when they regain their human form? What tapestry of the city will they fill out? What assumptions have I made based on nothing more than façade. What does it take to break it down to a human level? In a world of stone faces, perhaps there is bravery in cracking up.

Or perhaps to keep our humanity it is imperative we do not think about the toes we will be stepping on. I fall asleep reminded of that old nursery rhyme and slowly the words morph in my mind until the chorus sings: Masses, masses, we all fall down.