I Had To Ask.
I was waiting for the train at Times Square yesterday evening when a homeless woman, obviously not skilled in the fine art of panhandling, approached me and told me I was fat.
She kept up this rant for quite a while, with me trying hard to stare at the tiles on the tunnel wall and biting back obvious observations, such as the fact that she's a bum, only has 4 teeth (if you could call them that), others are fatter than me, she looks fatter than me, and if she thinks I'm fat because my life is miserable (actually, she's right about that) and I turn to food, well, you're a homeless person picking on me so it's more than obvious whose life really is miserable. (Ok, I was eating a Twix when this happened, but I can't remember the last time I had one. I was debating on whether or not to mention that because her tirade was still uncalled for, but I don't want to be the recipient of any undue sympathy. I know that in the age of Nick Sylvester and James Frey that factoid doesn't really matter, but I still believe in honesty. Yeah, thinking someone might be sympathetic to me in the 1st place is pretty conceited, but oh well.)
I was trying so hard not to take the bait and tell her off--or deck her. Choice 2 was really looking good to me. And she kept it up, how I'm a beautiful girl (actually, I'm pretty on the inside) but betraying that beauty by being fat, I look like a donut (Mmm, donuts. Well, that's not what I thought at the time but that's expected from someone with an extensive Simpsons background such as mine). I was still running through every comeback in my head, telling myself not to listen to a crazy woman, wondering when the fuck the train--any train at this point--would come, and trying to ignore her altogether all at the same so I didn't hear how she came to the conclusion that I'm a stripper. She made a few more comments about my being a stripper and then turned around and went to retrieve her rolling suitcases, one with a front pocket unzipped to reveal the newspapers inside.
She comes back to me and goes off on me for standing in her way when she's trying to get by, even though the whole rest of the platform wasn't crowded. By this time another woman was standing next to me, rolling her eyes and looking uncomfortable and bored because a bum was in her vicinity. The bum explains to her how I'm blocking her and she keeps up the eyerolling until the bum passes. She gives a shudder, as if she was the one inconvenienced by that episode, and I tell her, "You really haven't lived in New York City until a bum tells you how fat you are."
She replies with an eyeroll. Great, 2 crazy people talked to me today.
Her train comes first and I'm left alone on the platform, ready to cry. You're going to let a homeless person's comments get to you?
I know, I know: Big girls don't cry. Yeah, well. What can I say. You would cry, too, if it happened to you.
Perhaps to cheer myself up over the fact that my nose is running and I have no tissues and I'm wiping my nose with my hands and then having to touch poles on the subway and everybody's looking at me because I'm adding something obviously gross to the poles that others touch, I pride myself on not decking the bum. Can you imagine her going to the cops and me explaining, Well, she started it. No matter how justified I'd be in knocking those 4 teeth down her throat, a cop would just give me the stern you-should've-known-better face and fine me for aggravated assault, which I cannot afford to pay. I tell myself that even if I were skinny, the bum would've gone off about that, too. How unhealthy I look, kids are starving in wherever kids are starving today, and how she can't afford food so why do I want to look skinny.
Still and all, though, I'm glad I got the complaints about my looks out of the way early in the evening so I didn't have to call my mom last nite. I know I overreacted to the bum's comments because I'm too sensitive and take everything personally. But that's what I do, after all. I take love criticism and turn it around and make it an attack when I should be grateful that somebody wants to help me.
She kept up this rant for quite a while, with me trying hard to stare at the tiles on the tunnel wall and biting back obvious observations, such as the fact that she's a bum, only has 4 teeth (if you could call them that), others are fatter than me, she looks fatter than me, and if she thinks I'm fat because my life is miserable (actually, she's right about that) and I turn to food, well, you're a homeless person picking on me so it's more than obvious whose life really is miserable. (Ok, I was eating a Twix when this happened, but I can't remember the last time I had one. I was debating on whether or not to mention that because her tirade was still uncalled for, but I don't want to be the recipient of any undue sympathy. I know that in the age of Nick Sylvester and James Frey that factoid doesn't really matter, but I still believe in honesty. Yeah, thinking someone might be sympathetic to me in the 1st place is pretty conceited, but oh well.)
I was trying so hard not to take the bait and tell her off--or deck her. Choice 2 was really looking good to me. And she kept it up, how I'm a beautiful girl (actually, I'm pretty on the inside) but betraying that beauty by being fat, I look like a donut (Mmm, donuts. Well, that's not what I thought at the time but that's expected from someone with an extensive Simpsons background such as mine). I was still running through every comeback in my head, telling myself not to listen to a crazy woman, wondering when the fuck the train--any train at this point--would come, and trying to ignore her altogether all at the same so I didn't hear how she came to the conclusion that I'm a stripper. She made a few more comments about my being a stripper and then turned around and went to retrieve her rolling suitcases, one with a front pocket unzipped to reveal the newspapers inside.
She comes back to me and goes off on me for standing in her way when she's trying to get by, even though the whole rest of the platform wasn't crowded. By this time another woman was standing next to me, rolling her eyes and looking uncomfortable and bored because a bum was in her vicinity. The bum explains to her how I'm blocking her and she keeps up the eyerolling until the bum passes. She gives a shudder, as if she was the one inconvenienced by that episode, and I tell her, "You really haven't lived in New York City until a bum tells you how fat you are."
She replies with an eyeroll. Great, 2 crazy people talked to me today.
Her train comes first and I'm left alone on the platform, ready to cry. You're going to let a homeless person's comments get to you?
I know, I know: Big girls don't cry. Yeah, well. What can I say. You would cry, too, if it happened to you.
Perhaps to cheer myself up over the fact that my nose is running and I have no tissues and I'm wiping my nose with my hands and then having to touch poles on the subway and everybody's looking at me because I'm adding something obviously gross to the poles that others touch, I pride myself on not decking the bum. Can you imagine her going to the cops and me explaining, Well, she started it. No matter how justified I'd be in knocking those 4 teeth down her throat, a cop would just give me the stern you-should've-known-better face and fine me for aggravated assault, which I cannot afford to pay. I tell myself that even if I were skinny, the bum would've gone off about that, too. How unhealthy I look, kids are starving in wherever kids are starving today, and how she can't afford food so why do I want to look skinny.
Still and all, though, I'm glad I got the complaints about my looks out of the way early in the evening so I didn't have to call my mom last nite. I know I overreacted to the bum's comments because I'm too sensitive and take everything personally. But that's what I do, after all. I take love criticism and turn it around and make it an attack when I should be grateful that somebody wants to help me.
posted by heather @ 12:10 PM
1 Comments:
At 2:12 PM,
Matthew Sheahan said…
You're not fat. But since you've been to so many Blackout Shoppers shows, you're probably crazy.
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