Dear George,
I spent a couple of hours at the fitness center in the late morning. On the way home I thought about stopping at the grocery store to pick up some bread for lunch, but, on impulse, decided to treat myself at Wendy’s instead.
Wendy’s is on Westwood Northern Boulevard at the eastern edge of Camp Washington, a very poor, formerly Appalachian and now mostly black neighborhood nearby Clifton. There was a medium-sized lunch crowd which looked to be mostly working folks, and I got served my #2 meal (double cheeseburger, fries, diet coke) in quick order.
I sat near the center of the restaurant, picking a table which offered the best vista for people-watching. I had just taken the first bite of my burger when I noticed a shabbily dressed, dark-skinned African-American man in his late 30s or 40s who flashed a big smile in my direction and approached with his hand outstretched. I assumed he was greeting somebody behind me and averted my eyes, but he came right up to my table and held his hand directly out to me. Confused and disconcerted, I shook my head and looked away. The friendly man’s smile disappeared and he backed away, then turned to walk toward the service counter.
I watched out of the corner of my eye. I wondered if the man were psychotic. He walked back and forth in the thirty-foot space between the front door and the service counter, sometimes turning in circles and/or doing a little dance. He approached various individuals with a big smile, but nobody offered any visible reaction, nor did the various seated customers give any sign of acknowledging his presence. At one point he seemed ready to get in line to place an order, but he didn’t follow up on it. An attractive, well-dressed white woman came in and got in the line. The strange man came up and began talking to her, then touched her on the shoulder.
At this point a Wendy’s employee, a tall, thin African American woman in her 40’s who might have been the manager, came out from behind the food counter and told the man to leave. He didn’t want to, and she became firm and insistent. When he said he had to use the bathroom first, she said “Oh no you’re not,” and pointed him to the side door. He said angrily that he was going to go out the front door, and she shepherded him there, standing at the doorway with her hands on her hips until he disappeared into the parking lot. My impression was that this was not their first encounter.
All of this was mildly disconcerting. The strange man didn’t do anything harmful or threatening, other than making unwanted friendly overtures to strangers. But he clearly violated numerous implicit rules for behavior in public places, and, in the absence of any other information, the social inappropriateness of his behavior was unsettling to people present and disruptive of the scene as a whole. This would a rare event in a restaurant in my own more homogenous middle class neighborhood, but I guessed it to be more commonplace in Camp Washington. In retrospect, I wondered how the friendly man managed to survive in the world. If his behavior was ignored or rejected by the more civil folks in Wendy’s, how forlorn he must be in a street world that is probably harsher.
Love,
Dave
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