Pocket Dispatch from Canvassing in the Rain

This poor bastard is standing outside in a cold drizzle, wearing an ACLU vest and waving at strangers approaching him from 20 paces. He uses all the tricks from training to get their attention—“hey, Chrome bag, all right! High five. Hey, got a second for civil rights?” He’s always got his fist out for a friendly bump, but people point to their earbuds, making a banana with their thumb and pinky. Sorry, I’m having an important conversation with no one about how I’d rather cut off my own gangrenous foot than talk to you.

He’s young, but not young enough for this shit. Grad school must not have panned out. So he’s canvassing while he figures out how he’s going to make a difference in the world. Or if there’s any point in trying.

An older canvasser walks over. They talk sometimes when foot traffic slows down between trains. It’s hard to imagine they’re making small talk, since they make an exhaustive volume of it with the people they stop on the street. It seems more likely they’re trading tips or descriptions of the ones that just barely got away. Maybe they’ll be back. Most people pass back the same way later.

When he burns out and needs a break, he takes out his phone to make a call of his own, little bits of talking followed by long drags on a vape pen. I imagine a canvasser for some other charity walking up to him and trying to get him to talk. Do these guys ever prey on each other? What happens if you locked two of them in a room?

How does the recruitment process work for canvassers? Probably happened on a college campus. No doubt it involved other canvassers standing on sidewalks near the student center, under the train, outside the sociology department. But instead of looking for donations, they needed warm bodies to stand on sidewalks elsewhere. To find donations. Can it be a pyramid scheme if the compensation is hourly and low, or nonexistent?

I picture today’s canvasser walking out of one of those campus buildings, deflated and disillusioned, realizing he’ll never finish his thesis and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference in the world if he did anyway. He probably had sad eyes and a slow, directionless gait. A look the recruiters are trained to spot and jump on. Fresh meat. An ideal candidate.

“Hey there,” I imagine them saying to him. “You look like you could use someone to talk to.” Or maybe, “Hey man, you want to help us make a difference out here in the real world?” Two day-long training sessions and a couple days of shadowing, and he and his clipboard are making the world a better place at last.

The way he points at passing women and beckons with his fingers for them to come over and talk to him seems barely distinguishable from catcalling. He is persistent, even as they say, “Sorry, no.” Sometimes he leans in toward their path, or follows them for pace or two.

Turns out you can get away with a lot when you’re wearing an ACLU vest. A similar windbreaker is available for purchase on the ACLU website. Actually it’s on sale.

2023-10-06 15:30

Pocket Dispatch from the Subway

Recently I had the opportunity to waste time downtown. I relish wasting time anywhere, and I have always loved wandering around bustling city centers. I also like to visit The Loop now and then to see what’s still open, like a wellness check. I delight in discovering a business that I like has survived, and I inspect the new businesses that are trying their luck there like young livestock, wondering if they are hardy enough to prosper. Still, it is a dirty and increasingly hollowed out place—a reminder of who loses in America when winners move on.

The poverty and suffering on display is staggering. So is the stratification of society. Many of the city’s highest earners are concentrated there during business hours, speedwalking past the homeless and mentally ill begging for train fare and lunch money. It is impossible to go downtown without confronting this, especially on public transit.

But I prefer public transit. It’s another aspect of city living I romanticize, even when I have to change subway cars three times before I find one that doesn’t reek of piss and body odor.

On my recent trip to The Loop, my fourth subway car was crowded. I shuffled past the crowd congregated between the doors, then wound my way through the rest of the car until I reached the emergency exit at the end. Once there, I turned around to watch the rest of the car and stay out of everyone’s way until the train approached my stop.

Everyone was pawing at their phones. It’s an arresting sight: No one seems aware of their surroundings. Some doze off with their phones in their laps. Still others seem oblivious to their open bags beside them, occupying a seat and ripe for picking.

It’s been this way as long as I can remember, but I haven’t had a job with a commute in six years. I’ve nearly forgotten the eerie sight of a roomful of adults all unhooked from reality at once, like an opium den you can take to the airport.

My eyes scanned the train for a while, taking this in, then settled on a young man in a window seat whose phone activity seemed more engaged than everyone else’s. He flipped frantically between apps, pulling down the notifications list every few moments. Nothing new. Then he would return to his Home Screen, launch a game, then switch back to a social media app’s DM inbox. No new messages. Back to the notifications. Nothing new. Then the Home Screen. Then a new app. Then the game again. He would play for seconds before repeating the cycle.

I wondered what he felt when switching between the inbox and the notifications screen. Was it hope? Or worry? His face was expressionless. Even his blinking was slow. Maybe he found this calming, or it soothed his boredom. I wondered how he would know when it was time to stand up and move toward the exit.

I started feeling uneasy watching him, like I was seeing something I shouldn’t, the way it feels when you overhear a couple arguing in hisses in the kitchen at a dinner party they’re hosting. Or seeing someone pick their nose while reading in the park. Do you they know people can see them? Do they even realize what they’re doing?

I looked at the floor, suddenly afraid to see anyone else’s screens. The young man suddenly horrified me, and the panorama of glowing faces was making me feel queasy.

I slid my shoulder bag around my body to my chest and clutched it with my arms crossed. The train was entering a station, but I wasn’t sure which. When we stopped, I began my “excuse mes” and “coming outs” and made my way through the crowd.

The air on the platform was not fresh but it was a welcome change. I sat down on a bench outside the train door and looked at the spot on the floor between my feet.

2023-09-15 00:00

Doing some quick math in my in-laws’ shower: My parents owned their house from the spring of 1994 until the fall of 2018. 14 years. No, 24.

I began visiting my in-laws in southwest Ohio in 2007. At what point will their home, which feels almost familiar as a place I grew up, and in some ways is, become a place I’ve been inhabiting for as long as my actual childhood home?

Technically the answer is 2031. But I feel it happening already. I come in, I say a soft hello to whomever is around. I serve myself some water to drink. Maybe a snack. I have hugs for whomever wants them. Little fanfare.

Photo by Scott Webb

I help myself to a shower if I want one before bed. What’s there to say about it? I was maybe 20 when I first used this shower. I’ve long been coming of age in this place I didn’t choose, where people I love welcome me and look after me and tolerate the collapse of my mind, body, spirit, and energy whenever I arrive for a visit “home.”

It has the same quirky faucet as my own childhood bathroom, one you have to pull down to toggle from bath to shower head. Both are plastic shells. My childhood shower’s shell had a ceiling to it that became claustrophobic as I grew to 6 feet tall in college. This shower doesn’t have that, but the floor creaks beneath it when I shift my weight.

I turn off the shower and reach past the curtain for my towel, which is hanging on a hook nearby. I don’t need to look for it or grope around. I am a guest with muscle memory of the premises.

Someone calls to me from outside the door. “We’re heading downtown,” my wife says. “Want to come?”

I don’t hesitate. “No,” I bellow back so she can hear me through the door. “I think I’m happy just being here.”

2023-07-29 21:49

Pocket Dispatch from Office of Human Value

Keeping score:

2023-07-18 21:54