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The Weekend

Alhamdullilah, I have come back from the depths of Flatbush and the dark regions of Brooklyn, alive, clean (because I bathed and then showered), and completely satisfied with myself.

My first (and probably last) camping trip was excellent. It was excellent not because of wildlife (if bugs and moths are considered exciting wildlife), or the stars (there are none to be seen in Brooklyn), or the certificate I received from the Parks Department for the 30-hour training. My weekend was not excellent because, for the first time, I had the opportunity to experience the world as my boys Thoreau and Emerson did years ago. In fact, the concept of self-reliance is hardly relevant when you are sharing a campsite with 20 other people, most of whom are as unimpressed with Nature as you are. No, my weekend was excellent for none of these reasons.

My weekend was excellent because I spent an entire day expanding my understanding of another human being. It felt like I spent the entire day with a 38 year old Puerto Rican named Baez. During the hike, at Dead Horse Beach, during the cooking fest in the afternoon, and as the sun set in the evening--it seems as if the whole day was spent learning about this stranger.

On the beach, when our group went saining, we came to the subject of food. He asked if I was a picky eater. I have been told I'm picky, and admitted, yes, that I was picky but in nontraditional ways (I blocked out certain types of food like Italian and Afghan because they are consistently disappointing). He proceeded to explain the pickiness of his eating behavior. He told me about the time he tried sushi when he used to work at Macy's, how he vomitted all over the place until he had ruined everybody else's meal, how he only ordered plain cheese pizza, or foods that he recognized on the menu when he went out to eat. I found this troubling and told him as much. "You're afraid of food. That's ridiculous. Food is an experience." This was my reaction. He laughed. I then advised him to begin to experience food by trying a different topping on his pizza. And then move onto falafels, and other ethnic foods. I was satisfied that I had encouraged this man, who had gone nearly half his life without having tried mushrooms, to do something about his fear of unknown foods.

On our walk back to the campsite, I learned about how he didnt sue his drunkass friend who collided into his car one night. He insisted that he had a 19-going-on-20-year old son, who I decided was imaginary because it would be impossible for him to have one so old, unless he had impregnanted some girl as a teenager. I couldn't settle on his motivation for such a lie, but insisted that he was lying. He even showed me his son's picture. I figured it was just a random kid standing next to a girl on line. Cell phone pictures were random anyway. I admitted that I lied sometimes for no reason and that he, too, should just admit his guilt.

Later, I received another lesson in baseball. Nine innings, top and bottom. 25 people on a team. I needed to go to a game. I had heard it before. "I don't have the patience for baseball." This was my repeated one-liner. Over the years, some of my closest friends have tried to show me the brilliance of American baseball. And at 19, I still don't get it. The Yankees-Mets game was on Denni's television, which he smuggled to the campsite illegally, despite the prohibition against all electronic devices except cell phones at the Ecology Village. My friend, the stranger whose name I still did not know, told me how he first fell in love with baseball in '77. Janeen and I proceeded to calculate his age, because at this point, I had no idea. He couldn't be that old.

38. He was 38. He would be 39 at the end of August. He said it, birth date and all.

Apparently he was that old.

That evening, as others cooked burgers, hotdogs, shish kababs, spagetti, I sat in a lime fold-up chair discussing the stranger's addiction to weed. He sat to my right, in the matching red fold-up chair. I explained what I smoked (unfiltered fruity flavored tobacco) and listened in debelief, as he told me what he had smoked (mostly illegal things) by the time he was my age. When his son was born, he stopped all the drugs except weed, which he had begun at a few days before he turned 12. TWELVE, my brain screamed.

He talked about his 7-year-old-going-on-19 little girl, his son, his dejaying, his coping mechanism to anger, his love for music, STEELERS (football is another entry all together), cigars, smoking, the effing world was reached in our conversation.

What is particularly strange about all this is that in the course of an entire day, not once did I address him by name. He had revealed his personal life story to me as easily as he would to his 19 year old son, who did indeed exist--he had bought the turkey burgers and done the grocery shopping in preparation for the camping trip.

I had spent so many hours absorbing the life of this man whose name I didn't even know. I was amazed not by what he has done, but by how much he has told me. How much of himself he shared without regard to the fact that we were still strangers.

He worked for the NYC Department of Housing, ran a sports program for youth in Staten Island. He had an ex-wife. And he drank Coronas and smoked weed and loved his children and had a fear of food. His name was Baez.

Comments

  1. That sounds like a weekend to remember!

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  2. Anonymous6/29/2005

    i've got 4 blogs. 3 of them are locked. keep this one. the more readers you gain, the less meaningful the entries become. the comments > the writing, and then you're stuck.

    this, what you described, would never in a billion years happen to me. i'm too judgemental. and i'm afraid of old men. so no. this would never happen to me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. apparently i am open and friendly. i expressed my surprise and befuddlement (haha, what a word) that this dude would tell me so much (and there was so much more), that i went to my tent to process. Everyone passes judgements... These amazing people and their experiences will pass you by if you are not receptive, my dear nafisa.

    ReplyDelete

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