susanstinson | Boys on the Bike Path

On Wednesday evening, I was riding my trike on the bike path to go to the house of friends for dinner. Near the beginning of the path, a group of maybe twelve or so boys (junior high age? or high school?), came out of the wetlands on their bikes and gathered in a big clump across the path in front of me. They were some distance away, but, immediately, I heard the overexcited, loud voice of a kid looking my way and saying rude things about my body, intended, I think, both to be heard by me and so be hurtful, and also, for sure, to be noticed by his friends for wit and nerve in breaking the ordinary rules of how people treat each other.

He decided it would be funny to break away from his friends and ride his bike as hard as he could directly at me, looking me right in the eyes, and yelling, "Aw, shit," over and over. It was very theatrical, the joke being that I was so huge that he was in terrible danger that I would crush him. He actually was putting both of us in some danger, because that was some stupid bike riding. I just kept going, so if it was also a game of chicken, he lost. It played out without other commentary -- his friends didn't laugh or move, at least until, glaring and relieved, I finally rode by the big group, and a couple of them muttered something about heavy machinery.

Dinner was beautiful and abundant. So good to see my friends.

I haven't replaced my bike light yet (it's $60, and when I took it into the shop, they said to try cleaning the corrosion on the inside with steel wool, but the result was that I went from having uncertain light to none at all), but I'd brought a flashlight to strap to the handlebars with bungy cords for the darkness of the path, away from streetlights, on the ride home. First I had it strapped wrong, so all of the light went up into the trees, but it was pitch dark at the start of the path, and I rode off the edge into dirt right away because I couldn't see. So I adjusted the light. The part of the path that goes through Florence was easy, since there were lights from the town to help me see, but just before I got back to a darker section, a rider with no lights, who, in my quick glimpse of him looked like another boy, slipped onto the path in front of me from the street. He stayed just in front of me for the rest of the path, and I had to keep adjusting my flashlight to catch his reflectors so I wouldn't run into him.

It's almost poetry now: the shapes farther up the path, approaching or riding away, the kind of ugly thoughts they pulled out of me, and also the beauty. One of the things that sticks with me is how clearly I saw the first boy, the one who charged me, as I stared into his face. I saw his moment of calculation before he started yelling. I had on sunglasses, so he would have missed my eyes, but my face must have been so present for him, too. And then, on the way home, the flickering shape in front of me, comfort and obstacle both, maybe wanting to stay on the asphalt with my little capsule of light, maybe wanting the company, too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

OH Susan.... my inital gut reaction to this, let me at them! Let me get to those boys and shake them and say "what the fuck is wrong with you and didn't your family raise you right?" but the reality is that the most important thing is your safety.

Living in NYC I am spoiled by the richness of diversity of every kind and that mostly people tolerate each other and that nasty comments are few and far between (although it does happen).

My response to those kinds of things are usually to offer a big smile and say "have a nice day" and it usually leaves them speechless but along a bike path I suspect I might have been somewhat afraid.

It sounds to me like there was one asshole in the bunch.
Sending you big bike hugs!
xxxx

I know, Leah, anger and yelling make so much sense as a response, but they're not my usual first reaction, and, it's true, didn't feel particular safe. I like your big smile and "have a nice day." I murmured, "peace, children," as I went by the big group, which I often do when I get the meanness from the kids, but, although that's really what I'm wanting, for me, for them, some peace, and although it's their childishness that makes it easier to see the desperation in what they're doing without absorbing too much of it, I think saying that aloud might also feel really provocative, like an insult, like it touched something too raw in them, and might make things turn uglier. "Have a nice day" is much better that way.

Thanks for those hugs.

Susan, You generous beautiful soul on wheels, making poetry out of bad behavior, staring humanity in the face, and still loving us. You know you rock? Bet somewhere in there scared hearts, those boys know you rock, too. xo, Sal

My sentiments exactly; you took a nasty lttle incident and made it sing.

Hmm, thank you. One thing I feel, is, what else can I do? Those nasty little incidents come at me (at us, maybe), with such intensity and they reverberate in me -- they're both impersonal and intimate in such charged ways. For me, it kind of has to sing or else it burns. And I do, I really do, I recognize that ugliness in myself, too. Surely we can, all of us, do better.

I'm picking here to chime in with a "What Sal said!"

I love the matter-of-factness with which you report the experience. Gives the impression it's just speaking for itself, but of course your touch is in there. But talk about simply looking into the face of it, open-eyed.

Great post.

Thank you, fflo. For me, it really is one of the huge gifts of being a writer, trying to get things down in words, so that I can see more of what they are and what they make in me. The extended face to face piece of this particular moment has been haunting me.

Thanks, darlin'.

i think the time has come to get your mad max on and strap a couple of spud guns (http://www.mcphee.com/items/10762.html) to your handlebars. i can just see you bearing down on them with your sunglasses on, packing double barrel potato heat. that'll send that pack of punks flying. lock n' load, mama!

Whoa, spud guns!

Alas, it ain't me babe. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImpKzFXO1WI)

I'm 100 pounds lighter than my heaviest weight and while I am still fat, I generally do not get the fat insults from random strangers anymore. Still, I tend to get very nervous whenever I approach a group of young boys or college-age guys because these are the same people who would always harass me. I've gotten much better at dealing with comments, though. A couple years ago, I passed two guys while walking into a store and they waited until AFTER I passed them to make some kind of sexual innuendo. Without missing a beat, I replied "Yeah, I'm sure you have a dick the size of a peanut." I was so proud of myself, but I can't take all the credit. The line is from the film Notting Hill.

I'm glad you were also able to stand up (or sit down) for yourself. One of the reasons people feel so emboldened to make comments about fat people is because fat people usually lack the self-esteem to stick up for themselves.

Well, you know, I know a lot of fat people who have a pretty dazzling air of confidence, along with accomplishments to back that up, and harrassment still happens, along with other kinds of systemic discrimination based on size. So there's that.

Me, I'm pretty strong in my sense of myself as a fat woman (which I stubbornly insist on including vulnerability and brief or persistent pain, as well as all sorts of other powerful and gorgeous physical, emotional and social experiences, because, to me, that's the same as insisting on acknowledging as much of my full humanity as possible), and I have been for a long time, but I don't forget that its taken the insight of great writers and participating in grassroots feminist fat activism to make my outer and inner life possible. So, when I think of fat people sticking up for themselves, I think of that as a powerful and complicated thing, overlapping with other places of deep pressure in this culture around race, class and nationality (and so much), alive and happening in a specific person, in a specific moment, but not happening in any kind of individual vacuum.

And, you know, while I understand the snappy-comeback strategy of trading insults for harrassment, mostly, me, I'm looking for something else. First, it's true, safety, being able to go on about my business with minimal damage, and, second, some kind of recognition of the other person's (people's) humanity, some possibility that it doesn't have to go this way, that we can make something else happen.

Mind you, once, when a fat hate letter full of not very smart insults hit me once in a way that did feel like serious damage, my friends and I organized a speak-out against fat hatred: a public, political response. That was pretty transforming, too.

Oops -- that was me.

Ugh, so crappy this happened to you.

I love the stare-down, though. I am so glad you shared the story, which was very visceral.

You are steadfastly brave.

Thank you, lly. I've been around the block with this stuff, that's for sure.

Boys on the Bike Path

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