By Matt Durante
I am a creature of habit.
I go to lunch at roughly the same time. I order half a sandwich and an apple at a local shop. I drink water. I walk to the nearest cafe and grab a hot English breakfast tea. I walk around my local bookstore and then, before I go back home to resume work, I sit on a particular bench, set my tea down beside me, and write in my journal.
The bench is special. It may be magical.
In appearance, it looks no different than any other in the area. It’s black, metal, feels hotter or colder than the surrounding air depending on the weather. It’s near a tree. The tree is bare right now–it’s winter–and is a reminder of the season.
The bench sits at the end of a row of shops in a busy center of commerce for the town. On any given day, you’ll likely see me out there. I don’t talk to many people, save the ones who interact with me on my loop. When I wait in line at the cafe they all ask, “the usual, Matt?” in a kind, familiar tone.
I observe when the line is longer and remember the service industry. The hustle and the entitlement of the patrons. Sometimes it makes me smile. Sometimes it makes me mad.
Across from my bench is a road and a large movie theater at the end of the lane. It’s one of the more massive buildings in town. It’s pretty in its way. A cheap, commercialized Art Nouveau makes up the interiors of these buildings. The exteriors of all of these shops with their trimmings consist of clean blues, dark reds and tan stone, trying to harken to a period of urban American exceptionalism and neoclassical architecture. At the center of the plaza there is even a large fountain. Today, a brisk day in late December, it is frozen, making it especially lovely to look at — the crystalline explosion makes its own song for the eyes.
I sit at my bench and write in my journal reflecting on whatever comes to mind. I’m sure many of the people in the other shops have seen me walk by, munching my apple, journal in hand, on my way to the cafe. They may make assumptions about me. Maybe not.
I can hear in my head, imaginary people, calling me a “weirdo” as I sit at my bench, sipping and staring at nothing and occasionally jotting with my treasured Lamy 2000 fountain pen in my Leuchtturm1917 journal.
And they’d be right. I am a weirdo. I recognize the oddness of my idiosyncrasies. I should say too, that I am at once engaging with the world and living in my own head about it. We all are I suppose — in fact there isn’t another way to do it. But I need to mention that I so desire to be kind and open my heart to people, to treat everyone as I would like to be treated. And in the same breath I also avoid speaking with people. You’d think that these two things can’t coexist. You’d be wrong.
The power of the bench.
I’ll come to it. My bench has a way of pulling the fringes of the world right to me. Every few days a new and random person engages me in conversation as I write in my journal. I give no signals of interest. I’m simply looking around and writing. A person will come up to me and speak to me, head down, pen to paper, mid sentence.
I stop, listen and talk back in kind. It’s not exceptional. But it is a repeating occurrence in my life.
Keep in mind, it’s a busy part of town, but it’s not that busy. I could walk up and down the strip and never come within fifty feet of a person. But fifty feet is apparently close enough for a person to see me writing at my bench and decide that I’m a fellow they should speak to.
There are three instances that stand out to me. They aren’t remarkable. Just evidence that there is a world, in fact, happening.
The hat
An elderly gentleman sat down on the next bench over. He was wearing a heavy wool coat over top of loose fitting pants. He had on black Crocs and white socks. He slunk back casually and wasted no time in ending the silence.
“Nice weather. I like it cold,” he said.
“It’s brisk. Refreshing,” I responded.
“Positively crisp,” he vollied back. He took out a cigarette and began smoking.
“Yeah, I’m just on my way to work.”
“What’s work?” I asked.
“I work in the kitchen over at King’s Mill, the bus is just up the way. I’m early though.”
That explains the pants and footwear.
“Oh nice.” I have an affinity for kitchen work. I used to work in restaurants. Kitchen work was satisfying in hindsight, when you weren’t actually doing it. I remember it fondly, miss it even, but never want to do it again.
“Takin a break?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ll get back to work in a bit.”
“Say, uh, is this your hat?” He held up a knit cap.
“Nope.”
“I just found it here on the bench,” he said.
“I’ve been here for about a half hour so you know what they say…” I said.
“Finders keepers,” we said at the same time.
We chuckled.
“It was kinda damp, musta been here overnight. It’s a good hat though. Good hat.”
“Looks like you have a new hat,” I said.
His phone rang, and he started talking on it. I knew I wasn’t really going to be able to write anymore. I got up and looked over to him before I took my leave.
“It was nice talking to you, have a good one,” I said, waving.
“Hold up,” he said into the phone. He looked at me. “Hey, you too my man.”
I walked away. The small interaction felt good. It was everything. It was nothing.
Directions
Once again, while writing in my journal I found myself distracted. I noticed a large work van pull into a nearby parking space. It was out of place where it was. In a sea of middle class family vehicles sat this hulking mass of a van. Thoughts of Gonzo the Great’s work truck with his metal plumber statue came to mind. I went back to my writing.
A moment later, a very robotic, though southern twanged voice spoke to me. “Hello. Can you help me?”
I looked up. It was an older leathery tanned white man in coveralls and a worn trucker cap. He was holding a speaking valve up to his throat and a paper in another hand.
“Uh, sure sir, what can I do for you?” I asked.
“I need to find out how to get here,” he said. I saw the hole in his neck.
I looked at the paper. It was a work order for electrical repair for a nearby store, one that sounded familiar but I hadn’t been to — one of those small businesses that has someone’s name in the title: Bill’s Home Audio Repair, Johnny’s Car Manicure Emporium, Harry’s Oil, Coffee, and Lube Shoppe.
“Is this the name of the place you have to get to?” I asked.
He pointed to it and the address underneath and without the voicebox in a raspy breathy forced answer he nodded, “yes, that’s it.”
“You’re in the right ballpark. It’s confusing because the road you’re looking for used to connect before they added in all these stores and the causeway over there. You’re not the first person to get lost looking for an address in this area.”
He smiled.
I punched in the address on my smartphone and pulled up a map.
“Look, we’re right here. So if you look back out to the main road here, make a left. Then make another left at the light down there, then you’re on Ironbound Road. If you turn left onto Ironbound just keep heading down until you’re past this development. You should see a sign for this place two lights down on the left.
Without the box, through his mouth and throat hole, he rasped, “out to this road, left at the light, left at the light on Ironbound, two lights, on the left.”
“You got it. A lotta left.” I smiled.
“Hey, thanks,” he said.
“No worries,” I said.
He got back into his clodhopper of a vehicle and went on his way. Admittedly, the neck hole was hard to look at, but not as hard as it would have been to live with.
Passing the buck
I was sitting once on the bench and I saw a woman dressed in many extra layers make a beeline straight for me. My assumption was that she was homeless.
“Sir. Sir, can I talk to you for a minute?”
She looked troubled, worn, tired, dirty. She spoke in a slurred way, half of her teeth were rotten. She could not hide it if she tried. The moment she spoke it was apparent — a life of hard choices. She could have been my age but she looked twenty years older.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
The woman told me her story. It was a long one. She went on about how her mother was working and how she lived with her but her home was in Newport News, about twenty miles away, and how she wanted to get home but how she didn’t have money for the bus. There were extra details that you wouldn’t tell a stranger about how she got to here and now.
I just listened. Occasionally adding in a simple, “Yeah, that’s a pain.” or “Oh man, that is hard.” She got to the point where she asked for money. I felt bad. There I was with my cup of tea, on my long, entitled thinking break, and I didn’t have a dollar in my pocket to give her. It’s a problem I think of often now, actually. There is less and less physical cash out there. I wonder how this will affect the homeless. It’s tough.
In this moment, I felt guilty too. I would have given her a dollar, five dollars, twenty dollars if I had it. I didn’t, though.
So I told her, “Hey, that’s really tough. I hope things get easier for you. And look, I don’t want to pass the buck here and it sounds like an excuse, but I don’t really have any cash. I feel bad.”
“Oh, that’s okay sir. I just don’t really know what to do,” she said, defeated.
“Look, again this sounds lame because I’m not trying to shove you off, but if you go over there to that coffee shop and bookstore, there are good people coming in and out of it. Book people are good people. If they have a few dollars on them, I’m sure they will help you out,” I stood up and pointed over to the store I had been in.
“Again, I’m sorry that I couldn’t be more helpful.”
“Okay, thankyou,” she said and wandered over to the store.
I sat back down, thinking about her story and wrote in my journal about it a bit. Just a few bad days and any one of us could be that woman. It’s important to keep in perspective.
Perhaps five minutes later and she was back.
“Hey sir, you were right.” She was holding a twenty dollar bill in her hand.
“Oh, good! That solves it. I’m glad someone helped you out.”
“I just wanted to say thank you,” she said.
“Thank me? For what?” I smiled. “I wasn’t really able to do anything for you.”
“Just for talking with me. Most people look at me and tell me to go away. People say I’m disgusting. You spoke to me normal like. My face is hard to look at.”
I was devastated, floored, shattered. My heart wanted to envelop this woman and hold her and tell her it was all going to be okay. I wanted to protect her. She was right. In the most selfish, things have been good for me way, it was hard to look at her. But her humanity should not be denied by anyone.
There aren’t the right words to say in moments like these. I tried anyway, “Look. The world can be harsh. I think that we’re all going through it and we’re only a few steps from losing or gaining everything. You’re a person having a hard time. It’s okay.”
“Have a blessed day,” she said and she smiled.
I’m not religious, but when people say this I thank them.
“Thank you. You stay safe out there, okay?”
“Thank you,” she said.
I watched her meander away. I sat and thought about her and the level of pain she must have felt. I couldn’t imagine being treated with such a lack of humanity, thus showing how good I’ve had it. I really did hope that she’d be okay.
I got up after a few moments and got in my car, and went home to get back to work. I pulled out onto the main road and saw her sitting at the bus stop. She’d meant what she said.
I think of her nearly every time I sit on my bench now. I have not seen her since. One thing I am certain of, though, is that if I keep sitting down at this bench, the world will continue to see me and deliver — even when I avoid it.