BART-n-MUNI Tales #1 and 2

N Judah outbound, Saturday morning. The car I am in is virtually empty. I place a bag of camping gear in the seat next to me. The train pulls into Embarcadero station and a few people board.

"Excuse me, may I sit here?" someone says. I look up at a leathery, middle-aged man with a ponytail. He points at the bag next to me. There are empty seats all around us.

"Sure," I mumble, moving my bag without rolling my eyes.

"Whatcha doing? Planning to build a fire?" he jokes, pointing to the canister of cooking gas in my bag. I force a smile and nod.

"I'm headed to a barbecue myself," he says. "I'm meeting some friends, this group of hippies that hang out in Golden Gate Park."

My new seat neighbor tells me he moved to San Francisco a few weeks ago from Orange County. He says he recently became more liberal and no longer liked it down there. There is nothing threatening or inappropriate or overbearing in his friendliness, but he is invading my personal space and I am annoyed.

"Are you married?" he asks, after he finishes his life story.

"No," I say, making a mental note to start lying to strangers more.

"Yeah, I'm forty-two and still haven't found anyone," he says. "I'm a pretty simple guy, though. I don't need much. I always date women who have problems. It's because opposites attract, I guess."

I nod, staring out the window. Just because I'm sitting alone doesn't mean I'm available to keep you company.

"I like Oriental girls," he says after a pause. "I've never had one, but I'd like to."

"Oh, that's great," I say sarcastically, debating whether to explain the term 'Asian' to him.

"That's why I like San Francisco," he says. "Lots of Oriental girls. But they're nicer than in Orange County, where if I go near one they just look at me like they hate me, and the Oriental guys just want to beat me up."

"Yup," I say. He is well-intentioned and completely oblivious to his own ignorance, so I am finding it difficult to be more than mildly irritated. "That's how it is. They don't want some white guy going after their women."

"So what nationality are you?" he says. It was turning into a bad scene from The Joy Luck Club. I don't know, American?

"My parents are from Taiwan," I recite flatly.

"Oh," he says enthusiastically. "Did they come over here illegally on a boat?"

I'm so baffled by his unwitting tactlessness that I let out a snicker. "Um, no."

"Oh, I'm sorry," he says. "Did I--did I offend you? I didn't mean to, sorry."

"Well," I say. I am at a loss. I want to laugh at the pathetic man next to me. He is quiet for the first time, and visibly uncomfortable.

"I think I better get off here," he says, standing up as the car comes to a stop. "It's not my stop, but I better get off."

"Later," I say smugly. Part of me wishes he'd stay longer so I can give him some pointers. Don't announce that you have an Asian fetish. Don't say "Oriental girls." Understand the political implications of white men dating Asian women.

"It probably would have been worthwhile to explain some basic concepts to him," my roommate Tuyen says when I tell him the story. "Otherwise he's still as ignorant as before."

"But," he continues, "if you'd told him to fuck off, he wouldn't have understood what he did wrong. In the end, you just want to educate people, even if they piss you off."

===================

Berkeley BART to San Francisco, Sunday morning. I've just been pestered into signing a petition for a ballot measure that I still don't understand. The petitioner is a scraggly looking man in his fifties with a beat-up bicycle. There is nothing about him that convinces me he's not homeless, or crazy.

He zeroes in on a young black woman sitting across the aisle.

"Excuse me, Miss," he calls to her. She looks up reluctantly from her book. "Are you a San Francisco voter?"

"I'm not registered to vote here," she says blandly.

"No problem, I can register you now," he says, reaching into a saddlebag on the back of his bike. The young woman heaves a nearly undetectable sigh and puts down her book. He pulls out a clipboard with a pile of forms on it and begins asking for her name and address. I recognize the resigned reluctance in her voice as she recites it for him. It's the same resigned reluctance I had felt five minutes earlier.

"What am I signing?" I had asked him, scanning the official-looking petition. He had already collected several pages of signatures.

"It's for Indian gaming," he said. "Save Indian gaming."

"What's the issue?" I asked, thinking I could really care less.

"It's to save Indian gaming," he said again, shifting nervously. "California wants our money. We don't want to give it to them."

"So," I said, "Let me understand. They're trying to tax the casinos? I don't understand."

"Save Indian gaming," he repeated, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shuffling his feet. "We want to keep our money. California wants to take our money."

"Okay..." I said. I didn't know anything about the issues surrounding the petition, and apparently he didn't either, but I felt uncomfortable refusing to sign. "Sounds logical, I guess."

"It's the right thing to do. Don't let the state take away our money," he said, holding the petition out to me. I didn't have the courage or conviction to decline, even though it felt wrong to lend my name to something I didn't know enough about to have an opinion. I signed it.

The woman has finished letting herself be registered to vote. She nods politely - but unsmilingly - as the man hands her a receipt. She opens her book and begins reading again.

"Are you in school?" the man asks her. She looks up towards him, but not at him. I can't make out her words because she is answering in a low, vaguely annoyed tone. I see that she feels cornered but is reluctant to cross any boundaries of politeness to extract herself from the conversation.

I think of the way I had just let myself be coaxed into signing the petition. Is this the way we are socialized? To be so polite that we will tolerate others crossing our boundaries rather than risk being rude?

I resolve to be more conscious of when I find myself in situations that I don't want to be in. I decide that next time I won't fall prey so easily to the pressure to fulfill my polite, sweet gender role. Next time, next time, next time.

=========

Monday evening. I am locking up my bike at the Ghetto Safeway on 7th and Cabrillo. I avoid making eye contact with a man who has set up an ironing board and stacks of petitions at the entrance.

"Good for you!" he calls out. "Riding your bike is very responsible. You're an inspiration to me." I nod without looking up at him. As I walk towards the door, I resolve not to let him engage me in any petition-signing.

"Would you like to help me out?" he asks as I pass by. "I just need your help for a good cause." I glance towards him and break my stride. It's all over.

"I only have a few minutes," I say. "I have to get going soon."

"Don't we all have to get going?" he smiles, holding out an illustrated postcard. "What do you think of this? I wrote it."

He is chatty and possibly sane, and as every second ticks by I am thinking, walk away, just walk away. I finally do, fifteen minutes later, after signing three petitions.