Despertar

i don't actually have space dementia

But I am, at least, a little bit spatially retarded. Edging my car into a parallel parking situation takes me a minimum of seven minutes, maybe less time if I have a passenger to hop out and direct me into the space. Hugh usually does this without prompting, as he finds my solo efforts a pointless waste of time.

And I can't find my way around the city for shit, once you take away the numbers and letters. I know the state-named streets run diagonally, but I can't figure out the pattern to it. I know Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues border our campus, but Florida Avenue, for instance, is just randomly placed somewhere to the northwest, and eventually turns into U Street. What the hell?

Yet it's kind of for the best, because, as stupidly Victorian as this sounds, I think it's in my hormonal blueprint to appreciate being directed. Two weeks ago, when I got robbed and Justin suggested we go out for drinks to make me feel better, I felt the most contented I had felt for a long time, just turning over all the decisions and responsibilities to him. I obviously didn't have any money or means to pay for my drink; I had never been to the bar he chose, which he promised was walking distance from where we live. I stumbled down to meet him in his room, a wet-faced wreck from what had just happened, and he gave me a hug, gently ordered me to go back upstairs for a jacket, eventually led me outside. I fell into step beside him, blindly trusting that we would get where we were going, and back, without event; that I would eventually have a paid-for drink in my hands; that nothing else bad would happen to me that night, even as we were passing through an alleyway just as ominously unlit as the one where I'd been grabbed an hour before.

But I can't make him understand that. He thinks I'm just really, really bad with directions. In this age of independent women and the obnoxious I Can Do It Myself movement, it's hard to explain how valuable that is, trusting someone enough to let him guide your footsteps through the same neighborhood that just victimized you.

*

I started all the paragraphs in that section with conjunctions, which is a major grammatical no-no. After the first one, I did the rest on purpose. I just thought you should know.

I don't like Muse. That puts me in an extreme minority on Writing.com, apparently.

*

My new trick is to plug a pair of headphones into my back pocket. I do this when (1) my iPods are both dead, which happens a lot, or (2) they're alive but either (a) my ears need a break, or (b) I'm eavesdropping on some stranger nearby.

Either way, a pair of headphones, functional or not, are the most effective visual barrier between me and the people I don't want to talk to. Only people totally unfamiliar with the new social etiquette ever challenge my right to retreat into musical privacy. Chris, a guy in my academic section, likes to walk up to me and mime removing a pair of invisible headphones, indicating he wants to tell me something. Usually, what he wants to tell me is "Hey, what's up?"

He's a special case. Most people don't do that; they treat a headphone-wearer like a legitimately deaf person.

So I guess I've blown my cover if any of you ever pass me with my headphones in, looking for all the world like I'm deeply engrossed in musical therapy. Now you know.