Her eyes said it all to me. Those round and wet eyes, so perfectly spaced apart from each other. They fit into her wonderfully shaped head just so: they didn’t stick out or anything, and they weren’t hidden behind cavernous sockets, like when a fat man laughs hard enough to go blind. Those eyes, they spoke volumes.
“Why Jaywalk?” they said to me. “Why not just wait for the green light? Why not obey the laws of traffic like all good citizens should?” The tall drink of something looked at me with those eyes, and this, if she had in fact audibly acknowledged my transgression, is what she would have said. Her blonde locks pulled back behind her ears, her short dress, which upon first glance looked like it was just a shirt, fluttering against her legs in the summer wind, she was a specimen of WASPish wonderment.
“Because I can” thought I defensively. “Because it doesn’t hurt anyone! Who do you thing you are, eyes of the WASP, to tell me when and how to walk? I cross when I want. I am a rebel! I obey no laws of the land, except for the ones I find benefit myself. Walking across the is not one of those decisions better left to a blinking light. I’ll take the hearts and minds of men and women over those machines, those robots, any day. Because when I jaywalk I do it in tandem with drivers. I can sense how they feel, when they’ll speed and when they’ll stop. My intuition, my social sensibilities afford me the luxury or crossing when and how I please. So back off, with your gorgeous figure and perfect teeth, oh WASPy the crossing guard” I thought.
But the social sciences are subjective. I couldn’t read the WASP. I couldn’t imagine she’d follow my lead in spite of my bravado, as a means of saying she could be as much a rebel as I. How dare I jaywalk while she is left in the dust waiting, hoping the machine will tell her the truth, the time, the moment to cross? Instead she followed me and got hit by a truck.
Not I, though, skilled lawbreaker and professional jaywalker. Not I.
—
Reading:
Norman Mailer
Cannibals and Christians
