Shoulder to shoulder

A week ago, more than a week ago, I decided to fill a planless day by sitting in the coffee shop below my apartment and drinking coffee while I finish the book I’ve been reading too long now. Also, I’m taking a break to write this post on my phone to test whether this tactic might remove even one more barrier to regular posting – namely, the burden of lugging the machine around. Also writing this post in two different times and being OK with it just because of Hamsun, if you know what I mean.

Two men about my age are taking up two side-by-side tables in the center of the cafe, clearly together in some conspiracy to judge anyone who walks through the door. There’s a real aggression in the way they occupy too much space, and how they touch one shoulder to the other, doing their own thinking, coming back together to mumble about something, and going back to their stares. Neither man faces his own table, opting instead to open his legs to the one walking lane between the two rows of tables and the counter.

Recently I find myself wanting to interrupt strangers who engage themselves in some public rudeness: a loud conversation on the phone on the train; talking through a live performance; keeping reserved seats on the bus while elderly dodder toward the back; leaving shopping carts in the middle of everything. And I’m not talking about some little comment uttered under the breath or a request to please do a little thing differently in the moment. No. I’m inclined to a perverse self-righteous anger and, worse?, the impulse to lecture. How could you sit there polluting my airspace, and these other people you see here, with your obnoxious conversation about how you can’t believe your friend doesn’t know the definition of the word “remediate”? Or the conversation with some amateur advisor whose advice you won’t heed?

I’m of two minds. The one that says interruption and instruction, well, as much as I want to scratch that itch, I still don’t know what it will take to plunge into my own public outburst. Where do I get the right? I try to pinpoint that one move that will push me over the edge into confrontation. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve felt so so close. Close enough to have my voice box cleared up. Close enough to lean forward. Close enough to feel the adrenaline pump through my veins like I’ve just been in a fight. I could list a thousand things that stop me from stepping over, but I know there’s a trigger out there.