The Man in the Window

“Can’t you see I’m easily bothered by persistence?”-Pantera

I

April will be the first full month that has lived through the pandemic twice. The temperature, which seems to have settled on an unwelcome 25 degrees for 4 long, brutal months, has finally begun to eek its way into the low 50’s. It feels like a big deal whenever the sun does decide to come out. And with that, more people in my neighborhood have begun to walk.

I rediscovered my love for walking on Thanksgiving 2020. Faced with the inevitability of spending it alone, I tried something a little different. Fasting was always something I’d admired from a safe distance, less out of a noble aim to become more appreciative and more out of a perverse desire to deprive myself of things that give me joy. A meta-game of withholding. Around noon, I felt invincible, knee deep in a marathon play session of the new Assassin’s Creed game. But by 4 o’clock, boredom set in. My stomach grumbling and endless gulps of water sending me on repeated trips to the bathroom, I decided I needed to get out of the house. So I went for a walk.

I knew how empty everything had become over the past handful of months, but walking through it, navigating and swallowing the vacuity of the open air, stifled by overcast skies, I noticed something else. As my hunger pangs forced my brain to focus on something other than turkey, I indeed found myself grateful for the solitude that my suburban town had inadvertently allowed for me.

I’ve always enjoyed walking, but as I’ve grown older, so has my anxiety. I now own a dog who, like most all other dogs, loves to walk as well. This appears on the surface to be a perfect match for me and my companion, but it can be hell on me. Bending over to pick up his shit always feels like at least half of the neighborhood’s residents have their eyes lasered in on me, peering out their windows to ensure I picked up every last turd, even the minuscule ones. It’s even more uncomfortable when it’s diahrrea, which has a nasty habit of sticking to grass.

I’ve heard this affliction called “main character syndrome.” It’s a paranoiac personality type who irrationally believes people are constantly watching him. In other words, my ego thinks I’m more important than I really am. My own discount version of psychoanalysis tells me that when I was younger, I wasn’t getting the proper amount of attention that I needed. This yearning resulted in believing my ego was right, and no matter how mundane my story was, it was going to be something cinematic. Even household tasks like cutting the grass can be challenging, not because I’m lazy, but because I’m constantly worried a neighbor is going to point out that I’m doing it wrong. It’s exhausting to the mind feeling exposed.

I walked almost everyday between Thanksgiving 2020 and April of 2021. The walks were accompanied by suitably unfriendly Midwest weather: rain, snow, sleet, cold wind, and worst of all, the tease of a premature spring. But I knew that this would deter other people from walking, and thus I’d be left alone to mingle around an empty suburbia. My main route typically lasted around 30–40 minutes, depending on the briskness of my stride. Typically, I am a fast walker. There are two landmarks I was always sure to pass. The first was the elementary school in which I was a student between the ages of 4 and 13. I live a few short blocks from it now. It’s a private Catholic school that boasts a beautiful church with stain glassed windows and an aesthetically satisfying hexagonal architecture. The Church and school are separated by a blacktop parking lot, which also doubled as our playground during recess. It still does to this day. Walking past the church, I am in awe of both its beige mundanity and its triumphant excess. Something about it doesn’t quite make sense.

I used to take this route by car, because there’s a traffic light at the end of the street the school and church are situated on. I dread making left hand turns onto major roads without the aid of a mechanical light telling me when its ok to turn, so I was perfectly happy sacrificing minutes of my life each day, patiently waiting for the light to turn from red to green. At the time, I wasn’t really thinking about my grade school experience. I was more concerned with conventionally “early adult” things, such as getting to work on time and grocery shopping…and occasionally meeting up with friends to so we could get drunk and talk about what we were all watching on Netflix.

With time, the recent walks grew stale; they too were now an obligation. But I couldn’t stop wondering to myself why exactly I kept walking past my old grade school. There was a lot on my mind. I had recently quit my soul crushing job I had had for a decade, I was getting married soon, and everyone I knew, even those on TV and the internet, were bored, frightened, and uncertain about life during a pandemic. I began slyly talking to myself as I approached the blacktop playground, almost as if I was temporally conversing with my 13 year old self who spent every weekday here on these blacktops from the ages of 4 and early teenagedom. The more confused I grew in certain areas, clarity flooded in others. I was beginning to make sense of my childhood.

Catholic school in the 90s wasn’t easy. But I can’t imagine it ever was. For me, it began innocently enough. Go to Church every Sunday, pray and be grateful for the life you have, and treat others with the same dignity and respect that you were hopefully giving to yourself. Beginning around 5th grade, the unchecked gratitude was getting in the way of my wanting to become an autonomous individual. I was getting picked on. Previously unaware and unconcerned with being associated with the cool students, I was immediately thrust within their purview. I’d be on the receiving end of vicious, hateful insults. I was called gay, and then eventually the f word, because my navy slacks my mom had bought for me were too tight. They stopped barely below my ankles when I sat down, meaning there was a small amount of skin exposed between my sock and the end of my pant crease. One of the cool kids, arguably the coolest of them all, pointed at me and shrieked “I see skin! I see skin!” His cult of cool followers laughed and pointed. I used to think pointing at people was made up stuff you only saw in movies and sitcoms. But it was becoming my reality.

Instead of wallowing, I grew determined to become just like the cool kids. They held power. I didn’t feel sorry for myself yet, which gave me the razor sharp focus, a sort of tunnel vision. I wasn’t the most confident person, but I knew how to make fun of myself. And tragically, I eventually learned how to make fun of others. By eighth grade, I was officially one of the Cool Kids, picking on less cool kids on the blacktop playground during recess, to massive acclaim by my peers. But what they truly admired was my self-deprecation. I was at my apex when I was being a clown, doing ridiculous, unsavory things. Naturally, I started to get into more trouble. I remained an exceptional student, thanks to my parents discipline. But like my cool friends, I was getting scolded by my teachers, many of which were People of Faith. I even got suspended. The same instructors who had once been proud of my academic efforts were now showing signs of frustration and disappointment. I saw it as contempt.

But I told myself that the approval of my peers was more important than the approval of antiquated authoritarians. And most important was their recognition, which meant everything to a kid afraid of becoming yet another unremarkable white kid tucked away in the suburbs.

Two decades later, and I’m still battling for the recognition of others.

When I wasn’t spending the Long Winter walking and thinking about my past, I was devouring radical books on psychoanalysis and Marxist philosophy. European thinkers like Jacques Lacan were exposing my mind to concepts that made me regret not spending more hours at my college library. The one that probably piqued my interest the most was Frederich Nietzsche. One of his more bold ideas (which is saying something) was the concept of the Eternal Recurrence. It asked a simple, yet horrifically existential question: would a human being be ok living his or her life the same way over and over and over again? It’s scary, because the question presumes that everything that has ever happened in the world, and will ever happen in the world, has already happened, and nothing new will ever arise. But with that terrifying awareness, the question could be seen in its positive affirmation. The question then becomes something like: are you happy with the life that you are living, and more importantly, are you happy with the person you are, and are you satisfied with living the same life over and over again as the person you are? Spending months locked inside a house doing the same thing can make some days seem like an eternity. Some might even call it insanity.

II

The other main landmark of my walks is a nursing home for men and women who have difficulties with memory. One of my (shamefully nosy) favorite features of walking is peering into neighbor’s windows. I’m always curious what other people are watching on television. Are their interests similar to mine, or are they different? Usually the latter. Around my neighborhood, there’s a lot of CNN and football consumption. Walking past the nursing home, the glow of cheap, 13 inch HD monitors project the aging visage of Pat Saydjak and his ever resilient Wheel of Fortune. Tons of classic game show entertainment. It’s one of those cliches that rings hilariously true. One room has a pile of books haphazardly nestled against the windowsill. The last window I see is the most interesting. A man in his mid to late 70s sits parallel to me and the main street. He is staring straight ahead, presumably at a wall. Possibly at pictures, mementos of his life. I’m not entirely sure. What’s missing is a television. I wonder to myself, pitifully, how bored he must be. I keep walking. In late January, I decide to walk a little later, in the hopes of sun setting at a later hour. The sun has been setting around quarter to 5 for a few weeks now. Which is fine, because in January, there’s never much to look at.

As I test out my modified routine, I venture past the nursing home again. As I approach the man in the window with no television, he is now seated facing both myself and the main street. I am startled, but I act nonplussed. I continue to make long strides, a little nervous, wondering if he’s recognized me. I begin to think to myself, that maybe he isn’t bored after all. Lonely? That’s almost a certainty. I begin daydreaming about his daydreams. Being cooped up in a nursing home everyday, and during a pandemic, no less, must afford some level of creativity for the mind. But I grow jealous of the man in the window. He’s probably playing some pretty wild stories in his head. Unlike me, there’s a good chance he’s found a reasonable and interesting way to pass the time.

As January bleeds into February, I continue my routine. Some days, it’s a Herculean task simply putting on a pair of socks to convince myself to go outside and move my body. I promise myself it’ll be worth it, I just have to put my jacket on and open the front door. Even if my depression doesn’t subside after the first few minutes of walking, I’m far enough away from home now that doubling back would be pointless. Yet again, I venture past the man in the window. Sometimes, he’s staring at the wall. Sometimes, he’s staring outside. I think it depends on the time of day, but like me, he’s certainly holding on to the routine. It’s Monday, and the end of my work day. It’s also garbage day in the neighborhood. I pass a lovely European Bakery and begin the end of my walk down my favorite residential street. A man in his early 50s is wheeling his garbage and recycling bins down his driveway as snow begins to fall. I’m roughly 30 yards before him, and my pace is fast. At this rate, we’re going to collide with one another. I slow my pace a bit, and inevitably, my wandering mind is now temporarily fixed with on it. I try to be polite and respectful with everyone I meet. Some would say it’s a crutch, and maybe it is. I’m certain the man sees me, because how many other people are out walking at 7 o’clock in the dead of winter in an affluent neighborhood? I was wrong. As I approach the man, he jumps, startled. We both let out awkward laughs, and I march on. But I don’t beat myself up for how he reacted. And I don’t apologize. Maybe being hyperaware of my surroundings is more of a benefit than I’ve thought all these years.

There’s one person the man in the window reminds me of. It was so obvious. Memories of Maxwell House coffee penetrating every pore of my parents two story bungalow. I’d be in the living room, shaking off the cobwebs of a rough night’s sleep, and my father would be sitting in the kitchen. Both of us would be silent, which is how we’ve spent most of our time in life together. It’s peaceful. He’d stare out the window, either patiently waiting for his coffee to be ready, or enjoying it. I always wondered what he was looking at.

It is now early April, and the Michigan weather remains fickle. My walking has lessened, because I melt in the rain. I once called into work because my socks got wet. I am no longer walking past the man in the window everyday. But I haven’t forgotten him. It’s a dreary Monday night, the temperature hovering just below 50 degrees. My hair has grown shamefully long. I decide to take my tried and true route past my grade school. I’m annoyed and bored, my mind unable to meditate on the majestic and ominous cumulonimbus clouds above. Something peculiar happens as I pass the man in the window, a man that, up until this point in time, I was admittedly a little afraid of. We lock eyes, and I think I stop, frozen in the moment.

He waves at me.

Plastered across his face is what I can only describe as a naive focus. Like he was waiting for me. I reflexively wave back. I’m not sure if I smile, because I don’t make a habit of smiling, but I am overcome with elation. I keep my stride, and once I’m a safe distance away, I start laughing.

Of course it’s all I can think about. I spend the next ten days devising new routes, making every excuse not to trudge past the assisted living home. But the man in the window has certainly taken up residency in my psyche. Doubt creeps in. I wonder to myself if he’s waiting for me. Or if he’s potentially disappointed that I’ve stopped coming.

But I’m certain what really scares me the most is he has forgotten me. I think about people with retrograde amnesia, and my rudimentary knowledge of memory loss. I refuse to explore this line of thinking further, because memory is one of my strengths. My friends are astonished by what I can recall. I simply see it as another binary: either moments in time are worth remembering, or they’re not.

After 11 days of deliberation, I finally decide to walk past him again. Like a cosmic joke, a woman and her Pomeranian are fast approaching as the nursing home comes into view. Usually, especially since the pandemic, I’ll call an audible and turn into a residential street, or better yet, cross the street altogether if I can. Unfortunately, the woman continues to saunter on. As we’re about to collide, we both have enough consideration to give each other ample room to pass. The pomeranian is barking fiercely. I act unfazed, but inside, I’m screaming. I don’t have time to reflect on the interaction, because suddenly I’m at the building. Without time to think, I act. I pass the man in the window. The setting sun is fighting its way for room to breathe against the clouds, and its reflection against the window makes it difficult to know if I’m even looking at the correct window. But he’s there. And he’s ready for me. Same as 11 days ago, like clockwork, he waves. I don’t know if its habit, or memory, but I confidently wave and smile this time. I never lose my stride.