You are being manipulated

Personal Noise in Public Spaces

Tuesday: 5:00 p.m.: the bus stop.

I’m overloaded, on my ten-minute walk, by exhaust fumes, hellish decibels of traffic, both road and foot, and, of course, advertising.  From my vantage on the sidewalk I can see three billboards, two bus shelters sporting four life-size ads each (one on each side times two), two gargantuan building posters, and a newspaper kiosk which is nothing more than a sidewalk billboard put to dubious good use.

I’m passed by six buses with an average of one-and-a-half marquee boards on each side (accordion buses can carry two per side!), three cabs with placards on the roofs and on the trunk, and one van which has itself become a billboard.  Ah, the miracles of modern marketing techniques.  And let’s not forget every third person wearing corporate advertising that he or she paid good money for—like the T-shirt with the “Swoosh” or a jacket with a huge logo on the back.  When did we decide it was cool to pay companies for the privilege of advertising for them?

Finally the bus arrives.  I climb aboard, smiling at the driver.  Tough job, driving up and down the state all day, trying to safely convey a load of weary road-warriors from their sacred abodes to their profane jobs and back again.  I’m polite; this guy deserves respect.  I sure as hell couldn’t do it for five minutes.

I’m in luck: lots of empty seats.  I become a scout.  This is a game that requires skill, stealth, and cunning.  Leg room—check.  Overhead lights work—check.  Air vent not broken open (arctic winds) or closed (sauna)—check.  I find a great seat and settle in with a sigh.  I’m looking forward to a peaceful hour or so of relative comfort in which to let my mind peruse loftier things than earning a living or paying for one.  I get settled, park the briefcase/backpack/ satchel/whatever, turn on the light and open my reading material.

Next stop: Enter man with headphones.  Sits down directly in front of me with the volume so loud I could sing along (if I could sing) and not miss a beat.  He proceeds to get comfy.

I am appalled.  In my cozy little Utopia of consideration and courtesy, things like this just don’t happen.  People like this don’t exist.  People instinctively know that when their personal listening devices become public, they also become a nuisance.  Since I live in the Courtesy Utopia, I know it would be rude of me to tell this gent he’s an asshole.  So, I simply get up in a huff, gather all my crap, and move three rows up to the farthest empty seat I can get from him.  He is, of course, blissfully oblivious.

Sitting down again, I once more prepare to relax and partake of my daily meditation in the pages of someone else’s ideas, when I realize that I can still hear the music.  This is just too fucking much.  Who is this jerk to disturb my Nirvana?  Can he really be that stupid?  Can I kill him?

I turn around.  His expression is mild.  He looks like a nice guy. “Excuse me,” I say, looking directly at him so there can be no mistake, and he pulls the ‘phones off for a moment, “Excuse me, can you turn that down a little, please?”

His gaze is pleasant but uncomprehending, and I know he doesn’t get a word I’m saying.  I slow it down and pantomime along with it.  I look like an idiot.  “It’s a little loud.”

He gives me a friendly smile and nods a little, puts the thing back on his head, and I know I’m doomed to dance music while trying to absorb a treatise on why Americans spend so much money on crap like personal listening devices.  Don’t get me wrong; I love mine.  But I’m from that tiny island of Courtesy Utopia where people know what the “personal” means in front of “listening device.”  So I give up and turn back around.  It’s hard to think of a guy as an asshole when he seems so friendly and might just be hard of hearing or something.  Maybe the bus engine will drown out the music.

I read another sentence when the air is rent by the shrill chirp of a cell phone.  Oh, sweet Jesus Christ.  The Black Plague of the 21st century.  Every time I‘m dragged into the intimate details of someone’s life because the person next to me just had to take or make a phone call, I have to smother the urge to grab the satanic device from his hands and—as forcefully as possible—ram it up his ass.  I really think that’s what happened to that guy most of us Internuts have read about, the one who required surgery?  He “accidentally sat on it in the shower.”  Yeah, right.  In reality, he had one too many “Oh, I don’t know, honey, where do you want to go for dinner?” conversations on that fucking cell phone in front of the wrong fucking person.

Now, I’ll admit cell phones are convenient little gadgets, and no one wants to have a car break down out in the middle of Yucca Flats at noon in August without the handy-dandy doodad with which to send a mayday.  But, like advertising, cell phones are everywhere.  It’s too much.  How many times have you been at the grocery store, minding your own business, calmly comparing labels on cans of Cream of Chicken soup when you’re startled by the stranger next to you asking loudly, “Do you want to take the dog?”  Before you can even attempt to process this enigma, you realize that the person isn’t looking at you or speaking to you, but is, in fact, an agent of Lucifer communicating with HQ on the Infernal Device.  “Lady, I don’t care if you fuck the dog, but get away from me.”

Okay, okay.  In Courtesy Utopia we don’t say things like that.  But I could clearly picture carefully tucking her cell-phone away in the previously mentioned orifice.  Someone please tell me why you cell-phonatics insist upon dragging everyone within spitting distance into your private affairs?  Do you think we think you’re important?  We don’t.  We’re really laughing at you.  Look around.  You’ll see.

The guy behind me suddenly yells “Hello!”  I jump.  This is a genetically programmed response when a loud sound occurs unexpectedly a foot and a half behind you.  I whirl in my seat to evaluate the enemy.  Turns out he’s not simply trying to engage me in discourse after all.  What a surprise.  He’s got a cell-phone.  We’re no more than five minutes from the depot, but he just couldn’t wait to make that call.  He’s a self-important product of American consumer culture at its finest.

But I’d rather just think of him as an Anal Cell-Phone Receptacle. I wish I wasn’t a Utopian.

2000 Truman Hooks

Episode 3

Episode 1