Previously: I wrote about an unintentionally ironic comment that was lost on a shopkeeper I met on vacation.
Last week, while visiting New York, I went to a restaurant in my old neighborhood near St. Marks Place. My friend Jamison met me there, and as we were finishing up our potato pancakes, a girl walked over to our table.
“Hi,” she said, sweetly, and with a slight Eastern European accent. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but my friend, he works here, and he said you were here, and I’m a really big fan.”
“Oh, thanks!” I said. “It’s so nice to meet you.” She smiled, and asked if she could take a photo with me. I looked at Jamison, who gave me the go-ahead. Not only is he endlessly patient, but he’s someone who’s known me since we were both fifteen, so he’s seen this happen before. And it’s not as if I’m immune to getting starstruck: eight years ago, in the very same neighborhood, I ran into Jane Lynch at a coffee shop. She was polite and gracious as I went up to her table and gushed about how much I loved her in everything I’d ever seen her in. (I met her for real at a benefit a few months ago, and mercifully, she did not remember.)
We took the photos and she thanked us graciously. While Jamison went off to wash his hands, I went to the front to pay.
“Are you the actress that played Matilda?” The tall man in glasses behind the counter asked me.
“Yes,” I told him, and he nodded.
“My friend wanted to meet you,” he said, explaining that he was the manager. Immediately, he seemed like a familiar type: one of the offbeat, slightly eccentric characters that once ran the East Village. St. Marks Place may be nowhere near the punk playground it was years ago, but it’s still full of characters. At least once a week I think of the middle-aged man in sunglasses I saw a few years ago on Second Avenue, yelling to a friend that he was “still waiting on my check from the Italian government!”
“So,” he said to me, “Can you still move things with your mind?”
Maybe I was wrong, I thought. Maybe he was just a typical guy. That’s one of the most predictable questions anyone can ask me. It’s so expected that I now have a canned, jokey answer for it: “No, I’m not telekinetic anymore. Now I’m just telepathic.”
I thought he would laugh, but instead, he got a very strange smile on his face.
“I am psychic,” he said.
OK, not a typical guy. I didn’t know what to say to him. I am, at most, agnostic about the idea of psychic powers. It’s not that I think self-described psychics are all delusional or lying: some people do seem to have a very clear, strong intuition, which can lead to pretty precise inferences about human behavior and the future. That intuition is a kind of power in itself. But it’s not the same as seeing the future.
“Oh,” I said, finally. “Are you, really?”
He nodded, smiling wistfully. “It’s something I’ve been experiencing for a long time, but I didn’t know what it was. Now I know, and I’m learning how to deal with it.”
He sighed a cathartic little sigh, as if this were something he was relieved to finally get off his chest. It felt as if he had just come out to me, or told me he had just fallen in love, or just accepted Jesus into his life. I could see Jamison approaching, ready to leave, but suddenly, I felt full of guilt.
“I’m glad you figured that out,” I said. “Just so you know, I… I was joking. I am not really telepathic.”
He laughed, and now it was time for his canned, jokey response.
“I know.”
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Stuff I Did This Week: I had a wonderful, deep, intense discussion about gender and sexuality with the brilliant Ruby on JOY 94.9’s Triple-Bi Pass! I am also very much looking forward to the Melbourne Writers Festival! If you are in or around Melbourne, Australia this week, please come see me talk about my book, talk about empathy and the internet with my dear friend Jonny Sun, and share a letter and a new piece about my childhood!
Fake BBC Show Title of the Week: Let’s Not Talk About It
I know this question isn't related to your writing here but I wanted to ask a question about something you wrote in your book. You said men have been asking this question... well probably since the beginning of human life on earth and have yet to find the answer. What do women want? Your answer to that was power. I answered this same question a couple weeks ago, but, you and I have totally opposite answers to it. I am curious to know why you have settled on this answer... personally, I believe power is not something most women want or BELIEVE they want. I think it's something a lot of them fear. Like it was genetically programmed into them. Why most men are head of households. Even if women truly do want power, so many would be afraid to even reach for it or have the courage to seize it. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate- our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
My little sister agrees with you though. She also pointed out to me that I did too. For a 17 year old, she has one hell of a memory. Her and I became really close when she was 8 or 9. She was born on my 10th birthday. Our mother was and well still is very bipolar and well... hateful. I wanted things to be different for my sister. I never wanted her to have to go through what I did. So, I promised her I would always be there for her. When I graduated and left for college, it wasn't long before I started getting calls from her and she would be crying telling me how bad things were at home. She told me that I left and abandoned her and I broke my promise when I said I would never leave her. It broke my heart. At that moment, I made a choice that would forever change my life. I asked myself if I had to choose to between bettering my life or hers, which would I choose. I only had to ask myself that question once. The next day, I withdrew from school and I went home. I watched everything I ever worked for vanish. I just knew that no matter what, if i had to choose between her life or mine, I would choose hers every time. Her life meant more to me than any ambition I had. That was the moment I knew what selfless and unconditional love was. Well, she asked me earlier what did I value or seek above all other things. It was a rhetorical question because I knew she already knew the answer to that. I said that I value knowledge and education. She said exactly. Then said "when I was 9 years old, what did you tell me about knowledge?" I smiled because I remembered exactly what I said and happy she remembered it as well. I said "I told you that knowledge was power and that without it, you would be lost and that is was a vital part for any hope of achieving success."