Lonely People Don't Know How to Walk

“Yonge Street is full of crazies.” “And it’s not even noon yet.” Keith and Aileen stopped at a red light at Wellesley. The “crazies” Keith was referring to were out in full force today: There was the woman a block back who swore at anyone who made eye contact with her or her brown beaten-up purse that she held like a newborn baby under her right arm. Before her, there was the couldn’t-have-been-older-than-twenty-year-old belting out “Wrecking Ball” at the top of his lungs as he stormed down Yonge in such a determined way that you would have thought he owned the street (and the song). And Keith almost lost it when he saw the Justin Bieber lookalike (sunglasses even though it was a grey January Saturday, general sense of smugness) who, almost anticlimactically, wasn’t singing but instead simply standing with some friends in front of the Starbucks at College. Keith didn’t think he was crazy or anything; he just couldn’t understand why someone would intentionally want to look like the Biebs. “Why did we walk up Yonge Street again?” Keith asked. “Oh, don’t act like you don’t love this,” Aileen said. “If we walked up Bay you wouldn’t have been able to do your thing.” “What thing?”
“You know, that thing where you stare at people and judge them.” Keith grinned. “Hey, it’s not my fault you can tell everything you need to know about someone by how they walk.” The key, Keith would always tell Aileen, is if they were looking at the ground while they walked or straight ahead. The people who looked at the ground were the insecure ones and generally lacked confidence in life. These kinds of people walked in a way that would get them to their destination as fast as possible with as little interaction with the world as possible. One time a few months back when he was waiting for Aileen to meet him at the movies, Keith saw a young woman, alone and with about as much self-confidence as one of those i********: girls who take selfies at the gym, walk straight into a garbage bin. Keith couldn’t believe it. He knew these types of people were harmless, but there was no way they were ever going to get through life on their own. Keith felt sorry for these kinds of people. The other kind, the people who looked straight ahead, as if there was no one else on the sidewalk with them—heck, no one else in the world with them—were the more aggressive types. These were the people who shouldered you when you refused to get out of their path. They walked like they were on a mission and refused to let anyone get in their way. All things considered, Keith preferred the insecure walkers. At least you were less likely to get in a confrontation with those types of people. “Ok, let me ask you this then,” Aileen said, “what kind of walker am I?” “Sorry, did you just ask me what kind of stalker you are? Are you stalking me right now? Is that what this is?” “Be serious,” Aileen said, playfully punching his shoulder. “If you didn’t know me and you just happened to see me walking down the street, what kind of person do you think I would be?” Keith hesitated and then with a smile and a voice loud enough for the people around them to hear: “The prettiest walker in all the land.” Another punch. “What do I continue to see in you after all these years?” Aileen said and then took a sip of her latte. In what had become a tradition that delighted Keith to no end, the barista had spelled Aileen’s name wrong again. Usually it would be “Aleen” or “Eileen” (whenever Keith saw this particular variation of her name, he would break out into Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s Come on Eileen. It absolutely killed him.) But this time was a real doozy. This time the barista had written ‘Alien’ on her cup in big green letters. Keith and Aileen had seen a lot of variations of her name but never ‘Alien’. ‘Alien’ was definitely a new one. “So, how are you enjoying Earth, Alien?” Aileen smiled. “Ha-ha.” “Are our oxygen levels adequate for your respiratory system? Do you find the air too thin or not thin enough?” “Ok, Kieth.” Keith laughed and took a drink from his latte. “Hey, that ‘i before e’ rule can get tricky sometimes. I don’t blame her.” St. Joseph Street…Irwin Avenue… “Everyone looks so depressed,” Aileen said. Besides the crazies Keith had pointed out earlier, Aileen had noticed a lot of grey, unhappy faces on their walk up Yonge from their condo near Front Street. “My God, I think you’re finally rubbing off on me. I’m starting to sound just like you.” “That’s because everyone is depressed,” Keith said. “Depression is practically an epidemic these days. I mean, do you know a single happy person?” “I’m happy,” Aileen said and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re always happy. You don’t count.” Aileen pulled Keith’s baseball cap over his face. “You’re just grumpy because you had to wake up before noon on a Saturday.” Keith mumbled something unintelligible and then took another drink from his latte. To his left he noticed an employee placing copies of 1984 in the front display of ABC Books. “That seems a little over the top,” he said, gesturing to the copies of 1984. “Not if you’ve been following the news,” Aileen said. “Hey, that reminds me: do you want to check out the Women’s March at Queen’s Park after the movie? I read they’re expecting like 50,000 people there.” Keith tried to hide his grimace as best he could but he could tell Aileen still noticed. “What exactly are they protesting again?” “You know, that whole Donald Trump guy becoming President. Grabber of p*****s. You have heard of him, haven’t you?” “Oh yes, the guy from TV, right? Sounds familiar.” “The movie ends at 2 so we’ll be able to make it in time. Just think: we get to be a part of history!” “We’ll see,” Keith said and threw out the rest of his latte. “I don’t know about you but I’m more concerned with making it through this movie first.” Even though the two of them had been dating for three years, their taste in movies had remained as far apart as the day they had first met. Because of their polar opposite tastes in movies, the two of them had decided about a year ago that there was only one truly fair and objective way to determine which movie they’d see from then on: paper, rock, scissors. (Best two out of three, of course). Keith had lost, so they were off to see La La Land. Keith hated musicals. GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY!! “Uh oh, I think I hear another crazy coming up at 12 o’clock,” Keith said. About thirty feet up the street, a man in army green pants and jacket stood in the middle of the sidewalk yelling at a father and his young son. The yellor was white. The yellees were brown. GET OUT!!! “Oh my God, that’s awful,” Aileen said, reaching for Keith’s arm. “Should we do something?” Keith stared at the man. Yep, he was a big one. If Keith had to guess he would say the man was easily six-and-a-half feet tall. And his dishevelled hair and raggedy clothes, not to mention the skateboard he was holding more like a weapon than a mode of transportation, made Keith think it would probably be better if they sat this one out. “I don’t know. How do you even begin to talk to those kinds of people?” STOP TAKING OUR JOBS!! Keith was about to suggest to Aileen that they cross the street, but when he turned to her he saw that she had already started walking towards the man. “Leave them alone,” Aileen said, stopping right in between the man and the father and son. The four of them were separated by mere feet. “They haven’t done anything to you.” “Get the f**k out!! Leave!” the man yelled at the father and son. He looked through Aileen as if she wasn’t even there. “Don’t come back!! You’re not welcome here!” Even though he was a good thirty feet away, Keith could see Aileen was shaking. He also noticed several onlookers had begun to slow down to watch the scene unfold, each of them careful not to outright stop and attempt to intervene as Aileen had done. They just wanted to see the fireworks, not help set them off. Keith shifted his attention to the father and son. The father, his arm around his son, had a mix of anger and defeat in his face, while his son looked scared and confused. The four of them continued in their standoff. Then, whether it was because the man suddenly realized how many people were watching, the verbal attacks stopped. Sensing an opportunity to leave, Keith saw the father mouth the words “thank you” to Aileen and then gradually led his son away from the man, who continued to stare them down as they faded down Yonge. Aileen and the man now stood face-to-face, only five feet separating the two of them. A few seconds passed. To Keith they felt like a lifetime, and he could only imagine how Aileen felt. Suddenly the man lifted his skateboard under his arm. Aileen visibly flinched. Another moment passed. Then turning sharply, the man took long aggressive steps across the street through the dense traffic before disappearing around a corner. “Are you crazy?” Keith yelled, rushing to Aileen. “That guy could have killed you!” His sudden presence jolted her. He could see she was still shaking. “Well, someone had to do something,” she said. Her focus remained on the other side of the street, not convinced the man was truly gone. “Don’t ever do that again!” Keith said. “What were you thinking?” “It’s over,” she said, finally turning to face him. “Let’s just go.” Aileen began walking up Yonge while those who had slowed down to watch the drama returned to their normal pace as well. “I just don’t understand what you were trying to do back there,” Keith said as they turned onto St. Mary Street. “I said let’s just forget it.” Her arms were crossed against her chest and she began walking faster as Keith struggled to keep up. Each step made Keith more frustrated as the Manulife Centre finally came into view. “He’s emboldened,” Keith said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm. “Trump has emboldened him.” Aileen gave Keith a stern look. “What, you don’t believe that? The guy was basically reading off of Trump’s script.”
Keith smirked. He knew that drove Aileen crazy whenever he did his little smirk, but he couldn’t help it. “Saying something or someone has emboldened another person shirks individual responsibility. The Professor has spoken.” Keith knew that drove Aileen crazy too: his professor voice. Aileen stopped walking. The wind began to sharpen as they stood surrounded by the grey condos lining Balmuto. “With that mindset I guess it makes sense that you decided to just stand there and watch.” “Low blow. Do you really think you’ve changed that guy’s mind? That all of a sudden he’s going to start loving “immigrants” and everything will be hunky dory? Well, he won’t. So what’s the point?” “I guess that figures coming from you,” Aileen said. She began walking again, not waiting for a response. Keith followed. “I mean, why even give the guy credence?” Keith said, trying to keep up with her. “He wasn’t even going to do anything. He was just some loser looking for attention. Plus, that father and son could have stuck up for themselves. Why do you always have to save people from things that don’t concern you?” Aileen stopped again. “But it does concern me,” she said. “And it should concern you too if you had the slightest bit of empathy.” “Typical Aileen, always seeing things in black and white.” “Not black and white. Right and wrong. And that’s something coming from a guy who thinks you can peg someone just based off how they walk.” Keith looked towards the ground while Aileen went on: “So I bet you think that guy was just some loser looking for attention? And that makes it ok for him to be racist?” “No, it doesn’t make it ok, but that’s all these people are: losers with no friends looking for anyone to pay attention to them. I see these people all the time. People always want to make it out to be some big macro social problem about racism or a war on women or a war on gay rights, but the truth is everything is pretty damn good right now when you stop to think about it. Look at us: the toughest decision we have to make every week is what movie we want to see. Everything else is just noise.” Aileen let out an incredulous laugh unlike any Keith had heard her make in their three years together. It was the type of laugh he could imagine a parent letting out if their teenage son or daughter tried to explain to them how the world really worked. “Look, this is the last thing I’m going to say about this and then you go do whatever it is you want to do,” Aileen said. “I know you think you know people and that you have everything figured out, but you have to understand that now more than ever half the world is moving one way and the other half is moving another. I know you can see that. What I don’t know is why you don’t want to admit it.” Keith buried his mouth in his jacket and put his hands in his pockets. “Can we just go inside now? It’s freezing. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’ve never wanted to see a crappy movie so badly.” Aileen shrugged and let out a defeated sigh. “Right, let’s just forget everything like always.” Without waiting for a response, Aileen walked up the steps of the Manulife Centre. Looking straight forward and without a break in her stride, she opened the glass doors and walked into the warmth inside. Keith stood alone now on the cold sidewalk. Across the street he noticed a group of women and men, some holding signs that read, “THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE” and “GRAB’EM BY THE PATRIARCHY”, walking in the direction of Queen’s Park. He looked back to the glass doors of the Manulife Centre. Aileen was nowhere in sight. Keith continued to stand there as the cold wind blew over and around him.