I want to make it clear that no one has asked me this question lately, but if someone did wish to inquire about my hobbies, I would say, first and formally, “Sitting in the park.” To the closed minded, it may not sound like an activity, merely a location, to which I’d rebuke and say it’s a whole ecosystem. If you go around the room and say what you did over the summer, and the kid sitting next to you says he went to Australia, no one is arguing that’s only the location. And just like Australia, my park has some creatures.
A few months ago, a man approached me and asked me for a cigarette. As I handed it over because I am bad at saying “No,” he asked me if I liked comic books. To be fair, he could’ve asked me if I liked anything, and my answer would’ve likely been the same.
“Not really.”
This offended him.
“You hurt my feelings,” he said.
He then showed me what was in his black plastic bag– four copies of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
I said “Nice,” assuming that would be the end of it, but he went on, telling me about how he doesn’t know how to read. He asked me if I wanted a copy.
“I’m alright… at least you can look at the pictures in those.”
He pulled out another book, Legend of Zelda. This one was just words. He told me he wanted me to have it. Again, I insisted he should keep it. “No.”
He told me that when someone gives him something, he gives them something back.
Over the summer I had a little routine of going to the park to drink my coffee. It was around 8am when I sat down this day, near a flock of pigeons. Another man, this one younger and scruffier and clearly drunk, asked if he could sit at the bench next to me. I nodded because that felt like the only thing I could do.
“If you were a pigeon, what kind would you be?” He asked me.
“I didn’t know there were different kinds.” After a pause he repeated himself.
“So which pigeon would you be?”
I pointed at one, rounder than the rest with white speckles on its wings. He agreed and then introduced himself as Carl. He reached out his hand to shake mine and I very hesitantly obliged. He told me he was a Capricorn, and asked for a cigarette. I told him it was my last one. “Are you sure?”
I said yes and used it as an excuse to move.
My friend Zari and I met at a park near her the other day. As we were getting into some very juicy gossip, we were interrupted. A girl, middle-school aged, approached us with a friend who looked like she didn’t want to be there. “Could I ask you guys a question?” We said sure.
“Should men wear sports bras?”
“If they want to,” Zari said. This was probably the correct response, but not the one they were looking for, as she asked again.
“But should they?”
“Why do you ask?” asked Zari. The girl told us how she believes there should be contradictions between men and women.
“Why do you think–” Zari tried to understand.
“I think we should make them.” I interrupted. The girl explained how she thinks men and women are different and in a very convoluted way, her transphobia.
“Men should have to wear sports bras.” I replied, again. The girl said thank you and moved on to the next bench and Zari said she didn’t think they knew what the word “contradiction” meant.