Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

It was an unseasonably cool day in the city yesterday, feeling more like mid-autumn than the latter half of summer. A thick blanket of gray clouds dominated the weather, keeping the heat away and covering the city in rain and mist. For me, this is like an early birthday present. I decided that I would forgo my iPod on the walk home from the gym, the better to hear the soothing sound of light drizzle on leaves and the gentle susurrus (look it up) of tires on wet pavement.

I was having a good walk, enjoying the weather while contemplating the definition of insanity. There are two versions.

In the criminal justice system, when a person “pleads insanity,” it means different things depending on which state you’re being tried in. The definitions vary, but all demonstrate the narrowness of scope that is characteristic of law. Simply put, did the defendant understand that what he was doing was a crime at the time he was doing it? Did he understand the ramifications of his actions? If so, he is sane. Sure, it’s crazy to eat people, no argument there, but as long as you’re committing cannibalism in a way that suggests that you understand it to be a crime, you’re legally sane.

In purely philosophical terms the definition of insanity is much broader. Sanity is a social contract. We call ourselves sane because we all share the same perception of reality. I see a tree, you see a tree, your neighbor sees a tree, we all call it a tree, and we’re all sane. The guy who ambles by and calls it The Great Fire Dragon Radio Receiver of Southern Alaska is crazy. Probably. People who eat food are sane, people who eat things that are not food are insane. You get the idea.

It’s a fairly long walk from the gym to my home, and about seven blocks from my destination this meditation was interrupted. A portly, middle-aged Mexican-American came out of nowhere and started talking to me. The suddenness of his appearance was startling, as if he’d materialized a few feet behind me and then Power Walked the rest of the way. Even more disconcerting was the way he chose to engage me in conversation. Most people greet others with sentences like, “Hello,” or “How are you doing?” or “What is up?” This man chose to open up with, “You know, I am gay and am going now to see my boyfriend.”

“Oh,” I said, because what the hell else do you say to that?

I looked the man over. He was wearing khaki shorts and a cream-colored sweater. I’ve always felt that long-sleeved clothing looks dumb when worn in combination with shorts. Dumb but, given the weather, not crazy. The man, who introduced himself as Sextavio, also had a huge earring in his left earlobe, which suggested a somewhat antiquated interpretation of homosexuality. His speech was heavily accented but fluent, rapid but not pressured. In general he seemed friendly and benign, and also drunk out of his mind. His breath was like the inside of a martini glass. From the way Sextavio was talking, you’d think we’d been engaged in conversation for at least an hour, as opposed to, say, one minute.

We walked on. He complimented me on my friendliness. I didn’t want to continue this conversation, but I also didn’t want to be the guy who reinforces the idea that nobody says hello anymore, so I grunted in an affirming manner. This, I hoped, would be interpreted as, “Please leave me,” but instead Sextavio heard, “Please tell me about your family.”

“Joo know, I had a brother who had polio. Is okay to be different.”

I can only assume that he brought this up on account of my funny walk. Let me tell you something. I’ve heard a lot of different theories on my walk over the years, but polio—as in iron lung, 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt—PO-LEE-OH, is a new one. It rockets to the top of my list, along with, “He’s just eccentric.”

The only thing that could have stunned me more than this sentence was, as it happened, the one that Sextavio uttered next. “Joo wanna come back to my plaze?”

“No, really, that’s very kind of you but…that is…no thanks.” In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was so nice about this. A drunken stranger had come out of nowhere and was now propositioning me in broad daylight. I mean, really, I don’t think it would have been absurd to strike him across the face. Given his height, poor physical shape, and presently impaired motor coordination, I probably could have pulled it off. Incidentally, these are the kinds of odds I need in order to succeed in a physical altercation.

The great scientist and philosopher William James, writing on the perception of time, once remarked that sometimes his walks seemed to go by in an instant, and at other times it felt as if the journey from the pub to his house took hours. Let me tell you, when being propositioned by a talkative drunk on the way home from your gym, the walk takes an eternity. At this point I was thinking of us as two people on concurrent journeys, walking in parallel but certainly not, God forbid, together. Eventually—where by “eventually,” I mean “after several days”—we reached an intersection at a supermarket. Here I stopped walking, because we were now a few blocks from my cross-street and, harmless as Sextavio seemed, I didn’t want him to know where I live.

He continued talking, mostly about how America treats its immigrants, and how it’s so unkind and nasty, and people really should be better to each other, don’t you think?  And also his brother, the one with polio, committed suicide a few years back, he doesn’t know why. Very sad. Clearly, it was time for me to make my exit.

“Listen, it’s been…uh…nice talking to you, but I have to get going. I’m supposed to meet some friends.” As lies go, this is not very convincing. I considered other falsehoods, like maybe claiming that I needed to get some food shopping out of the way. However, this raised the possibility of accidentally allowing a lecher to accompany me on my errands. My fake errands, mind you, ones that I didn’t want to do in the first place.

“Oh, daz very nize. Is important dat joo keep jour frienz cloze.” What Sextavio actually said went on for at least a minute (or perhaps a year), but I can’t recall all of it. He capped this cadence of speech with, “Lemme walk joo home.”

“No, that’s fine–I mean–I can handle it by myself.”

“Okay.” There was a pause. “Joo wanna come back to my plaze?” He punctuated the question with a wink, as if perhaps, prior to this moment, he had been too subtle.

“No,” I said, finally adopting a harsher tone that I think put him off. To my horror, we continued walking in the same direction. Sextavio explained that he wasn’t trying to walk me home, he just lived a block away. I quietly thanked God that he’d have to turn onto his street before he saw mine. At the next intersection he stopped and said, “This is where I live,” and proceded to give me his precise street address and apartment number, in case, you know, whatever.

I wasn’t sure how to terminate our largely one-sided conversation. It seemed rude to simply discard the jolly drunk, walking away in misanthropic silence. After all, he had accompanied me for a good portion of my walk home and his only real offense was being a little too friendly. He extended his hand, and I shook it, at which point he clasped his other hand over mine, and sang me a short poem.

No, I do not recall the words. I do, however, recall that several small groups of people walked right by us during this exchange. No one seemed to be staring, but I can’t imagine that they missed the tableau of a skinny white guy with a backpack, holding hands with a man who was serenading him in heavily accented English.

Once Sextavio was out of sight and definitely not following me, I walked the couple of disturbingly short blocks back to my apartment. Many thoughts ran through my mind; first and foremost among them was, Did I just hallucinate that?

I mean, really. Did a stocky, drunk Mexican-American actually come out of nowhere, strike up an awkward conversation, and proposition me multiple times in the span of fifteen minutes? Has it finally happened? Am I now David Sedaris? I don’t see Sextavio anywhere, so when you think about it, where’s the proof that he existed, just now? Maybe I was, in reality, hit by a bus on my way home, and my brain, now in its death throes, is doing everything it can to fabricate the remainder of my life. Will the waking world soon fall away to reveal an infinite chasm that is both nothing and everything? I’m waiting.

There are few moments in life that will literally make you question your own sanity. This was one of them.