Public Conversation: You’re Doing it Right

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

I wrote, a little while ago, a post about men and women in public spaces.

I worked as a passenger counter on Metra again this weekend, and had a conversation with a guy that opened with “Do you live in Chicago?” and wasn’t creepy.

Actually, it opened with him coming into the vestibule where I was, and asking which stop we were at and when his was coming up. He was a little panicked. He calmed down, made a joke at his own expense, and went back in and sat down. He came back out just after the stop before his, and asked if I was from Chicago, where was I from originally, that sort of thing.

It was not invasive or intrusive, and I’ve been thinking about why. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

• He didn’t crowd me. At all. He stood at a distance away from me. Also, he looked at my face, or out the window, and not at my body.
• He didn’t outnumber me. There was only one of him, not a group. I didn’t feel trapped.
• We had previously made contact that included an out-of-towner/don’t-normally-ride-this-line exchange, and a joke at his own expense
• When I asked him questions about himself, he was very quick to volunteer information and let me actually participate in the conversation without trying to steer it entirely
• He wasn’t drunk, and hadn’t soiled himself with some sort of bodily fluid

He was also totally adorable. He loved Chicago! It was so awesome! He was just in for the summer doing an internship! Chicago summers are so mild! (what. the. hell.) He’s from Michigan! Chicago winters aren’t too bad but he’d like to move a little further south! He loves to vacation at lake houses, which Chicago doesn’t have, but it’s totally awesome and cool that a big city like Chicago has so many open, public beaches! He was like a puppy.

We had a conversation, not an interrogation, and it was cool and fun. And he didn’t push conversation on me when I was counting or writing, which means he respected me/the work I was doing and didn’t think his needs were more important than mine.