what, me bully?

I call it a "grace deficit." Dad? He calls it "rammy." Whatever it is, it's true: I am a bully. It finally hit me last night, as strong a thump as when I'm walking down a hallway and run right smack into a doorframe. Suddenly, without warning, I veer to the left, causing a hip hematoma the size of a grapefruit. Grace deficit? Nah. I claimed for bankrupcy a long, long time ago.

My ramminess causes me to hemorrage words as well. Sitting last night in the hotel bar with the only colleague I have here who doesn’t consider me a spy, I interrogated him: How old are you? Where do you live? How old is your financee? How did you meet? Where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you come from? These rapid fire questions held him against the wall not ten minutes after he’d complained about the nosiness of a woman at the airport, who’d come up to him to ask him why he was so moody. “You look stressed,” he said she’d said. “What’s wrong? You can tell me.”

He’d thought her odd, and rightfully so. Who was she to probe him for such personal information? What gave her right to lay claim to his secrets? I agreed, and noticed no irony in my own line of questioning later on, until I’d tucked myself under the covers, thinking about how I’d asked him to expose himself through response.

He’s 37. He lives in a condo in the Market. His financee is 10 years his junior. He met her a lawyer party. (Um, isn’t that an oxymoron?) He’s not sure where he wants to be in five years. He comes from London, Ontario.

Aha! My mind’s lightbulb flashed bright as I clicked off the bedside lamp. That’s the difference between him and I. I am too open, too honest, a consequence of my Western Canadian immigrant heritage, maybe, ghosts within me recalling their wait in the line at Pier 21, answering The Man With The Stamp: Where do I come from? How old am I? Where do I want to be in five years? These answers pour out of me; my heart leaks onto the table. Which is fine for me, but maybe not so much for the person I’m confessing to, who is left to clean the table up.

And for him? Gentrified sensibilities of proper tea times past cause him to get his back up when the questions start coming. Ontarians like to keep themselves corseted. And while I have the ability to draw them out, like a naïve farmer harvesting friendship, I have to remind myself of my grace deficit before people start to feel like I’m pushing them into the doorframe as well.

Besides, generalization like that above is what keeps this country great.