Your Space or Mine?

The ocean breeze coming down Santa Monica Boulevard on this first evening of autumn gave me a chill as I looked around for the nearest Big Blue bus stop. It was September 22, around 6:15pm, and the sun was on its way to calling it a day. I walked one block and stationed my dark blue backpack-on-wheels near the bench at 14th Street and wrapped my grey shawl tightly around my shoulders. As I paced back and forth to keep warm, I gazed west in the direction of downtown Santa Monica for the bright blue bus that would take me home to neighboring West LA.

A few minutes passed before a black man with weathered skin and hair that matched my shawl approached me unexpectedly. He had on a navy blue baseball cap, a forest green sweatshirt, and jeans that didn’t seem to fit quite right. Without any introduction, he dove right into my personal space and notified me, “Jesus is worried about you. . .” I didn’t object, figuring that it couldn’t hurt to have an extra set of eyes looking out for me.

After a few more similar statements, he leaned in closer and angrily warned me, “you had better pick that up when you leave.” With his nose inches from mine, my usual disposition in such circumstances turned from calm to confused, and I even felt the prickly fingers of fear beginning to crawl up my neck, although my left brain told me he was harmless. (Hey, no wonder Jesus was worrying about me.) Before the man ambled back over to the adjacent gas station, I caught a whiff of his alcohol-laden breath.

Nearby, a couple of people were filling up their gas tanks. One fellow was looking at me, shaking his head in disapproval of this drunken wanderer and I felt a bit safer than I did moments earlier. The drunkard landed in the personal space of yet another one of the gas station customers before picking up an empty green glass beer bottle from the ground. I found my fear subside as compassion surfaced in its place. Still, I couldn’t be sure what would come next (I’ve had a bottle hurled at me once before). So I braced myself for another encounter. Then, after giving me one more stern look, he kept on rambling to himself and dawdled down the sidewalk in the direction of the forthcoming sunset.

Despite numerous bizarre encounters I’ve had over the years in places ranging from safe to skeptical, this moment gave me pause to think. This part of Santa Monica is hardly what one would call “dangerous.” Furthermore, there was still plenty of daylight. Given the unusual momentary fear I had experienced in this instance, I wondered exactly what it was that bothered me, because he didn’t actually do anything to me. I realized that it had to do with how he invaded my personal space – it was in a way that unnerved me for some reason. I felt that anything I might say to defy him might only ignite him further and cause a big scene. I had the urge to push him away, but I thought it best to let him do what he needed to do – to get whatever it was out of his system – and trust that he would leave.

After he left, I began to think about personal space and whether there is any way to defend it from invasion. I mean, what exactly do you say in a situation like that when reason doesn’t stand a chance? Usually minding your own business is sufficient, but it’s hard to mind your own business and ignore someone when you feel as though they might keep getting closer. For a split second, I thought about calling the cops to come get this fellow and arrest him for “violation of personal space.” At what point would it have made sense for that head-shaking customer at the gas pump to have come to my defense? I was in that strange place where my space met the stranger’s space involuntarily: it is that place in which we are not actually touching each other, but where I felt as though we were and where the feeling alone was enough to make me wince. It seems that invasion of space is not enough to warrant action. Our personal space gets no defense.

If you’ve ever had experiences related to the involuntary meeting of spaces in either friendly or unfriendly settings, I’d love to hear about them. Please feel free to share them here.