I grabbed a sandwich the other day at the Boston Public Library, at Sebastian’s, the little coffeehouse there in the old Map Room in the McKim Building. I didn’t enter by the McKim Building, which is the more civilized of the two, And on my way through the corridor from the Johnson Building, I brushed past a woman – she was, if not homeless (which almost everyone in the public library these days seems to be), someone clearly with nothing to do but weave and wend from one end of the corridor to the other, and, as I would soon find out, shout at passersby.

Now, it’s a documented fact I much prefer people who walk down corridors in more or less straight lines, and stay to the right. Corridors were never meant for meandering. It was another beautiful day yesterday, and there are plenty of urban trails in Boston where you can meander to your little heart’s content. What made this case worse, in my opinion, was that the meanderer, aside from being wider than she was tall, was lugging around several trash bags to boot. She was nearly impassable, and seemed, honestly, to have nothing better to do than lumber there, in the corridor, gumming up the works.

I was hungry and on a schedule, and she was the only thing standing between me and lunch, and the rest of my day. A recipe, if ever there was one, for disaster.

The truth is, I dislike jostling people more than I dislike them weaving and wending so that I can’t get past them.  One thing you can be sure of when dealing with people who make obstacles of themselves: Engaging with them in any way will only create a louder more obnoxious obstacle in the end.  Aside from that, my code forbids me to  touch people I don't know in public, except in certain designated areas, if they're hot, and if they touch me first. 

You can be sure I'll do everything in my power to avoid even the hint of physical contact with most vile bodies.  I will go out of my way to avoid those places where unwanted physical contact, however minimal, is unavoidable.  None of this is to say that I am not a tactile person in a different context, or that I react with the outward disgust I feel inside at unwanted unavoidable contact.  When I have to take the T, for example, I set aside quiet time before and after, prepare myself with martinitherapy and have a Guinness enema when it's over to purge bad energy. 

I can be surprisingly compact for a person of my dimensions, and have become very good — like ninja good — at contracting and sliding by obstacular types like the woman in the corridor. In this case, I saw a brief opening and shot ahead, grazing her almost imperceptibly as I passed. In fact, no part of myself touched any part of hers. My fag bag brushed ever so slightly against one of her Glad bags. But for real. There was no bumping, or jostling – I even hesitate to call it brushing or grazing, it was, at most stray particles — molecules I was shedding as I breezed by her. It was like sometimes when you’re walking along and a jogger passes coming the opposite direction and there’s a little concussion of wind from his passing that you can still smell him on. The shadow of a touch.  Nothing more.

For a moment I foolishly thought I was home-free and ambled ahead, but people with nothing better to do than weave and wend their ways up and down library corridors all day long are obviously looking for any excuse to be bumped into. This woman was a premature ghost. No one wants anything to do with her, so in order to feel as if she still exists in the realm of the living, she uses her corporeality (a reality that could not be denied, let me assure you) to obstruct others. It’s the only way for some people to be acknowledged.  Well, again, not the only way.  When they're not acknowledged to their satisfaction, they can always scream.

And after a beat that's just what she did, in her thick Island accent: “Hey! Hey! Don’tcha be boompin inta meh! Don’tcha walk away like dat! Dis is a Cibil Societaaaay! Hey! Hey!”

I was not moved by her righteous indignation, and the logical inconsistency of her argument and her mode of making it led me to conclude that nothing was to be gained in the way of civil discourse by acknowledging her caterwauling now.  However uncivil my “boompin inta” her may have been, her screaming her head off about it didn't seem to be a remedy for incivility.  It’s like those people who say things like “be polite, asshole!” (actual quote overheard on the streets of Boston), or those who beat someone to death with a tire iron for cutting them off in traffic. 

But over my sandwich and coffee at Sebastian’s I thought about the bag lady’s lament. Was it uncivil of me to brush past her without acknowledgment? I know myself well enough to know that if I actually do bump into someone I say, “excuse me.” I had a rather strict upbringing in this regard, and it has stuck with me for the most part. But where is the line?  

Call me a Pollyanna, but I think it's something most of us struggle with.  I, at least, can see others struggling with it occasionally, too.  Boston can seem a pretty relentlessly rude place, but most people I know weren't raised that way. The other day I was riding along the Commonwealth Ave. mall, and there were lots of pedestrians about. I cycle slowly when I’m around pedestrians, but even when I’m standing still it amazes me how oblivious we can be to our surroundings.

I was cycling around a monument and a middle-aged fellow was coming around in the opposite direction. He was fascinated by something that had caught his eye to his left, but kept walking forward without looking ahead. I had stopped in my tracks, and watched him walk several feet until he ran right into me.

I suppose I could have cleared my throat, or something, before it came to that, but people hate to be interrupted from their little reveries, and sometimes they lash out at you.  I think it's embarrassment at not being aware you've been making a spectacle of yourself, of resenting innocent bystanders for pointing it out to you.  It's an unguarded state in an extremely guarded society. 

He was surprised to find me there all the sudden when he awoke from his trance with my bicycle handlebar poking him in the gut, and with a startled look he offered his apologies. I offered mine as well (doing my part to humanize cyclists on the streets of Boston — no mean feat), but as he walked away he thought better of his apology and became increasingly indignant at having been so rudely awakened from his meditations, and started mumbling the most scandalous epithets under his breath at me.

I thought it was interesting that his first reaction – his natural reaction — was to politely excuse himself, and only as an afterthought did he resort to name-calling. It was like “Oops! Sorry!... Fucking douchebag!”

It seems you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.  What does a "civilized society" really require of us?  Politeness, of course, but where politeness is understood as a species of self-control, as an expression of restraint, something sadly lacking in our culture.  We may live in a liberal-permissive environment where self-expression is the highest expression of self, but repression, especially for those who lack all self-control, still has its merits. 

Many of the needs we bring to the social realm are not properly social needs, which require forbearance all around, but psychological needs the social realm has no adequate answer for, which is why the self has to be socialized in the first place.  I know I've said it before, but we really don't need or want honesty in the social realm of the same degree or kind that we require in intimate relations.  We don't need or want personal disclosure.  This should be obvious, but for many — and I have been there, myself — it seems not to be a lot of the time.

The less we see restraint in public as a form of hypocrisy, or the requirements of society as a blow to our authenticity, the happier and healthier our society will be.  As we realize that the public realm can't bear the weight of all our private needs, we may be better able to place our emotional resources where they properly belong, for the good of all.