I can't stop analyzing someone once they catch my interest. I was downstairs in the little take-out place in my building, and there was this guy sitting on a stool waiting for his order. He just struck me as being so overwhelmingly PASSIVE. Timid, but not like a deer (poised and tense, every muscle ready for flight). A slippery kind of timid, like if I was to try and put my finger on his forehead he would sort of jelly-up and melt and slide out of my reach, whimpering and breathing heavily. I was tempted to just jump at him and shout "GET OUTTA HERE!" I really think he would have flown out the door, probably through it. He almost fell off his chair when they called out his order. It would take a second to beat him in a staring contest.
Yeah, he was a wimp, soft and meek, so what, I know, but it's more than that to me. It's not about a feeling of superiority. I want to understand him. What the hell is he thinking, that he gives off this aura of passivity? How the hell does he get anything done ?
He probably goes to 24 hour supermarkets in the middle of the night to shop unmolested by the eyes of others (like mine). Maybe he gets his food delivered, always the same guy from the same place, but he is still nervous when the bell rings, still hesitant counting out the money. Absolutely agonizing over how much to tip and usually tipping too much.
Maybe his relationships have been brief and clumsy, too intimidated to speak his mind or his heart. Such frustration he would feel, at times so much that he actually does something, puts his foot down in some way. Attempts to have some kind of impact. Maybe it was just a word, a gesture, maybe a touch. (I'm reminded of so many movies, where the ordinarily good hearted half-wit rapes the beautiful young girl, out of confusion and a surge of repressed emotion and sexual energy, or Lenny in Of Mice and Men) And then later on, more agonizing, paranoia, what have I done? All the while just trying to be known by someone, to be understood.

But how can you show someone who you are when what you are is a jellyfish ?
I would try and understand him, I would listen, but I don't think he would ever have the capacity to tell me. This man is in his mid '30's, I guess, and the pieces of his personality are too firmly set in place. The where-with-all to relate to someone from a perspective other than this abject passivity isn't there. Is he one of those people that quietly off themselves in some uptown apt. ?

"He kept to himself. He didn't get out much. He didn't have many friendships (and those he had were incomplete, lacking a depth of understanding due to the deficits in his abilities to be understood). He was a good worker. Never missed a day..." and all that kinda shit.
Is that who I am looking at ?

I'm staring at this man, searching his face for some answers to these questions. (And I am silently pleading for him to say "What the fuck are you staring at?") I'm accenting his nervousness and most likely pushing him deeper into the hole he is hiding from the world in. With a nervous patter he is out the door, head down and walking quickly away from the restaurant. Then he is gone. Leaving me with all these questions and some lo mein with too many bean sprouts.