People Should Not Repeat Things Back To You
It bothers me when people repeat everything you say back to you.
“I wonder if you’re buying things right now?” I asked the person at the fancy used bookshop.
“You wonder if I’m buying things right now,” the person said back.
I stared at him and he stared back, like he was even repeating my stare. Then, like sometimes happens with people who repeat everything, he committed the further annoyance of repeating my question as his own.
“How much do you pay for books?” I asked. He took the thin book from my hands, then pushed it back to me and shrugged his cardiganed shoulders.
“How much? Do I pay? For books?” he asked, squinting at me like I was the fullest Moon.
Before I left I orbited him at tortoise pace, though I spent eight minutes instead of twenty-seven days. I tried to mimic synchronous lunar rotation by always keeping my face to him, which I admit was scowling a bit under the circle of my respirator. The book was a Harryette Mullen and I was only selling it because I was broke and his shop door was open and there were no stairs and no one was in there but him.
*
Before the pandemic I used to take useless trips in a loop on the only subway in Scotland. Before the pandemic there were disabled seats on each train, though only one station with a lift. Now, two stations out of fifteen have elevators. People still don’t wear masks and you still bump your head if you’re standing up.
Before the pandemic I’d ride around that small circle on orange patterned velour benches, remembering people who’d touched me with passion. On a trip that only led back to where it started, I’d make a wish at each station to honour them. Fifteen wishes didn’t take long, but it’s still too many stations to bore you with. I’ll provide highlights from the stops that have lift access now:
• Govan: I wish all the closed-down local shops would reappear, and also the fish in the Gulf of Mexico.
• St. Enoch: I wish there were fourteen more stations with lifts.
*
“You’re not fully here until you’re over there,” wrote the poet Harryette Mullen in 1992, which was also before the pandemic. But simultaneously, like now, it was during the pandemic.
*
Someone repeating things back to you could be harmless. It could mean:
a/ The person didn’t hear you.
b/ The person is scared of a question and more scared of the answer.
But most of the time it is not harmless. The man in the bookshop last week didn’t like my mask or my watermelon hoodie with the Free Congo badge because they reflected back at him murders he wanted to ignore. If he’d bothered to read the Harryette Mullen he would’ve had inviting words to say that weren’t my questions: “The way we bruise and wilt, all perishable.”
*
While the Glasgow subway screeched through tiny, round, pre-pandemic tunnels, a person across from me would show their friend a video of a cat falling off a TV, or a can of mushy peas from the food bank. The subway is so small that you could reach across and high-five someone, and trade kinds of cans if you had lychees and wanted to be generous.
The person who was so close would look like an ex I last saw twelve years ago under an ancient toll booth near my home, when she didn’t kiss me goodbye. Or like the ghost of a guy I had sex with after we climbed the wall of a non-ancient Toronto castle and nearly got eaten by a guard dog. I’ve made love to men in the oddest of places. I’ve made love to women who snort at the term “making love.” My body echoed back at me from most of their lips.
Glasgow’s subway opened in 1896, when there were also people who needed elevators. Also, elevators existed, including one up the Eiffel Tower. It was both before the pandemic and during the pandemic, and during eugenics and before eugenics.
*
When people repeat your words back to you, they’re mocking your attempt at communication. Sometimes repetition is just buying them time, but mostly they do it to say, “You’re a fool and an inconvenience for wanting a different world!” or, “Don’t embarrass yourself by trying to be understood!” Also, they will say “make love” back to you, but rarely “fuck.” They won’t repeat “disabled,” “trans,” or the many many moons round and round of “disappeared.” Or this Harryette Mullen: “They starve for all the things we crave.”
Sandra Alland (they/San) is a Glasgow writer and interdisciplinary artist who experiments with form and access. Winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award and co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, San has published three poetry collections and two fiction chapbooks. San’s work examines history, alternate realities, qrip languages, anti-eugenics, class and political mourning. Other stories appear in Protest! (Comma Press), Thought X (Comma), We Were Always Here (404 Ink), Discover (British Council), Gutter, Extra Teeth, subTerrain, and The Deaf Poets Society. Photo by San. The Harryette Mullen quotes are from S*PeRM**K*T (Singing Horse Press); San would not actually sell their copy because it’s too good. blissfultimes.ca.