November 15th, 2022

One night in Minneapolis

I don’t love it when people say “These things only happen to me”–I think it implies a certain lack of empathy with the universe, which is very vast and we are always following in each other’s footsteps. And yet…sometimes I do feel little bit alone on my asteroid, having experiences without echo. Anyway, I tried to go to the Mall of America and this is what happened:

The clerk at the hotel from whom I asked directions evidenced frank and visceral disgust at the question, which he only somewhat covered. In truth, a mall was not my first choice for a Saturday night either, but I had not succeeded in making any friends at the conference, I was too tired for something more adventurous, nothing was within walking distance of the hotel, and at least by going to the largest mall in the western hemisphere I would have…accomplished something…? Or something… Also eating in a food court seemed like a good compromise between sitting in a nice restaurant sadly alone and huddling on my bed with takeout like a goblin.

Anyway, the desk clerk told me to walk five blocks to the light rail stop, then take the blue line south to the end of the line. I was worried about getting on in the right direction but he said not to, because the train would just go two stops north, then loop around and go back the other way, so either way was good. He also said the trip would take 20-25 minutes, or a bit more “with traffic.”

Well, the part about 5 blocks was true. I just missed a train–so close I was touching the door–and then stood in the shelter with a man who passed the time by spitting. It was 15 minutes until the next one and the wrong-direction train came 4 minutes sooner, and I was VERY COLD, so I took that one. At first, the man at the desk seemed to be right, in that after two stops people came on and removed some garbage from the train and then an announcement that the line was ending went out, but then we were ordered off the train. No one stood, so I thought maybe it was just a formality. Then the train started up again and I thought awe, it’s turning around, but it got about 100 metres out on an elevated track and just stopped there. For…a while. At first I wasn’t too concerned–transit has its delays–but then I thought they DID tell us to get off. The other people on the train were an unhoused-seeming gentleman in shorts who was either glaring at me or glaring at nothing, and a group of rowdy kids goofing off. When the kids started to notice we were just sitting alone trapped on a train above the train yard, and were sort of tapping on the windows worriedly, my heart started to beat fast.

Of course, we weren’t in danger–I had my phone and could have called…someone…to let us out. But how long would that take and how positively STUPID would we all seem? Also, if the train turned Lord of the Flies, obviously I would be the first to go. I stood, thinking not much of anything, and then the train started finally went back the way it came. It had probably been about 10 minutes but if felt pretty long.

The ride out felt longer–it took an HOUR, and the light rail is not affected by traffic, so the guy at the desk didn’t know what he was talking about. The group of kids ruled the train and many came and went, all seeming to know each other and what car to enter and leave from–it was very odd, a senate of light rail teenagers. The man in shorts never altered his gaze. A lot of people on the train seemed to be having a hard time–transit does not seem to be the province of the middle class in Minneapolis. At one point, a young man–dressed ok, but a little dishevelled, Black–seemed to be in distress, pacing up and down the car, yelling and whimpering, crouching down to hold his head in his hands, rummaging through his pockets and not retrieving anything, screaming obscenities. Just for a moment, he noticed me watching him, and his demeanour completely changed: he straightened, calmed, smiled pleasantly. “How you doing tonight, ma’am?” I was startled, and sad that whatever he was going through, he made it a priority for his self-care–for his safety–to assuage a person like me. I have aged since I’ve last been in the States, and was dressed at the outer edge of my prissy professional looks for the conference: I looked like the sort of person that might make life worse for a person like him. Ashamed, I said I was doing all right, and smiled, and cast my gaze elsewhere, to let him get on with whatever he needed to do.

By the time I got to the mall, I no longer wanted anything to do with it and wished I hadn’t started, but I had invested so much time in the endeavour I got off the train and went in. The first thing I saw was a sign saying guns are forbidden in the Mall of America, which indicates to me that there are many guns at the Mall of America, as I have been to many malls–even many malls in the states–and never seen such a sign, or any guns. This was not an auspicious beginning.

I was genuinely impressed with the amusement park, though it is oddly dark, and the aquarium, though I didn’t go in. There are lots of nice stores, including one I like that had a pretty party dress I wanted to try on, but the thing is the mall is so vast you spent forever finding what you want–in my case, an Ulta, a bathroom, and something to eat. So I had no time leftover to ever go back to the party dress and in any case I couldn’t remember where it was. And I never found the food court and ended up having pretzel bites for dinner, an enormous disappointment, though they were sold to me by the rudest customer service person I encountered in Minn, where the service was pretty uniformly excellent, so that’s a landmark.

The whole thing was basically horrible and also rushed–I probably would have liked the mall if I had a few hours and could just browse around and had been there with friends who like that sort of thing. But then it was closing and they literally started turning out the lights and I had bought 1 thing if you didn’t count the pretzel bites. Upon discovering I had lost my return train ticket, I decided to treat myself to a cab, walked all the way to the “cab pickup” point on the mall map, called it, waited a bit, called again to confirm it was in fact coming, and the dispatcher only THEN informed me that it would take an hour. She seemed surprised that I was surprised, and we agreed not to do business.

I walked all the way back to the train terminal, by now exhausted and full of dread for the return trip. I just missed another train (of course I did) and bought a replacement for my lost ticket. There was a train waiting in the station so I went and sat in that to get away from someone standing in the station and screaming. After a couple minutes someone came and sat close behind me in the otherwise empty car, which I knew was not a good sign but I tried to ignore it–I was so tired, maybe it was nothing.

It was not nothing. He was rustling around and pulling things out of bags and I don’t know what and after a lot of this, he said, “Excuse me, ma’am? I got some rabbits here, if you might be interested?”

Of course this was a confusing and intriguing sentence and of course I turned and OF COURSE they were vibrators, still in the boxes (small mercies).

“Nope!” I swung to my feet and was in the aisle and down the step in an instant–I like to think this bit was somehow very graceful??

“Oh, that’s how it is, is it? You don’t gotta run away!”

He was so…whiny??? And the evening had been so dreadful, and the day no bowl of bananas either, let me tell you, that I turned again, even though I know I should have just kept going and not engaged.

“Do you usually get a better reaction? What were you expecting, trying to sell vibrators to strange women alone on the train?”

“What, you think this is sexual? This isn’t–“

“I do think that! I do think that!” And I stamped my little foot, for emphasis or sheer rage or I don’t know what. And finally realizing the conversation was unproductive I stomped the rest of the way down the car and to another one, where I sat alone and the rest of the passengers by and large let me be. (the more I think about it the more I think that dude had no game plan–even if he had someone how found the exact woman who was planning to go home and buy one of those exact vibrators online tonight, who would have bought it from an apparent thief [surely they were stolen] and weirdo on the train? AND even if somehow he encountered someone who WOULD buy them, who carries cash nowadays? Did the train-vibrator-man have a Square for credit card transactions? That would really be adding insult to injury, as my colleagues and I spent an hour on Wednesday trying to get our Square working, only to find it doesn’t do USD transactions.)

When I got off the train another hour later, I still had to walk the five blocks back to the hotel, plus a bonus block I accidentally walked in the wrong direction. And it was FREEZING. I wasn’t exactly hungry, because the pretzel bites were very dense, but I was a bit malnourished, since I hadn’t consumed any actual nutrients. I kept hoping I’d encounter a store or restaurant where I could buy a vegetable but of course, downtown Minneapolis doesn’t seem to have any of those.

I finally got back to my room past 10:30pm, having spent over 4 hours buying a small makeup palette and eating pretzel bites. I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed but I was kept up by my brain firing dementedly: possible scenarios where I spent the night in the trainyard, the pretty red dress, questions about race in America, the second amendment never envisioned malls, some of the pretzels at the pretzel store had pepperoni on them, it seems unfair to rabbits to name a sex toy after them, how did all those kids on the train know what car to get on, and on and on. Of course I put on all the makeup, for the benefit of no one.

I think I might hate Minneapolis.