The Gonzo Syndrome

a guest post by Arvid Nelson

Arvid Nelson is a writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts. He’s worked on everything from films to video games, but he’s best known for his original comics title, Rex Mundi, published by Dark Horse Comics. His current project, The Band of the Crow, is a fantasy story based on his love of Edwardian romance, heavy metal music, and Japanese cartoons from the 1980s.

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I consider The Great Muppet Caper (1981) to be the Citizen Kane of Muppet movies. There’s Charles Grodin’s outrageous, over-the-top obsession with Miss Piggy, a brilliant cameo by Peter Ustinov, and a lovely, dreamy bicycle riding sequence – to this day it baffles me as to how they pulled it off technically. But the scene that really sticks in my mind is Gonzo’s creative taxi hailing strategy: instead of waiting for a cab to slow down he simply screams “tax-EEE!!!” and flings himself into the street, not just expecting but knowing that oncoming motorists will slam the breaks for him.

Josh posted a journal piece here describing an unnerving encounter with a pack of joggers who were, well… acting an awful lot like Gonzo, throwing themselves in front of his car, as if daring him to hit them. As if trying to get hit. Quoth Josh: “I know this might strike you as absurd or paranoid on my part.” Actually, Josh? No. It doesn’t.

That’s because I live in Northampton, Massachusetts, home of Smith College, which really is as deranged as you might imagine it to be: a living, breathing meme factory of vicious, so-called “progressive” illiberalism.

Similar encounters to what Josh described happen to me all the time in and around Smith campus: students willfully and aggressively swaggering into crosswalks in the face of oncoming traffic – regardless of whether it’s a crosswalk with a pedestrian light, or, of if it’s a lighted crosswalk, regardless of the status of the light. Do they have right of way? Of course. Do I slow down for them? Of course. Of course.

But there’s no wait-and-see from them, no making sure an oncoming car is going to slow down, and absolutely no acknowledgement when the motorist invariably does slow down – no “thank you” wave, and, if the motorist is waving “I see you, you can proceed safely”, not so much as a glance in the motorist’s direction. It’s like the motorist doesn’t even exist to them.

I call it The Gonzo Syndrome.

This is hard to put into words – this might strike you as absurd or paranoid – but then again, maybe not: these crosswalk cowboys (-girls, -grrls, -womxn) have a peculiarly nasty way of strutting into traffic, above and beyond what I’ve already described. They walk slowly, with fake casualness. Who cares how many cars they’re holding up? Not them.

It’s deliberate, of course, but they also act like it’s not deliberate, like you’re a cockroach to them. A distinctly passive-aggressive and female way of expressing contempt, and I sometimes get this from gay men, too: going out of one’s way to make a person feel he’s so insignificant that his existence doesn’t even register.

Nor is this behavior limited to pedestrians versus cars! I've become cautious about walking around Smith College campus. On many occasions, too many to count, I’ve had Smith students ram into me on the sidewalk. I’m keeping right per social norms, and they swerve to their left, into my path, deliberately violating the “keep right” norm despite the fact that there’s plenty of space.

And always, always with that “I’m deliberately acting like it’s not deliberate” attitude.

The first few times it happened I did indeed veer onto either the street or grass, but it didn’t take long for me to figure out the game. They’re doing it on purpose! The revelation hit me like Buddha beneath the Bodhi Tree. They want power over me. They want to humiliate and dehumanize me.

I’ve developed a strategy to deal with this variation of The Gonzo Syndrome, and so far it’s worked pretty well: if I see one of ’em veering into my path and revving up to ramming speed, I stay on course, keeping to the right – they’re called “norms” because normal people actually follow them. I just keep walking straight ahead, neither slowing down nor speeding up. And, at the last moment, if impact is clearly imminent, I stop and cross my hands in front of my chest like King Tut.

I’m sad to say – and this is just the empirical, observed truth – that most times the women who do this are obese African-Americans. They’re quite squishy, and about half my size. They bounce off me like a tennis ball off a concrete wall. It’s like a video game, you can almost hear the Jew’s harp sound effect.

And, as Josh so often says, “supply your own not-alls”. No, I am not saying this is something that all, or most, or even a disproportionate amount of African-American women do. Josh’s encounter was with a group of males. I myself had similar encounters twice last week, both off of Smith campus, and neither of the rammers were African-American women.

Here’s all I’m saying: I live here. Northampton, Massachusetts. And I have seen them with my own eyes, the Smith students with the ANGRY BLACK FEMINIST t-shirts. The shirts are probably made in Xinjiang gulags or Nicaraguan sweatshops, but never mind, the real question is this: am I going to judge that ANGRY BLACK FEMINIST book by its cover? Yes. I am. And I make no apologies for that.

If I saw a man with dirty dreadlocks, an unsheathed bowie knife, and an I’M A RAPIST t-shirt, I’d judge that book, too.

And while I’m at it, I won’t apologize for calling it a “Jew’s harp”, either. That’s what it’s called. Relax.

Every time it happens – that Jew’s harp bounce – these women never acknowledge it. Never apologize for violating social norms and veering into my path, for bouncing into me. They never so much as look at me. They act like they’re pinballs that bounced off an invisible bumper, continuing on their way like mute, mindless drones. It’s that “I’m deliberately acting like it’s not deliberate” thing again – they stay in character, I’ll give them that.

But you know what? I sense something else, too. A little – dare I say? A little ripple of shock emanating from them. Did he really just assert himself?! Although they’re trying to act like nothing happened… something happened. They tried to intimidate another human being, they failed, and they have no response because it didn’t even occur to them that their intended victim might not consent to victimhood.

So their only option is to flee.

And you know what? I think that’s fine. Gonzo is weird but lovable. These “activists” are just weird. They’re constantly bleating about the lack of “safe spaces”, when in reality they are the only ones making “spaces” unsafe. Well, we’re safe-ing things back up, and we’re not apologizing. I think it’s 100% fine for a tennis ball to bounce off a concrete wall and not the other way around.

Boing-g-g!