Umm, hey. I'm, like, walking here?

On Vienna's spaced-out spatial relations

When my partner and I first moved to Vienna, we spent a few weeks living in a nondescript neighborhood at the edge of a massive construction site. The buildings were unpainted and circled a rotting playground.

One afternoon, I was crossing the street to visit a pharmacy when a maroon sedan barreled into my crosswalk, screeching to a halt next to my knees.

It took a millisecond for me to realize what was happening; I’d been engrossed in an episode of Esther Perel’s podcast, about a lesbian couple whose mothering instincts had ruined their sex life. “The flame has died!” one was saying.

“Hey, I’m walking here!” I yelled at the windshield, which reflected the sky’s gray. Infused with adrenaline, I threw up my hands for emphasis, thinking at least my flame hadn’t died.

Then, believing I’d made my point, I continued walking, looking back at my phone so I could rewind to the part of the podcast in which one of the women was complaining about the others’ suffocating embrace.

That’s when I heard yelling and realized that the driver of the car had exited his vehicle in the middle of the intersection and was speed-walking towards me.

He was a sprightly man in his mid-sixties, with a haircut that reminded me of Robyn. A tribal necklace was thumping against his chest.

As he yelled at me in German, I looked around for witnesses. What was happening? He made a lewd gesture — grabbing his crotch with his right hand while pretending to blow into his left, like he was jerking off the air.

“I don’t get it!” I yelled. “What are you even doing? You’re parked in the street!”

I let him wear himself out, and then he turned back around and walked back to his car, seeming satisfied to have roused me.

At the pharmacy, I found myself shaking. “That is unusual for Vienna,” the pharmacist assured me after I told him an abridged, desexualized version of what had happened. “Usually, they just yell back at you.”

****

Today, I’d be just as annoyed by a car nearly running me over, but I wouldn’t take it personally. The Viennese, I’ve learned, have a different sense of spatial awareness — one that I’m still trying to understand.

Sometimes I feel like I’m a background actor in other people’s big dramas as they gesticulate to their friends, taking up the entire sidewalk. Other times, the city feels like a giant children’s playground. I’ll be minding my business and a kid will just appear snot-faced and screaming right in front of me. “Hast du ein Regenbogen-Einhorn?” They’ll yell, or “Do you have a rainbow unicorn?” (I’m paraphrasing, but they really do seem like silly, nonsense questions.)

Usually these kids have arrived in my field of vision using one of those razor scooters made of plastic and strewn with stickers. I hate these scooters because they pierce the invisible cocoon you assume you’re in when you’re a pedestrian.

But if parents here trust their kids with strangers a bit too much, I guess that’s a sign that something is working here.

“Where’s mama?” I usually ask and the kid will shrug, then cough in my face.

****

I don’t know why I have such a problem with people invading my space. Sure, I grew up in Seattle, but I was always taught that people were more interesting than nature. “Can’t talk to trees,” might as well have been my mom’s motto.

For her, entertaining was the highest of arts, and our home was all she needed. Our family spent so much time indoors that our cat Snowy began having a nervous breakdown, our home becoming her version of Vienna.

“She has emotional issues, poor thing,” my mom would say as the cat hissed at us while running to her litter box during a rare daytime appearance. Usually, she’d then hide under a pile of my mom’s unopened mail-order clothes, only emerging in the dead of night to scarf down her kibble.

Over the years, Snowy became even more of a recluse and shut-in, as if our world felt increasingly hostile to her. But I can’t say I blame her: there could be a lot of screaming in our house. Often it would start with my Mom playing Solitaire on the upstairs computer while pretending to listen to her twin sister. `

“Uh huh,” she’d say. “Uh huh, uh huh.”

You knew an explosion was coming when the “uhh huhs” dropped to a Daria-esque octave.

“I am too listening to you!” my mom would suddenly yell. “You’re the one who never listens to me!”

Then she would slam the receiver down and my aunt would call back, leaving an angry voicemail on our answering machine.

“I always listen to your boring stories!” my aunt would yell. “And the one time I have good gossip — I mean really good gossip — you can’t be bothered! Well, that’s it: I’m never talking to you again!”

She’d call back in five minutes or so, and the pattern would repeat itself.

Was this kind of explosive interaction what drove Snowy to insanity? Surely there were worse families with less neurotic pets. But Snowy seemed uniquely damaged, disappearing for days on end.

One Friday night when we had company over, Snowy suddenly burst from one of her hiding places, hopping onto the dining room table and flinging herself into the window.

Our guests were a well-heeled family from down the street whose two daughters who got better grades than me, and as they screamed in horror, Snowy fell back onto the table, writhed around a little, then leaped again before falling onto the floor and scurrying away.

“Oh my god!” My mom yelled.

“She’s possessed!” I screamed.

“I wonder if she saw a bird,” my Dad wondered aloud, though it was already dark out.

Snowy disappeared for a few days after that. I’d try luring her out of her usual hiding spots but it was no use.

***

These days, I can relate to Snowy. Loud noises and lack of personal space make me feel like I’m on the verge of self-combusting.

Over the last few months, I have had to hike a few times a week lest I slip into what a Victorian doctor would call “nerves” — an anxious exhaustion that takes over my body, making it hard to sleep or function normally.

This started before we moved to Vienna, but living in one of the densest districts in the city has only intensified my need for nature.

Is my newfound claustrophobia a symptom of my mother’s smothering embrace? Is it a feeling of lack of control? Could it be solved by EMDR or exposure therapy?

Or is it only a form a culture shock — the kind we all allegedly experience?

During Pride a few days ago, I set out to adopt more aggressively Viennese mannerisms. I walked bowlegged and drunk-seeming, moving in a jagged and unpredictable way. I wasn’t really drunk, just trying on a new bodily persona, the way you do in acting school.

As I scrolled on my phone and curved around the sidewalk, others made space for me, the groups carving express lanes on the sidewalks for me to walk through. It felt, in a way, like freedom.

It took a lot of work for me not to apologize for acting as boorish as everyone else. But, I thought at the time, maybe I could do this forever. Maybe this was freedom!

***

I wish I could have imparted my newfound zen onto the most neurotic creature I’ve ever met: my former cat. for whom other people had become her own private hell.

Perhaps a therapist like Esther Perel could have helped Snowy.

“The misery began shortly after being pulled from the womb,” our cat would say.

“And what of the Blums? Have they increased your misery?

“Oh, sure,” Snowy would reply. “Especially that fruitcake of theirs, always clomping around in mother’s heels.”

Sorry for all the chaos, Snowy. But you know what? My mom was right. You can’t talk to trees.