You Can't See Me

I’ve done well, so far, as far as sticking to my own rules. I’ve kept up with the reading, having so far completed Outliers, Tree Girl, A Mercy, The Poetry of Robert Penn Warren, and Brave New World. Three of those titles were read as audio books, but one of the books that I brought in hardcover, and have read sporadically throughout the trip, is Invisible Man. In addition to being absorbing and living up to its reputation in every way, it is the perfect size for tucking bus tickets into. For this reason I’ve made sure to have it handy at all times while traveling, whether I’ve been reading it or not.

It lives up to its reputation thus far, but more than that, it’s provided an unexpected parallel to my own identity in some of my stops on this trip. Much of what I’ve been doing has required that I become invisible.

I've always been able to blend. In order to live by my own rule number one, I must act and cheer as any other average fan in the stadium. This has proven to be easy and gratifying, whether the home team wins or loses. (My record is 3-3 at this point) We love sports as much for the communal celebration as we do for the commiseration, and grumbling about the Pirates losing another one was not as exciting as rejoicing over the Twins’ walk-off win, but it certainly led to better conversations.

Even outside of the parks, I’ve tried to remain invisible. A man who looks like he knows where he is going is rarely stopped, by either beggars or security guards. I’ve slipped into a forbidden ballroom at the top of the Walker Museum in Minneapolis to get my best view of that city (without a camera, unfortunately). In my unplanned stop in Des Moines, I slipped into what turned out to be a Masonic Temple on the top floor of the building occupied by Starbucks on the ground floor, and a theater on the third. I’ve got pictures of that, but I’m not sure what the Masons will do to me if I post them.

Invisibility has allowed me to see more. In Detroit, I poked past a curtain at the back of a the coffee shop at 1515 Broadway to find an empty theater. As it turns out, I would have been allowed to go there if I had asked. Usually, it’s better to just not ask, so that you’ve never told no. So I didn’t bother asking whether it would be okay for me to slip into a seat behind home plate at the start of last night’s Tigers game. I didn’t plan it ahead of time, I just saw that an usher was away from his post and went for it. While with my cousins in Pittsburgh, we tried something similar but were tossed right away. Four drew too many eyes, but one invisible man was able to stay in the ninth row for five innings. The seats’ owners never even came to claim them. I finally left, only out of curiosity about the rest of the park.

Before I left on the trip, my cousin Adam, a former military man, lent me his camouflage backpack. I liked it for being the perfect size and having the right number of compartments in which I could hide my travel essentials. Like a chameleon, I’ve taken on the characteristics of the backpack. I’ve learned to be camouflaged, as a Twin, as a Pirate, as a man who knows where he’s going, and as a man who belongs.


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I wrote this post from the bus station in Detroit. It’s more pleasant than you would think, but it clearly wasn’t pleasant at all for Hope, a girl who asked to borrow my phone while I was writing. I let her, then let her try again when she didn’t get an answer at her halfway house. I asked a few more questions to find out that she had just been let out after a 15-month sentence in West Virginia for using counterfeit money in Battle Creek.

According to her story, she had missed her bus to Grand Rapids, and if she didn’t make it there on time, she would likely be sent back to prison. She tried the house again, and there was no answer. I don’t believe that she had a ticket for the morning bus and missed it, but she wasn‘t high, and she hadn‘t asked for anything but a phone call I realized that I hadn’t done anything nice for anyone in Detroit yet.

I decided to test my abilities as the invisible man. Although I had already bought my ticket to Cleveland, I went up to the counter and asked for one ticket to Grand Rapids on my Discovery Pass. No questions asked. Ticket granted by the same man who had given me a ticket to Cleveland twenty minutes earlier. I am the invisible man.