‘Salinger Kids’
— Reneé Bibby
Today at the gas station, the young attendant returned my change with a “thank you, sir!” As a tall woman with short hair, I’ve had my share of busy, service-industry people mislabel me with their standard salutations; but it was the first time an attendant didn’t push past that first American heuristic for “man” to recognize female cues, and repent their mistake with a flustered, “sorry, sorry, I mean, ma’am.” The young man looked at me and didn’t see me. It was a disembodying moment of invisibility. Fresh from that encounter, I read Ioanna Mavrou’s ‘Salinger Kids,’ an uncanny echo of my own experience. At a social gathering, the narrator, full of passion and relevant commentary, lobbies to participate in a conversation between two men, but is actively ignored. Mavrou understands: you want to be immune to it, of course, “It bothers you, but it doesn’t. Fuck them, really. Who cares.” Yet, invisibility is unsettling. The narrator’s gender isn’t specified, the reader gets no other clues, either, about why it might be happening and just as it occurred in my own experience, all that is left is speculation. The unanswered questions, the worst-case scenarios of racism or sexism, and Mavrou leaves the tension unresolved, echoing, again my own experience, when all you have is: “And you can’t figure out why. You don't know what made you invisible to them.”