December 23, 2014
“Confession time,” she told the Brisbane Times.
In my Facebook status, I editorialised. She wasn”t sitting next to me. She was a bit away, towards the other end of the carriage.
Oh, and come to think of it, about that stranger removing her headscarf:
She might not even be Muslim or she could have just been warm!
Then when the pair disembarked at the same station? Remember that tearful, sixty-second embrace?
It’s hard to describe the moment when humans, and complete strangers, have a conversation with no words.
Well, yeah …
I wanted to tell her I was sorry for so many things”for overstepping the mark, for making assumptions about a complete stranger and for belonging to a culture where racism was part of her everyday experience.
But none of those words came out, and our near silent encounter was over in a moment.
Except this “encounter,” like the Rolling Stone “rape,” occurred exclusively within the confines of a woman’s skull.
And Jacobs’s “encounter” wasn”t “near silent.” It was completely so.
Look, I”m the first to complain that “Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner” aren”t “dead enough,” but holy hell: At least they went to goddamn Mississippi.
Before continuing to “humblebrag“ for a few more hundreds of words, Jacobs avers in the very middle of her “confession”:
“But while I”m warmed by the sheer volume of media interest, I am not the story here, and my actions were not extraordinary or heroic.”
I”ll say!”¨”¨Here’s the best part, though. Having confessed to the world that her “actions” were mostly fantasy, Jacobs was back, this time on Twitter:
[T]o those doubting or questioning my story, of course it happened. Is it that unbelievable that strangers could hug?
Oh, dear.
So I”m forced to take back that part where I “give her credit.”
Here’s my noble voluntary gesture of the day:
I”d be willing to have one of those sex-change operations if it meant that I”d no longer belong to the same gender as Rachael Jacobs.
