it's a pretty good question.

as i was walking to the subway this evening, i was stopped by a young man on st. mark's place. he fit the bill of who you'd usually expect to be hanging out in that vaccum of gentrified quasi-ur-hipness--badly dyed mowhawk, multiple piercings, heavily pinned leather jacket. he wanted me to give him a dollar, and as i was on my way home and don't have a steady gig myself at the moment, i said "sorry," and walked on.

he chased me down the sidewalk after that, shouting in my general direction "can i ask you a question?!" perhaps foolishly, i stopped. "what does that mean, sorry? what do you mean, you're sorry? i don't want to be out here doing this, i'm sorry too. what do you mean, you're sorry?"

now. anyone who knows me well knows that this is the kind of question that i hate being asked. i have enough middle class guilt as it is; i have enough guilt FULL STOP as it is. i hate being taken to task for not wanting to give my money away, particularly by people whom i suspect of having simply run out of the stipend mom and dad gave them before sending them off to NYU. besides feeling generally ashamed of both parties, i start to feel vaguely threatened.

but, it was st. mark's place, the disneyland of downtown, so i figured i was unlikely to get myself killed by talking back. "i don't know what everyone else means when they tell you they're sorry. i'm sorry that i don't have a dollar to give you right now. i'm sorry that i don't have a lucrative job of my own at the moment that would provide me with enough money to give away. i'm sorry that you have to go through all this to get your money. i'm sorry that i'm not in a position to give you any." the unspoken part: "i'm sorry that you feel you're making some sort of point by harassing me. i'm sorry that you think i'm that firmly a member of the establishment. mostly i'm sorry that of all the people you could have picked to bother tonight, you chose me."

for a minute, i thought he was going to hit me. he was genuinely angry that i hadn't given him a dollar; equally angry, i'd imagine, that i'd given him an honest answer. i guess i look like i'm a spoilt rich kid, or something; i suppose he wanted someone he could rail against, someone he could catch out in a bourgeois lie. a semi-employed, socially conscious, paranoid hypochondriac girl whose default state is guilt is not really a good target if that's your goal. not that i was particularly interested in what he wanted; by that point the shame had set in, and i just wanted to go home.

at the end of the exchange, he seemed to accept my explanation; he offered me a high five and wished me luck. i wished him the same, though what i really wished was that he hadn't asked such a good question. what do most people mean by 'sorry,' anyway? we bandy it about so casually in daily affairs; i worry that means we live in danger of losing our ability to gauge when people are genuinely sorry. i worry that someday 'sorry' will not be enough, ever again, for anything. i worry that 'sorry' doesn't mean what it once did. i worry that nobody believes me when i say it.

i hope it never comes to that; i hope i always remember how valuable a real 'sorry' is, if for no other reason than that a true apology should never be taken lightly; a real one is certainly never given lightly. everything in the world, everything that's important to you, can hang on a real one.

it's such a simple word, so easy and yet so hard to say. i hope i will always know when a real 'sorry' drifts my way. i hope i will always mean every 'sorry' i deliver. i hope the time will come when i won't have to say 'sorry' again.

i hope a lot of things.