Put your damn mask over your damn nose

Every fall as the temperature drops, I’m prone to getting nose-bleeds. It happened recently while I was grocery shopping (while masked, of course). I didn’t feel it so I had no i dea why people were avoiding me in the store; I mean, I’d taken my bi-monthly shower and it’s not like they could smell my breath.

It wasn’t until I got back to my apartment and took off my mask that I saw blood and realized it’d soaked right through to the front of my mask. We may be desensitized to seeing each other in masks, but a bloody mask coming at you is still jarring, with the possible exception of Halloween. But even then.

I avoided the subway f rom March until August for the same reason most people did: I had nowhere to go. And even if I did, I worried about catching COVID. I used to ride the subway four times a day, and looking back, I wince remembering winter trips squished into an R train between someone’s armpit and another’s overstuffed backpack, listening to a mixture of pop music leaking out of airbuds and wet coughs flowing freely from open mouths. I’m pretty sure I can never go back to that.

As things opened up this September and work opportunities presented themselves in distances I couldn’t walk to, I decided to try the subway again. I was met with a much cleaner-looking train, and the few people riding were distanced and masked. Some were even double-masked. And it was quiet, almost solemn. So, for the most part, I felt safe.

Now in late October, the subway ridership has increased, and I find the experience excruciating. As I step onto a subway car I am filled with anxiety. I furiously scan every person’s face to see if they are wearing a mask. If they are not (and there is always one or two) I switch cars at the next stop. I am so angry at these people. Are they just at the breaking point of not caring anymore? Are they flaunting the fact that they have antibodies? If so, can they just wear a sign letting me know that?

But what infuriates me the most is seeing grown adults confidently riding with their mask right under their nose. Why? Why not go the extra 10%? I flip through all the possibilities I can muster: Is it hard to breathe with a mask on? Not really, and certainly not behind those blue disposable ones. Is the fogging of the glasses too annoying? Sure, but then you just tuck it under the rims, or take your glasses off for a minute. But most of these people aren’t wearing glasses. Did they forget? How can you forget? I mean, haven’t they seen those banana-yellow smiley face posters all over the subway showing us how to properly mask up?

I want to break through the “see something, i gnore it” subway etiquette and just say, “Can you please put your mask over your nose?” But I don’t. Why? For one, if they answer, there will be more droplets in the air. But more than that, I don’t say a word because I’m scared. I’m a woman and I fear retaliation, an aggressive response or fight that I’m not sure I could handle. I have no clue whether others would come to my aid or they’d all just aim their phones at me to record it for likes.

And I assume the interaction would be aggressive, because unfortunately, whether and how your wear a mask has become a statement. It’s political. It’s a choice and therefore a symbol of your ideology: What you believe, maybe how you’re voting. Your exposed nostrils communicate to me that you’ve decided to go with your own individual interpretation of science, and I might be part of your idea of acceptable loss.

I haven’t washed the blood out of my cloth mask from that grocery trip. I’m thinking of making it the one that I wear on the subway — just to send a message, or rather a reply. The people not wearing their masks correctly may not care about my life, but maybe for once, I can be the one perceived as the threat. Maybe for once, others will think twice about sitting near me. Maybe I can be the person that you recall five days later when you have a sniffle to wonder if that was the moment you were exposed. Maybe I can be a symbol of the fact that there is something to be scared of, and if you participate in the easiest of popularly acceptable solutions, it won’t constrain your freedom. It will just let us all get back to work.

Eisenberg is a standup comic, writer, and host of NPR’s “Ask Me Another.”