Getting assaulted, by me

It hasn’t happened in a long time, but today I got attacked by one of those crazy people, all because I walked past him on the left. He didn’t physically touch me, but he followed me for several blocks, screaming at the back of my head, until I turned around and started screaming back.

The last time this type of thing happened, I was walking back to my apartment and a guy came out of a pizza joint and walked into me. He spilled his pizza and blamed me for not watching where he was going. In that case, he followed me, and a crowd gathered because they wanted to see a fight. When the crowd was too big to push my way through, I had to stop and the guy — he was an older black man — lunged at me and sort of hugged me but then backed off and left. That was the end of it. But what I was left with was a feeling of helplessness — when someone decides to attack you, for whatever reason they have, there is almost nothing you can do about it.

This guy, after I passed him, started muttering — very loudly — things like “can’t even fuckin’ say, ‘Excuse me,'” and other things, and he was getting louder. Finally I stopped and looked and he said, “Yea, you. This ain’t your grandfather’s time when you just hang me. I’ll kill you motherfucker.” So I continued walking but he wouldn’t stop the screaming — and maybe realizing that he wasn’t going to stop I, myself, finally stopped and screamed, “All I fucking did was pass you. I didn’t bump into you. I didn’t stare at you or say anything. I just passed you.” And that lead to him screaming to “hit me, hit me motherfucker. I’ll knock you the fuck out. I’m as big as you and…” blah blah blah. Eventually he started walking faster than me on his way to Union Square and he was several buildings away, still screaming. But that was when the adrenaline kicked in, or when I started to feel the after effects of the adrenaline rush, and boy was my old body shaking. I almost couldn’t even walk. I was heading to the 19th Street movie theatre and by this time he was at about 18th Street, thank God. But I could hardly order my ticket or pick the seat, and then I couldn’t eat anything — I had planned to make it my lunch. The whole thing was entirely demoralizing, but again, it makes you realize what — I think it was Joseph Campbell said — about other people. They aren’t insulting you. They aren’t attacking you. Even if they kill you, they aren’t killing you. It is entirely inside their own heads. They just externalize it, and this guy was angry as all fuck, about racism and maybe some weird old belief he had about himself that he was small and weak. He wasn’t small — he was my height and he was thin.

At first I was depressed. The movie was awful so that kind of had an opposite effect on my own depression. But on the bus on the way home, I was wary of black men who looked somewhat shady — a little disheveled. And then I wished I knew self defense.

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