Beautiful sunny day in the Mission district. High of 82 degrees, and it's the middle of October. I've been walking around all day. I ate so much Mexican food I can feel the extra weight in my knees. I stopped by an independent book store and read one of those homemade comics, not even stapled together, about how to survive as an artist. First page, FLOSS. Lot less expensive than a root canal or a vicodin dependency.
I'm starting to feel like I've got this whole thing figured out, the good life, long walks, refreshing water, beautiful art on the walls and nothing but my happy thoughts as I anonymously roam the neighborhood. I'm passing the corner store, just at that moment thinking that this neighborhood is too pleasant to have a liquor store...
Commotion.
"You…. GAHHH, MOTHERFUCKER!!"
Whoa. I turn and see a hefty white woman in a shoving match with a young black teenage, just at the store's door. I guess I should have expected it, but the woman nearly bowls the kid over. She was hefty. He stumbles away, clutching at his own backpack and bolts like lightning.
I've developed a physiological state I call crisis mode, and I feel it coming on. With a raised voice I ask her, "What's going on!?"
"Kid tried to reach into my pocket, trying to steal somethin'. Good thing there wasn't anything in there…" She's pissed, not scared in the slightest. She stares him down as he's running down the street, then turns and goes in the liquor store.
There are people everywhere, but only one other person gives a hoot. A white elderly woman wearing a BMX helmet bikes up. We share a look of mutual concern. She asks and I tell her what happened.
And that's it.
That's all that happened.
No cops.
No people coming up to console the near-victim.
Nothing.
I guess that was just no big deal. I guess people are used to that, but I sure as hell am not. All sorts of thoughts flooded through my head just then, mostly realizing that could have happened to me just now.
That crisis mode stayed with me for hours. I felt my anger, my pride, a feeling of DON'T FUCK WITH ME BECAUSE I'LL RUN AND CATCH YOU, YOU UNDERSTAND? I wanted to scream that at everyone.
I walked back to the BART with clenched fists. My thoughts were interrupted on three separate occasions by police sirens. Now I can imagine growing up poor and black. Poor and Mexican. No daddy, shitty teachers, no way out and no chance to even dream.
I'm coming to realize that this is just life on the streets. Scenes of incredible drama play out before my eyes ALL THE TIME.
Man tears his wife from her (their?) toddler child outside a day care center and shoves her into the car. "I TOLD YOU GET THE FUCK IN THA CAR!"
A cracked out woman cries, no, moans into a pay phone, "But why you never calling me! Why I's always calling you, don't you love me!??"
I never wanted the world to be a suburban fairytale filled with green grassy fields and strip malls. But right now I'm wondering why I choose to see the ugly. It's more than I can take some days. I mean that.
