Based on a true story. In part.
Damn. I knew I wouldn’t get home until eight or even later. I got
off of work early at quarter-till five in an effort to get home by six,
but this god-damned weather has driven everyone to drive like
complete morons and back up the entire public transit system to all
hell. It’s taken me an hour just to get to my second bus stop, where I
must sit and wait for yet another. I’m at 13th and Lincoln in downtown
Denver, and it’s getting pretty damned dark, and I’ve got a cell
phone, an old laptop (Pentium 120!), and a nice RIO MP3-CD
player in my backpack. I feel like a sitting duck, just standing here
waiting for the inevitable outcasts of society to emerge and harass me
to no end. Usually they're peaceful and just want a cigarette or
some change, but there's nothing less enjoyable than defusing a
pissed-off drunk who sees me as a part of the reason why he's drunk
and homeless. And perhaps I am. It's all connected, wouldn't you
know?
It’s been about forty-five minutes now. An endless number of buses
have rolled by, but mine has yet to come. A “B-Line” appears and the
driver asks me where I’m headed. “Golden,” I say. “I can get you to
Colfax,” he responds. Hmm, Colfax is only two blocks away, big
whoop. For some reason I hoped he meant he could take me further West
on Colfax, and I’m dying to get inside a warm bus, so I hop in. Of
course he can only take me to Civic Center Station, a popular
stomping ground for drunks and crack-heads. I run into a nice lady and
a nice guy and we chat for awhile. Somehow, before this night began, I
knew I’d run into a crack-head. I’ve never been harassed by one
before, but before you know it, this toothless drunk white guy with a
Sturgis T-shirt walks up and asks us if we “have any rocks.”
Of course we don’t. He quickly responds “of course white people don’t
have rocks,” and his companion tells him to shut the fuck up and they
scurry away. The irony of the situation is that in my bag I have about
$100 worth of semi-precious minerals and gemstones, all of which
are “rocks,” but of course, not the rocks he wants. I mention this to
my companions and they get a chuckle out of the idea of selling the
poor fool a nice, clear chunk of quartz for a pretty penny.
After awhile the nice guy decides to head out, and a couple of drunks
walk over and insist on introducing themselves and shaking our hands
playing the usual drunk-as-fuck mindgames that involve forcing us
to be excessively nice to unstable drunk-bastards in the hopes of not
pissing them off by saying the wrong thing. They’re actually pretty
nice to us, and tell us “we’re all right,” and even offer us a swig of
whiskey from a Sunny Delight bottle, which we graciously decline.
All in all, I don’t feel threatened by them whatsoever, but I’m still
unsettled by being completely helpless in the middle of downtown with a
bag full of goods that could easily be traded for a good handful of
"rocks."
Another hour passes, still no bus. A fifteen shows up and wouldn’t you
know it, the crack-head who asked us if we “had rocks” before gets off
and is yelling racial slurs at the bus driver. Apparently, he’s a
crazy-as-fuck white supremacist, and just like the majority of his
companions-in-ideology, he represents the worst possible specimen for
someone who is supposedly “proud of his race.” Like I mentioned, he’s
drunk and toothless, and not only that, he’s yelling racial slurs in
the middle of downtown on Colfax and Broadway, just asking to be
beaten, killed, or mugged, assuming he has anything to steal. At
this point the nice lady and I have played off of each other for comic
relief; if either of us had been alone, we’d be enraged by this
situation of having waited ninety minutes in freezing weather, with the
sensations of frostbite slowly setting into our toes.
The crack-head continues to harangue the driver while he waits at a
stop light. Evidently he is surfing buses to stay warm, and was
asked to get off since he wasn’t going anywhere. The nice lady notices
that there is a bus stop across the street that appears to have a bus
that might be able to get us halfway home. Nonplussed by the angry
rantings of the crack-addict, we begin to waltz over across the
street, and he notices our absence. He follows us, yelling at me for
abandoning him in his time of need. Evidently, he required the
presence of other white people in order to harass a black bus driver
without fear. He tells me I need to “stand up for my people,” and
keeps calling me “white boy.” He follows us to the other bus stop,
continually ranting that I’m afraid of him, that I’m a pussy-ass white
boy, and that I need to stand up for my people.
This whole “white boy” slur brings back a feeling of anger that I
hadn’t felt since middle school. At Martin Luther King Middle
School, where I attended six through eighth grade, I was in the
minority and was constantly labeled a “white boy” and pushed around
and goaded into fights. I never actually engaged anybody in a fight,
because I knew damned well what “getting jumped after school" meant.
It meant that if you fought somebody, win or lose, all of their friends
would beat the living tar out of you before you reached your bus home.
Despite these unsatisfactory experiences, I emerged with my
appreciation for people as a whole intact. When I hate people, I hate
humanity, I hate myself. I don’t hate black people. I don’t hate
white people. I hate intolerance. I hate hate. And this
white-power crack-head motherfucker was challenging my ego. I was
already bottling up the rage of having been stranded here for hours.
I felt as if I should’ve just slept under my desk at work.
I knew that if this man touched me, it would be the end for him. I had
never really gotten into a real fight in my life, and was almost dying
for the opportunity. But he kept his distance, and I informed him that
“I am just trying to find another bus, ok?”
**This is the point where reality and surreality blur. The events that
transpire here did not actually occur…**
The crack-addict gets into the bus that’s been sitting at this other
stop for several minutes now. Apparently, it’s going to leave in ten
minutes. I’m waiting for a different bus which should be showing up in
ten minutes. I’m glad that he decides to leave peaceably, and feel a
sigh of relief. I knew this man wanted somebody to put him out of his
misery, and it wasn’t going to be me.
So his bus eventually takes off, and yet another hour passes. It’s
been three hours now, waiting for one god-damned bus that should “run”
every twenty minutes. I’m infuriated. And wouldn’t you know it, his
bus makes a full loop and comes back, and he gets kicked off yet again.
He’s even angrier, but the bus driver is white this time, so he can’t
blame her for being a member of a race of which he doesn’t believe
has the right to exist. He sees me, and blames me. His anger
uncontained, he begins harassing me about being a pansy-ass white boy,
and lays a hand on me. I don’t remember if he punched me, slapped me,
or just put his hand on my shoulder. Did he push me? It’s hard to
say. Something happened, though. That much is for certain.
I can’t come up with anything less cliché than “I snapped” or “I
lost it,” or “I exploded,” but that’s what I did. His life was no more
from this point onward. My first punch landed on his stomach, almost
“in his stomach,” causing him to belch and vomit profusely. He was
too drunk to defend himself, but I was not interested in a fair fight.
Every last bit of bottled-up frustration and rage and sadness that had
plagued me from my very conception manifested itself into a furious
flurry of blows to his face, stomach, and back. I punched, kicked,
kneed, and spat. I grabbed him by his hair, and threw him face-down
into the pavement. He was completely unconscious, but there was no
stopping me. When he finally fell to the ground, I shattered his
skull with the heel of my dress shoes, my beautiful black dress
Payless shoes that probably made people think I was a “yuppie.” I
could see his brains and cerebral fluids emerging from his now cloven
skull, and was instantly nauseous. I went to puke, but could only
dry-heave, my stomach completely empty. The horrific taste of bile
filled my entire being. I could taste it, smell it, feel it, see it,
and touch it. It was the taste of his downfall more than anything
else.
When he was finished, I felt the faintest glimpse of sorrow, which
quickly transformed into something I've never felt before. I knew he
wanted to be killed. I had just indulged his last wish. He didn’t
really want “rocks,” he wanted an escape. Freedom. He was most
likely homeless, and was stuck in a racist mindset that plagued him
until the end. He insisted that “white people don’t sell crack,” but
hoped that we did, so that he could feel dependent on his “brothers”
rather than his “enemies.” I indulged him, and I felt terrible and
relieved at the same time. I was wearing dark blue pants, and the
blood barely showed. Those around me were completely awestruck, but
did nothing. When the bus finally came, we all boarded quietly and not
a single thing was ever said of the incident ever again.
Incidentally, I saw the nice lady again the next day, on my ride to
work. She did not acknowledge my existence, but I could at least thank
her in my own mind for not having called the cops on me. His death
never even made it to the obituaries or the news. His existence or
lack thereof was never acknowledged by anybody ever again, if it ever
had been previously. I had killed a dead man, and from that point on I
could never look at myself the same way again. It wasn’t really guilt,
or sadness, or depression, or sorrow, or anything you could
conveniently attach a label to. I had taken a life that had already
been lost, and couldn’t put my finger on how this would change my life
from this point forward.
I tend to believe in karma to a certain extent, and felt that from here on out I would be possessed with a burden of guilt that would plague me for the rest of my life. But this did not happen. Instead, I was relieved. All of that pent-up sadness and anger died with that man, and though I'd never be the same person again after having taken a life, it seemed as if I'd inverted his death into something positive for myself. So whatever guilt I had from here on out was the guilt of not feeling guilty enough. Go figure.