A Night on the Street

So I find myself standing in front of this smiling behemoth, and he's swinging a club....

My friends had already chosen different directions of escape. I was alone in the dark. One friend, a man with experience of prison, while fleeing, had even stated my problem: this ape probably had other weapons and was almost certainly willing to kill.

The vacant lot around offered no objects usable as weapons, and the nearest buildings were both too far to reach ahead of an attack and too featureless to offer any hiding place once there. Escape and evasion were, at best then, unlikely.

I took a look at my possible enemy. He was already keeping his right hip facing me to prevent an attack to the groin, and his left right was already swinging his billy in anticipation and preparation. His left arm was back, perhaps to hold a victim in place for a clubbing, and his forward knee was crouched already to kick. Yeah, he was ready for serious scrape-up....

Now I'm not a bad fighter. If nothing else, I can certainly block the average opponent long enough to find and exploit a weakness. I did, however, lack one tactical advantage of the man before me: an apparent joy in inflicting harm. In the event of a fight, sheer glee would likely keep his attack constant, energetic and unpredictable; and both that fact and the weapon in his hand were very likely to end me up with more than one broken bone.

Well, Dr. Dre may want ta' strap on da' gat to lay da' bitch out flat, but I preferred ta' use mu' brain to dodge all dat pain. In high school one of my nick-names had been "Con-Man," and various Cherokee friends have village-named me their equivalent: "Smiling Pig." I did then have at least a chance of pulling through on my verbal skills.

I took another read on the man before me. He was wearing the colors, perhaps of the crips,' perhaps of the cops. Either way though, his affiliation he presented me with the same danger: the willingness of Gangsters, gangstuhs and heat to inflict their personal sense of justice on passer-by like me. Well, at least he wasn't actually approaching me just yet. I had to be grateful for that. He was probably still just looking for a justification to club me, though. Well, I would have to influence his decision on that....

Of course, before even trying to affect his thought process on anything, I would have to be to lull him out of his animal preparedness to fight. My first step in this process, though, would have to be to appear as unthreatening as possible, and unfortunately, given his probably ability to read an opponent, that appearance would have to be at least somewhat accurate. I resigned myself to this "best bet" hope of defense and relaxed my back In order not to seem very alert. I then raised my hands, palms up, to shoulder-height in a show resigned confusion, the least expectable and thus most puzzling attitude in such a situation. At this point I was, of course, in no position to punch or chop anybody in the event of an attack. Worse though, my very relaxation had had to take me out of the mind-set necessary to win a fight. In spite of all these problems though, I could not expect this pose by itself to do more than delay the inevitable. To get this guy to drop that club, I knew I would have to do more.

My first thought was to confuse him into inaction, and with this aim in mind, I shrugged my shoulders and widened my eyes in hopes of communicating a passive puzzlement great enough to bring him to wonder about me and my reasons for being here. He stared at me in response, and he cocked his head as though inspecting me. Well, at least I was succeeding at being a minor enigma.

he was probably still just looking for a justification to beat me of course, but at least he was still merely thinking rather than acting. I would have to try to turn thought into more of a habit for him, at least for now. With any luck, I could even make him think and learn specifically about me. Knowing me would make me less of a punching bag and more of a human being to him.

"Didn't you hear what I said?" he announced in hopefully feigned bravado, slapping his club into his hand with an authoritative smack. "I asked you what you're doing here!"

His question was probably more of an attempt to find weakness than to gain information. He probably already apparently saw me as a disrespecter and an offender of some sort, and so he was therefore likely to see weakness as a justification to teach me a lesson in respect and reality. I would have to avoid seeming either bold enough to challenge him or weak enough to obey. I decided, at first, just to try to make the question of respect irrelevant.

"I'm lost!" My tone of naive confusion was the verbal expression of the look on my face.

"You're lost!?" He exclaimed. "Well, you better figure out where you are!"

"I wish I knew." I said, continuing the appearance of simple confusion, "...You won't believe how I got here!"

"Well," he said, "why don't you just tell me allll about it"

I used his question as an excuse to tell him about my evening. I was of course very careful to include enough details about me to make myself a specific individual to him, and I also made sure to talk in a style sufficiently entertaining and just confusing enough to make him both take interest in my story and to ask questions about it, thus involving himself in it. He would be less likely to damage a source of interest and entertainment.

Unfortunately though, despite all my efforts, his face and posture showed only limited change. He was probably seeing through my ploy to some degree, and I had expected that--He'd have to have been an idiot not to! Theoretically though, according to the best con-man's logic, I only had to appeal to a want or need of his big enough to make that irrelevant. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one. I would have to try something new.

So far, my simple cooperation with his demand for information had apparently affirmed his mental image of his own rightness and power, and this affirmation had at least seemed to take some of the snarl out of his voice. Perhaps by continuing to provide even more support for his desired self-perception I just might calm him further, perhaps even to the point of permitting me to leave. Lacking any other options, I decided to give it a try.

I began to hinge telling each further detail on his permission to do so, thus further confirming him as the decision-maker of our group. I also smiled at every step in the conversation, implying my actual approval of him in that role. The process of demilitarizing him was slow of course, but by a series of separate, unconscious steps he came to stand, snarl-faced but soft-shouldered, beside me. Of course I didn't kid myself about the ultimate efficacy of this action--any pacification of this man would be only temporary. Still though, to escape excruciating injury I now only had to find a way to excuse myself without re-creating his previous mood. I started looking for a conversational ploy of egress. Unfortunately however, that search distracted me somewhat from keeping in character, and I began using habits of speech somewhat peculiar to me. He reacted oddly to one:

"On...your....watch..." he said, repeating the final words of my last spoken sentence.

"yeah" I said, wondering at his interest in my phrasing. "...you know...on my shift at work."

"Yeah, but...on your watch!"

Did he have some kind of problem with that phrase? I had to figure that out quick. "Well, yeah, my watch--"

"Were you in the Navy?"

Was that phrase specific to that branch of the service? More importantly, could he have some weird hatred of it? "Uh, no...my dad was though...and a lot of his stuff just kind of...rubbed off on me."

He grinned widely. The look on his face may have been a sign of a greater greeting, but it also may have been a return of his earlier joy for upcoming violence. "Your dad was Navy!" he said, apparently in some sort of conclusion.

"Well, yeah"--I now had no idea what to say, but I knew enough just to keep talking--'like Jesus was the son of God! He wasn't in when I was growing up, but it affected him totally and for the rest of his life." My small witticism might bring his club down on my head, but I didn't have the option of simply saying nothing. I had to keep control of events--and if necessary, I just might be able to spin my words and actions into something to re-pacify him.

He took a step toward me, and I tensed badly. My shoulders rose in a preparation for that strenuously avoided fight.

I probably didn't have to do that, though. Seeing my tension, he clapped me lightly on the shoulder and laughed with at least an apparent warmth.

"My dad was navy, too!" he declared like the punch-line to a favorite joke. Clearly, my father's not actually being in during my own life did not matter to him. "I know all about being a navy son!

I was at last seeing a chance for a happy farewell to this situation. To my mind, he was probably now just searching for another affirmation of himself, one as the tested son of a military sailor. With any luck, I could just use a few more bits of navy slang, affirm him in that status, and leave on a handshake.

Unfortunately though, the man before me had other ideas. He again repeated my status as my father's son...and then asked me to breakfast.

He seemed to want nothing more than to wallow in my affirmations, but keeping such an actively positive and affected view for another hour would be tiring and risky at best. Still, rejecting his well-armed invitation was likely to set me back to my original problem....

McDonald's was just re-opening by now, and I was very nervous as we went in. We ordered English-muffin sandwiches and coffee, and surprisingly my attempted assailant insisted on paying, no doubt out of both a self-opinion of magnanimy and a gratitude for someone at last seeming to understand him so completely. Then we began to talk. Interestingly, he had recently read the book The Bullet-Proof Mind and, he centered the conversation on it. At first, the idea of him reading such a heavy, intellectual tome surprised me, but I caught myself in my own ignorant presumption. He wasn't always the man before me, after all. He could've easily grown up in a perfectly normal home with an interest in ideas and only later decided to turn his current ways. He could've even grown up in the 'jects but had parents and teachers willing to foster at least some interest in the life beyond the streets. I'd met more than one such person in my life.

To judge from our conversation, he had probably not read the book so much as gotten through some part of the first chapter, but he seemed to be expecting me to give him credit for the whole job as yet another form of praise. I gave it to him by making a single, smiling nod to his every statement. He seemed to have started the thing in an effort to prove himself to himself as someone fit to face combat and military discipline. I couldn't afford not to use such an available way to flatter and persuade.

Over our talk, I actually began to like at least some aspects of this previous source of threat. Somewhere, down deep, he was really just another guy desperately trying to keep a good opinion of himself, taking to his current very risky life to avoid a verdict of stupidity from himself and those around him. Part of me could honestly feel sorry for him.

Once out of the restaurant, we both went opposite ways. I had no specific direction to go, but I was planning to find a bus stop and solve my transportation problems from there. Interestingly, though, I had to go to no such effort. As I walked down the street, I saw my wife at the far end of the block walking jitteringly toward me. Apparently, she been looking for me for most on the night and had spent the remainder of it frantically worrying about me....

"I called your mom to tell her what happened, and you won't believe what she said!"--Carol's tone betrayed her agitation--"She said 'don't worry; he could talk his way out of anything!'" Ah yes, my adoptive mother was, at times, remarkably unsupportive, but she was always very accurate. She also seemed to understand that my own genetic, Irish ancestors had not simply kissed the Blarney Stone but had, in all probability, performed intimate acts with it.

Carol went on to tell me the events of her stressful evening, and comparing her night to the genuinely genial conclusion of my own, I had to giggle. Yes, I had been in grave danger, but I also ended up with a story to tell....