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 with experience of prison had even stated my problem: this ape probably had more weapons, and he was probably 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.

The guy already had his muscles tensed, and he had his right side toward me in preparation to attack. He had his forward knee crouched for kicking, and the elbow and fingers of his opposite arm were curled to grab and club me. Hell, he was even in colors, and wether in the reds of a crip or the blues of a cop, he posed the same problem: the willingness of gangsters, gangstuhs and heat to inflict their personal sense of justice on passer-by like me.

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" due to my talent at persuasion, and current Cherokee, Lakota and Pottawatomie friends had village-named me "Smiling Pig" for the same reason. To judge from their opinion then, I did have at least a chance of pulling through on my verbal skills.

In my experience, both criminals and police are, in some way or other, acting out of insecurity. Both cops and Crips believe themselves to be the victims of a general injustice as well as the representatives of a wronged people, and both take similar actions to correct the problem, though with profoundly different legal justifications. As a part of this mentality though, both like to cast themselves in the role of protector for their supposed fellow victims. Neither side would probably find much hard evidence for this idea in this complicated world of course, but such feelings do give them a sense of power, importance and are strength.

Standing there, facing the possibility of blunt trauma to my head, I probably had no better way to deal with this belligerent than to appeal to that feeling. To avoid a battering, I would have to become a victim, like him. My first step in that plan, however, would have to be to lull him out of his animal preparedness to fight, and to do this I would have to be to appear as unthreatening as possible. Unfortunately, given this guy's probable ability to read an opponent, that appearance would have to be at least somewhat accurate.

With only slim hope for my safety, I resigned myself to this one possibility for defense. I relaxed my back In order not to seem very alert, then raised my hands, palms up, to shoulder-height in a show resigned confusion. I was no longer in a position to punch or chop in the event of an attack, but I was basically hoping for the appearance of such an unexpectable and puzzling reaction to get him to ask himself questions about the man before him and thus distract himself from the fight.

My aspiring assailant kept the same fighting stance and glaring stare, but he also seemed to slacken the muscles in his arms. Well, every cop and every criminal is, somewhere down deep, as prone to doubt as less violent types, and to judge by appearances I was reaching a little of his doubt. I didn't kid myself about the effectiveness of my deception, though. This guy could still go back into a combat mindset at any time. To get him to drop that club, I would have to do more.

Lacking any better idea than simply building on my current strategy, I shrugged my shoulders and widened my eyes in hopes of communicating my feigned puzzlement more abjectly, perhaps even strongly enough to get him talking to me. After even a short conversation, after all, I would be more of a person and less of a punching bag to him, and he would therefore find me harder to attack.

He continued to stare at me, but he also cocked his head as though inspecting me. Well, I was getting a little further through my escape plan, and he was orienting himself more to thought than to action. I would have to try to turn thinking into more of a habit for him, though. Damn it! If only he would talk....

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

He hadn't said a word before that, but I didn't argue that point. My lame duck act was apparently working on him, and so he was probably trying to find weakness in me as a justification to teach me a violent lesson in the drawbacks of that supposed weakness. Well, I would now have to walk a conversational tight-rope. I would have to avoid seeming either bold enough to challenge him or weak enough to obey him. I decided 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 in a feigned shock intended to threaten. "Well, you better figure out where the hell 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 in mocking tones, "why don't you just tell me allll about it"

Regardless of his attitude of disdain, I used his question as an excuse to tell him about my evening and myself. 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 to interest him and just confusing enough to make him ask questions. He would be less likely to damage a source of interest and entertainment.

Despite all my efforts though, his face and posture showed only limited change. He was probably seeing through my ploy to some degree, but I had expected that. Hell, according to the best con-man's logic though, I only had to appeal to a want or need of his strong enough to make that irrelevant. Unfortunately however, I just couldn't find one.

Lacking any other options, I decided to lull him by affirming his possible self-image of rightness and power. First, 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 of two. I also smiled at every step in the conversation, implying my actual approval of him in that role.

This process of demilitarizing him was slow of course, but by a series of separate, unconscious steps he came to stand slack shouldered beside me. I didn't kid myself about the ultimate efficacy of my actions, though. Any pacification of this man would be temporary. Still, to escape 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 with a new level of snarl.

"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--"

He glowered at me and chuckled. "Were you in the Navy?"

Was that phrase specific to that branch of the service? More importantly, could he have some weird hatred of that branch? "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 long delayed 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 still 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....

Seeing my tension though, he clapped me lightly on those 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 been through it all!"

To my mind, he was now just searching for another affirmation of himself, but 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 this new 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 still 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 magnanimity 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 Miind and, he centered our conversation on it. At first, the idea of him reading such a heavy, intellectual tome surprised me, but I ultimately 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. Hell, he could've even grown up in the 'jects but with 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. Of course, I agreed with him on this also. I couldn't afford not to use such an available way to flatter and persuade.

Oddly, 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. He had apparently taken to his current very risky life to avoid a verdict of stupidity from himself and those around him, and part of me could honestly feel sorry for him over it.

Once out of the restaurant, we both went opposite ways down the street. I had no specific direction to go, but I was planning to find a bus stop and solve my problems from there. Interestingly, though, I had to go to no such effort. After turning the first corner I saw my wife walking jitteringly toward me at the far end of the block. Apparently, she been looking for me for most on the night and had spent the morning in frantic worry.

"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 always very accurate. She also seemed to understand that my 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 on some level I'd also had a thrilling adventure and ended up with a story to tell....