As I put the cold items with their kindred, I realized I was in a compromising position -- particularly upon overhearing the young, black male a few feet away.
"I'ma push that white motherfucker in front of the train."
At first, I thought I imagined it. That's what I wanted to believe, but I turned to see from whom the statement emanated and the racist fuck expounded.
"I'ma punch him in his face so his glasses fall off."
Yes, I wore glasses.
"Yeah, I know he hear me. He look at me all scared."
The audience for his sociopathic rant was a girl -- presumably the one who lets him fuck her -- who is even more repugnant a human being than he is for enabling such anti-social behavior with her silent complicity and re-enforcing that his attitude is okay by rewarding him with female company.
I ignored him. No other reasonable option presented itself. I wanted to talk back, but I had fifty dollars of food I didn't want to jeopardize, the aforesaid pair of glasses I didn't want to risk breaking, and my general disdain for stooping to the troglodyte's level and giving him the satisfaction of a verbal and/or physical altercation. And, of course, the fear of bodily harm that could result from any dust-up with a stranger from whom I don't know what to expect ... a weapon? Sanity and self-preservation prevailed.
So I let it go.
The train arrived and they got in one car, I got in another. My car was hot. I went into theirs. It was cooler. The xenophobic subhuman shit-bag was blocking the train doors with his ghetto-fabulous hoochie mama.
If I sound as racist as I'm accusing my would-be attacker of being, that's because I'm reacting to the threat of violence against me merely because I exist. Right or wrong as that is. I had said nothing to him, I didn't even look at him. Still, he passive-aggressively alerted me of his yen to do me wrong.
My response is that they're both shit. Each for the relevant, aforesaid reasons. The pure malice that drives such violent musing based solely on -- I assume -- the contrast between his skin color and mine is abhorrent and abominable.
Sure, he may not like when people wear the color brown. He may not like blue jeans. He may not like people with glasses. Short, straight hair. Blue eyes. Scruffy beards. Sideburns. But give me a fucking break.
He and his bitch -- to use the parlance for women of the neighborhood in which the three of us (me, him and his "girlfriend") live -- got off at the same stop as I did, they went left and I went right when exiting the station. They walked off down Fulton, I walked in a different direction -- towards the overpriced brownstone apartment I have the near daily misfortune of calling home.
This, after working an 11-hour day. After going grocery shopping on an empty stomach after said 11-hour workday. After carrying said groceries the near mile to the subway nearest the closest decent grocery story from the train line that services my derelict 'hood.
A day in the life of the most racially segregated powerkeg of class-resentment and vitriol.
For all of the white people in this borough, blogging about how great it is because they can either afford to shell out thousands on rent to live in a neighborhood where everyone looks like them or are too stupid to realize they can't, but do so anyway ... there's an ugly side to Brooklyn.
And I live there.
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