21 December 2005

You know how you see yourself as being one way, but everybody else sees you as being another way? Well, I think that I’m pretty good at being honest with myself about myself. It’s sort of this little project I’ve been working on for quite a while.

One of the things that I think that I am is chill. You know: mellow, kick-back, cool. When I tell people that I know pretty well that I think of myself as being pretty chill, they tend to look at me incredulously, as if I’m being completely deluded. I always find this incredulity to be surprising; in other words I’m incredulous about their being incredulous.

Why, you may be asking, am I writing about this today? Because, my faithful readers, I almost got into a fistfight in front of the Madtown Starbucks about two hours ago. Sadly, I have a better understanding of where my people are coming from. (If you’re keeping track, so far, I’ve ended two independent clauses with a preposition; I’m not proud.)

This is how it all went down. I’m on my rig, working on an e-mail to one of my bestest buddies when my cell rings. It’s Bert, inventor of the Bert Classic and the tabletop tripod, calling with the latest info on the upcoming poker game. That means that this was a very important business call. All of a sudden, there’s this big dude who walks up to my table and starts trying to have a conversation with me, even though I’m clearly talking on my cell. I try to wave him off, but he insists on talking. Next, he tries to hand me a business card, but I wave that off, too, because who the fuck needs a business card handed to him at a Starbucks when he’s transacting? Next thing I know, he’s actually touching my rig, I guess to indicate that his business is in the field of computers. Call me old-fashioned or well-raised or whatever, but it is one of my core beliefs that one doesn’t go around touching other people’s stuff without express permission. And then, to close it off, he places the rejected business card on my table, thus completing the violation of my personal space.

This dude had offended my sensibilities in so many ways. First, he repeatedly interrupts a phone call, then he touches my rig (and, come on, his mama had to have told him not to go around messing with people’s stuff without asking; that’s Parenting 101), and then he drops the card on my table. I should probably say right here that I like to keep my workspace clear and distraction-free, and his card was a distraction.

It could have ended right there, but two things came into play: One, I’m all about manners/common courtesy/decorum/good behavior. Two, I’m from the ghetto, and, as I like to say, “sometimes the ghetto comes out.” So, to express my profound displeasure, I blow his business card off of the table, and am proven successful in two puffs. (Yeah, I know: not very chill.) I think that that will be the end of it and I can finish my call with Bert, inventor of the Bert Light and the compound-complex sentence.

The end of it it is not. The dude bends down to pick up his card, and, on the way up, he calls me a prick. He calls me a prick and then he storms out. I could have let him walk out and that would have been the end of it; he goes off and does his thing, and I can finish my call with Bert, inventor of the Bert Death Spiral and the lawn mower, and get the poker game dialed in. But, by my count, the guy had now been quadruply rude, and I can’t cotton to that; that’s not how I roll.

I tell Bert that I’ll call him back in a few minutes and then I follow the guy outside. I call out to him and he stops and turns around. Now, I’m genuinely offended but not looking to beef with this cat, so I calmly start to explain that I was taking care of business on my phone and our discussion degenerates quickly from there. Finally, he puts his little bags down and asks me if I want to “have a confrontation,” by which I think that he meant that he wanted to slug it out with me. The problem, in retrospect, was that there was no way for us to have a genuine and meaningful discussion/analysis of what had already transpired between us, so any attempt would probably have had to devolve into two guys swinging away in front of a Starbucks.

I’ll be honest, when he put his little bags down, I sort of smiled because, even though he was bigger than I and he had tattoos on his hands and arms, I didn’t think that he had a chance. Not for a second did he have a chance, but I have the kind of job that I could lose if I were to get into a fight, and, even though I despise my job, the poker money’s gotta come from somewhere. Also, I didn’t want to lose my Madtown Starbucks privileges. Mostly, though, I just don’t think that I could actually hurt another person, physically I mean; I’m a mess and I cause emotional pain everywhere that I go. I could give you a list.

After he inquired into my confrontation-wanting status, I made another attempt to talk about manners, but to no avail. At some point toward the end, he restated his opinion that I was a prick, and I, in disagreement, said that he was the one who was being a prick. No, I’m not proud. Finally, he makes his closing comments and then I conclude by saying that he just needs to “use his lid,” which is one of the ways that I say to use one’s head.

I go back inside and call Bert to finish planning the upcoming game and then I start to work on this post. It didn’t take too long for me to see that I was far from the victim in this confrontation. In fact, the guy was right, and I was kind of a prick.

Blowing his card off of my table was, I admit, less than classy, even if it was a genuine attempt to give physical manifestation to my displeasure. I could have let the whole thing go or gotten off of my phone for a second to tell the dude that I wasn’t interested. Okay, I handled it badly.

Great, so now I’m flashing back to other instances where I did not, in fact, act chill and, in fact, escalated the aforementioned instances. There was the 1998 parking space situation in Richmond, British Columbia, right in front of Hon’s. The parking guy had waved the girlie I was then rolling with in to the space, so in we went, but some dude tried to steal our spot by coming in from the other side. Our car and his truck came to a stop and he shouted something out the window at my then girlie and then made a violent gesture with his arms and face. I should explain that we were in a section of Richmond that was made up mostly of Asian-style businesses, and my then girlie was of Asian extraction and the dude doing the shouting was a white dude. I’m not going to ascribe sentiments and feelings to this dude, but it was pretty clear that he was acting out some prior racist stuff in how he reacted to the situation.

Anyway, this prick’s yelling at my then lady and trying to take the spot to which we were assigned, and I wasn’t going to stand for any of that shit, so I got out of the car to suggest that he move his truck. At this point, I was still being polite, polite but firm, because he wasn’t getting our spot. He then started talking shit to me, like he wanted to go, but probably thinking that I would back down or punk out.

Here’s the thing about people. Everybody wants to think that he’s bad (I’m using bad here in the ghetto style, as in meaning tough or dangerous), but the thing is that most people aren’t really bad. They like to front that they’re bad and will count on the other person backing down in order to preserve the façade of badness. These guys also tend to act bad with people who they think will fold. Basically, they’re bullies.

So the guy had yelled at my lady and gestured aggressively at her, and then, when I suggested that he stop trying to take our spot, he talked shit to me. I told him to get the fuck out of the car. I may also have called him a motherfucker at this point, but that part’s hazy. His lady is riding shotgun, so if he doesn’t get out, he’s going to look pretty silly. I’m waiting, but he’s not getting out of his truck, even though I had repeated my suggestion that he exit his vehicle.

Finally, the parking attendant came over, the situation was explained, and the guy moved his truck. That could have been the end of it, but shortly thereafter he walked by my then girlie and I, but he wouldn’t look at us. So I called him a fucking punk, which my then girlie wasn’t too happy about.

Not very chill.

A more recent occurrence was when I had been living in Madcity, and my big bro had flown out for a visit. I decided to take him to Chicago and show him some museums. The first place that we went to was The Art Institute of Chicago, a museum that I truly love. So we spend hours and hours inside and we’re our front, taking the I’m-standing-in-front-of-the-famous-place tourist pictures that one always takes. My big bro is at the top of the steps, and I’m down toward the middle, setting up my shot. I studied photography for a long time, so I’m trained to take every composition seriously, even your standard touristy shot. All of a sudden, there’s a guy interrupting my shot and asking me if I want to buy a newspaper. If you’re not from a major American city, you may not know that most of these cities have newspapers that are sold by homeless people, and this guy was a newspaper salesman.

I told the guy, “No, thanks,” and thought that that would be the end of it, but the guy, as he turned around, said, “Well, fuck you, then.” Before he could take a step, I said, “It’s here if you want it, motherfucker,” because it was there if he wanted it. He was bigger and younger, so he might, in fact, want it, but he walked away. As he did, I closed the conversation by saying, ghetto-style, “That’s what I thought, bitch.”

Yes, yes, I know. Not very cool and/or mellow. I mean, what was I going to do, throw down in front of the Art Institute? There’s a pretty good chance that I’m not chill at all.

What does all of this mean? That it’s painful introspection time. That I’m not exactly making the world better by not being more understanding of my fellow sisters and brothers.

The guy in front of Hon’s probably had some issues with women and minorities to work through, and I wasn’t of much help. If anything, along with hating Asians, he probably hates Mexicans now, too. The guy in front of the Art Institute obviously had some stuff going on, having to sell newspapers to museum goers just being a small part of that stuff. And the guy at Starbucks was just trying to generate business for his company, and maybe he doesn’t have good manners, but nothing I did had any effect on those manners. All I managed to do was to piss him off to the point that he wanted to brawl with me.

Okay, great, now I do feel kind of like a prick. No more. From now on, I am going to try to live up to my former (and now wrecked) sense of who I am, to the version of me who I thought I was but who I am far from being.

For right now, though, I’ve got to go. Some guy just frowned at me, and I can’t let that slide.