Tasmanian Devil in a pickup truck

The story about the August 15 beating of Jon Brittain in Ohio City's gay district reminded me of something that happened to me a few weeks ago. I work a few blocks from there, and I think this is no coincidence.

I returned to work after a lunch out with my wife, parked across the street from my building, and saw that a nearby light was red, so I jogged across the road. Then I noticed a pickup had gone through the light. Nobody else moved ... the light was still red ... he hadn't come from the cross street. I glared at the truck as I crossed the street. When he got to me he slowed down and said, 'you got a problem?' I said, 'you just ran a red light, asshole.' Since he had stopped in my path, I walked around the back of his truck. Then he got out. Huh? 'Why, are you a cop?' he yelled. He didn't wait for me to answer. What came out of his mouth after that was an escalating stream of vile insults and threats. Bewildered, I think I called him an asshole again and ran. After all, this encounter took place in the middle of another intersection, and I didn't want to get hit by a car while I was trying not to get in a fight with a dumpy sixtysomething white dude wearing a wifebeater. I went back to my desk and tried to work despite the adrenaline rush.

For a few hours I wondered what would motivate someone to pick a fight with a random stranger in broad daylight. A blue collar bender? Bad divorce? He already had a body in the bed of his pickup and wanted some bruises of his own to make it look like he'd killed them in self-defense? It didn't make sense.

The next day I thought about what he'd looked like, and what I had looked like at the time. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I didn't have my briefcase or nametag. I'm a skinny young-looking guy and I was on foot a few blocks from the gay district. He looked like a member of the generation and social class of Americans for whom open homophobia is common. So there you have it.

The attack on Jon Brittain appears to have been opportunistic, not a hate crime. But I couldn't help being reminded of my experience. I almost bought a house in that neighborhood. I drive by it every day, at the end of my commute. On the one hand, I'd have a much smaller carbon footprint if I walked to work, but on the other hand, justified or not, I have concerns about my personal safety.

5 comments:

  1. Providing a safe community should be paramount. Dollars currently going to the nonprofits for "development" need reallocating to either more city police or private security forces. If peoples' health and lives are at undue risk, the community withers. It their property is at risk, the community shrinks and retrenches.

    Perhaps you should have advanced on the guy in the t-shirt. On the other hand, old guys have nothing to lose... Having lived in the cities for 40 years, I find it's best not to take a whole lot of abuse. Intimidation is one way people with nothing to lose steal our equity, our peace, our quiet, our time.

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  2. You're right. On some level it was my civic duty to call him on his behavior. That was what I was doing when I scolded him for running the red light - that was absolutely flagrant. And if I were a different kind of guy, it actually would have made me feel better to stick up for myself more. But I'm a very conflict-avoidant person. It really shocked me to be confronted with physical violence and I didn't think quickly enough to react correctly.

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  3. You did the right thing calling him on running a light. Which, let's face it, is a crime. I live in a congested urban area. People shortcut the traffic laws constantly out of frustration. I yell at them if I can do so safely. It's part of the whole deal of living in a city: to some extent you have to self-police and sanction people who get out of line. You can't and shouldn't have a cop behind every light pole. The hick in question was clearly taking a risk by escalating a verbal confrontation to a physical one. That's kinda scary and in rare cases that ends in someone getting hurt.
    He got away with breaking a traffic law that time. I assume that people who I see doing that once probably do it regularly as part of their driving habits. The law eventually catches up to them when they get dinged for 3 or 4 of those minor violations. It's expensive to ignore the law regularly.

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  4. Funny you should mention the guy probably does it regularly. I told the story in front of a coworker and he said, 'gray pickup truck? Old white dude? Yeah, me too.' But in his case there were five of them walking, including two women. So I was jumping to conclusions when I pinned the incident on homophobia.

    I had a little fantasy afterwards, about tripping him, getting in his truck, and driving it into a telephone pole. Hopefully his airbags would work.

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  5. Ross in Detroit (you one of Diana's clan, or are you Diana?) has a good insight, and it's worth remembering: "It's part of the whole deal of living in a city: to some extent you have to self-police and sanction people who get out of line."

    And Jeff, your fantasy reminds me that we need to get the poles taken down and the wires underground. Absent the option of the poles for destruction, your fantasy might have cut to the chase and run over the guy himself. You don't want to get his adrenaline spiking and having him come back at you.

    Remember, humiliation is not the goal: neutralization is. Some people cannot be humiliated.

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