walking to civic center BART after the gym, i walked past a woman facedown on the sidewalk and i couldn’t tell whether she’d passed out or just decided to take a nap like that (it was the tenderloin, so this is a harder distinction to make than one might think). i walked by with my eyes trained on her trying to see if there were signs of life, and she began picking herself up by the time i made it to the corner for one more look back and “should i see if she’s okay.”
i felt like shit about that.
not more than a block later, i watched a man yell at a woman who was walking away and then running away and then running into traffic to avoid him. this time i stopped and called 911 and as i was on the phone he fucking beat her on the street and dragged her half a block before she crumpled to the ground and refused to move. i stayed on the corner half a block away until the cops came. in the mean time, the only concern i heard was a white dude saying saying to another, “let her eat the fucking chicken wings.”
i walked away with about as much water as my eyes could handle before the break because:
1) fuck.
2) fuuuuuck.
3) did i make things worse? because he obviously knew her, and while maybe i feel immediately safer for having forced some sort of intervention, maybe he’s going to find her later and take my “kindness” out on her.
4) fuck the world.
then i ate some soup and drank a cucumber flavored soda water and saw that a local independent bookstore in berkeley posted a flyer that reads: “suffering from loss of library? buying and selling books at moe’s encourages young readers” (playing on the narrowly averted closure of 14 of 18 libraries in oakland) and i lost it.
this is my day.
