I’m still shaking. Earlier tonight, I was supposed to meet Crazy Michael for a movie. We were going to co-ordinate the train and meet up at my local “EL” stop on Argyle. The thing is, Crazy Michael never called me, and so I decided to head over to the train in hopes of meeting up with him.

As I was standing on the platform waiting for the next train, a black man walked up the stairs onto the platform mumbling incoherently (I believe he was singing along to his CD player) walked into the glassed in area, pulled out his dick and started taking a piss. He was vocal about it, “ooohs”, “aaahs” and “damns” bellowed from him as he relieved himself on the platform. Once I realized what was happening, I moved further down the platform and jumped up to sit on a garbage bin lid to wait for the train without being forced to endure his vocal performance.

Once he finished, he proceeded to gather his belongings and headed in my direction. He had his fist out towards me as he approached, apparently looking for a “bump”, to which I replied, “Get away from me”. (Not the right thing to say I guess looking back)

He stopped, turned and looked at me with his glazed over eyes and started spewing expletives wondering why I wouldn’t give a brother a “bump”, asking aren’t we brothers and getting more and more agitated. I started to get nervous and offered a kindly, “Man, I don’t even know what a “bump” is” to which he replied “Are you that lame”? I thought for a minute about the best way to diffuse this and replied, “Yeah, I guess I am that lame” and shrugged my shoulders as if that would show him that I was merely a backwards country boy without much “street” knowledge.

Again, wrong tactic to take with a drunk, angry black man on a dark and deserted train platform. Here my recollection gets fuzzy cause it all happened so fast, he started swinging at me, pulling his punches before the made contact. I stood up from the garbage bin lid telling him that I wasn’t looking for trouble; I was just waiting for the train. He grabbed his hat off his head, threw it to the ground and dug deep into his pocket, mumbling about where is… I decided it was time to remove myself and headed towards the stairs followed quickly by my would be attacker on the opposite side of the billboard running down the center of the platform. He sped up to cut me off, hands still in his pocket digging for something (which I think was a knife because that’s what it sounded like he was saying). I doubled back and as he turned to meet me, I doubled back again and sprinted for the stairs taking them 2 or 3 at a time. He didn’t follow me down.

I ran with all my speed down the stairs into the station where I was greeted by an Asian man that was running into the station, having seen what was going on from the street below, asking if I was OK. I said yeah and we both alerted the station agent, gave a description of the guy, to which I added, he was the only guy up there. (The Asian man described him as a Ni… catching himself when he realized he was talking to a Black woman, corrected himself with Bla… then once again with African American)

Feeling foolish now for running from this guy and being protected by a woman, (mind you, she was taller and bigger than I so I shouldn’t have felt foolish) I left the station quickly then ran home, looking over my shoulder the entire way.

It brought back all my memories of conflicts in grade school and high school where physical violence was always the first answer. Why, in an age of civilization is there still this much random violence? Why are men taught to answer every criticism with fists? Why did it have to be a black man to further ingrain the very stereotypes I fight to avoid and push from my head daily. The stereotypes I was raised with, reinforced by media and peers, to the point of acknowledging there may be some truth to them, after all, stereotypes exist for a reason. They develop out of experience, shadowed by bigotry, re-enforced by observation.

My observation tonight solidified a certain bigotry into my fibre. Not about black people in general, more about specific black men, that dress like thugs, gangsta rappers, whatever you wish to call the look, and approach people with glazed over eyes looking to establish their ignorant excuse for dominance over another person.

Yes, I’m still shaking, but now that the immediate threat is gone, I’m shaking with anger that this individual could have had such a profound influence on my life had I not fled.