This is a Frankenstein post, pieces written at 3 different times and now combined into one. It probably will read funny. But I’m long overdue to share some of this.
“You’re too little to be so trill.” That’s what a friend said to me in 2005. I took it as a compliment.Â
I have a big mouth on me. I am a shit-talker by nature, and I’m good with words. Often, that’s enough to get people to leave me alone. In fact, it was almost always enough until, July 11, 2017, around 8:45 pm. At that time, words weren’t enough. At that time, I got punched in the face.
Prior to that moment, I had never been in fight. In fact, it’s probably fair to say I still haven’t been in a fight. But a few hours ago, a homeless man with wild eyes rolled up on me and a friend as we were standing outside a bar and said, in a tone both matter-of-fact and menacing as all hell,“I need a cigarette.”
By the time he finished his sentence he was already far too close to her, to us, but neither of us had a chance to be frightened yet. The threatening nature of his tone and his stance was not immediately apparent in the 2 seconds it took for him to state his claim. So she just said something normal like, “Oh, I’m sorry, no.” But in response, he grabbed her hand and stepped closer.
And that’s when I slapped his hand and said, “Don’t touch her.”
I probably shouldn’t have hit his arm, but even with the benefit of hindsight, I’m not sure I would do anything different. Regardless, I did it. He turned to me and said, “Oh, you wanna fight?”, squared up, and swung.
I don’t know if I leaned back or he had mediocre aim or what variety of things happened, but I’m fortunate that his knuckles hit me in the forehead hard enough to hurt, but he missed my eyes or my nose or my teeth. Nothing is broken. I don’t have a concussion. I do have a lump, much smaller now than it was a few hours ago. I do have a tender spot on my head, and I will probably have a bruise in the morning. But I’m fine.
I’m also probably a little drunk as I write this, and still in a bit of shock, and possibly even pumped on the super strong espresso I had around 2 pm. But I’m fine. So fortunate that I’m fine.
My friend and I passed a cop car as we hurried to a nearby bar to get some ice for my face. Neither of us wanted to stop them – that is, to report him – even though now I feel a little bad about that. Homeless dude seems like he’d be more than willing to punch someone else, so I hate that I could have stopped that from happening but didn’t. On the flip side, if the cops tried to talk to him or bring him in and he was still feeling crazy, he might have swung on them and ended up dead, in which case my nightmares would be far, far worse than I expect they will be tonight.
These things are complicated.
The amazing thing is, as previously stated, I’m fine. Definitely physically fine, most likely emotionally fine, too. And I now have this amazing story about how a homeless man punched me in the face in Tribeca, of all the fucking places in New York. As my friend said, I am a superhero. And I am that ride-or-die chick I always believed myself to be, for my friends. And for myself. We are women, and we are human. We are not fucking property, we are not museum exhibits, we are not toys. Don't FUCKING touch us.
Also, don’t tell my mama. I may not be scared of homeless men in the streets of New York City, but I might still be scared of her. And she will not like this at all.
But I am who she raised me to be, and apparently she raised me to be a badass.
The hits just keep coming.
Literally, this time. In addition to the tax and insurance issues I’m having, the flooded basement, the continued inexplicable failure of my uterus and associated never-ending tests, I actually got punched in the face. By a presumably homeless man in Tribeca, of all places. Fancy ass, well-lit Tribeca, where Jay and Bey had an apartment, where Robert Deniro lives. Two blocks from my job. Tribeca. Huh.
I am not coping with it all that well. Any of it. I hate being a grown-up, so I’m ignoring nearly all my responsibilities right now. But the assault – because that’s what it was, whether that feels like the correct label or not – is probably at the top of the list of Things I’m In Denial About (maybe second to the insurance stuff). My shrink thinks denial is not the best coping strategy, especially for something as layered as this. There’s the fear, the shock, the mixed feelings that led me not to involve the police, the anger, the relief that I wasn’t physically hurt badly, the fact that I was physically hurt at all, how this feels in the context of the work I do and the low-income, often mentally unstable, mostly people of color I serve, and probably more. There’s a lot, and I’m ignoring all of it.
This incident (getting punched), and what I wrote about it, has been in the forefront of my mind this week. What’s interesting to me is, I never did talk about it in therapy. I never did think more about how I feel about the fact that the man who hit me was like so many of our clients, or about what it means or doesn’t mean that I refused to call the police. Those things have faded into the background and, honestly, feel unimportant. But right now we are in the midst of a national, perhaps international, conversation about sexual assault and sexual harassment and how women are treated in the workplace, the streets, the world. And I remembered that part of my rage that night was related to the entitlement of this asshole to think he had the right to touch my friend, in public, on the street, and she would just acquiesce to his demands and, more importantly, that there would be no consequences. He was homeless, and probably mentally ill, but his initial behavior wasn’t so different from that of men everywhere. Behavior we ignore literally every day.
The punching me part was different, though. That’s something everyone can recognize, that’s something that people were ready and able to name as assault, even when I wasn’t. But he assaulted her, too. Those are the assaults that go unnamed, unnoticed.
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot, lately. How hard it is for so many men to appreciate what it is to navigate the world as a woman. How uncomfortable we are in so many situations, and how we’ve largely been taught – by the world, implicitly – that we should keep that discomfort private. How we adjust our lives, change our routes to work or within work, avoid meetings and conversations with certain people, warn other women where not to go and with whom not to speak, smile and laugh so as not to make a scene or draw more attention, or wear a scowl, dead-eyes, or headphones as a form of armor.
Because we know, more often than not, that what that homeless guy thought is accurate – there will be no consequences for a man’s catcalling us, making a suggestive comment at work, pressuring us to stay in a place we don’t feel comfortable, or yes, even touching us. As long as it’s just a pat on the arm, a squeeze of the shoulder, a hand on the lower back, how we feel about it doesn’t matter to anyone but us. That’s what we’ve learned, I think.
Many men think I’m (we’re) exaggerating and these things are harmless, until the thing rises to the level of a recognizable assault – obviously a “forcible rape” (or a punch in the face) would count, especially if it’s by a stranger, and maybe unwanted touching or particularly vulgar words, if the touch is to your genitals or the lewd comment comes from your boss. But short of that, it’s very difficult to convince people that these things are harms. They cause damage. They degrade a woman’s autonomy and sense of self, and chip away, bit by bit, at our conviction that we have a right to exist in peace.
One of the foulest things about slavery is that it is literally premised upon the idea that some people have no rights in their own bodies. A slave is property first, and a person second, if at all. Slaves had no choices, no control over their own lives. A slave could not be raped under the law, because the owners had the right to do whatever they wished with their property. Crimes against slaves – physical damage done to them at the hands of another – were treated as property crimes, wherein the criminal owed restitution not to the harmed slave, but to the slave’s owner. If people were rude, cruel, suggestive, or lewd towards a slave, the slave had no recourse, because a slave’s feelings didn’t matter. No one cares how a glass feels if you knock it over. Such concerns are reserved for humans.
When we ignore, belittle, and dismiss women’s experiences, their discomfort, concerns, their fears, we tell them that their right to self-determination, their right to control their own bodies, their right to security and safety, their right to themselves is subordinate to the right of others to treat them however they please, as long as those others don’t go so far as to penetrate them. It isn’t slavery, but it is oppression. And it’s not harmless.
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