So here I am walking. Walking with purpose. Wearing a uniform. It's late afternoon. The winter sun beaming. I'm walking and smoking. Just off of work. The day was hard, in terms of people. The bones shaken. The uniform wet under the arms and crotch. And here I am at the transit hub, just off the bus, heading for the train, walking straight and fast so as not to miss the Northbound, when I hear it:

"Ay bruh! Ay bruh!"

Too bad, I'm walking. Walking and smoking. In no way does my plan entail stopping and listening, especially to strangers. My boots are heavy, my muscles compressed--my burlap sack of a stomach, noisy. The tension in my trapezius is pulling at the back of my neck to slowly unveil a headache the way curtains in old movie theaters slide apart to reveal a screen.

The cigarette is not very good. It's the day's ninth. They get progressively worse. Plus I'm walking, laboriously enough that to be striding any harder I'd no longer be walking. No cigarette can be good this way. In fact all a lit cigarette can be in this circumstance is sad.

"Ay 'scuse me sir!"

It's coming from behind me and to the right, from a man standing still. Positioned on a clock, I'd be at 11, and he'd be at about a 5. I have to turn around; it's a psychological imperative. And before I do I already know what he wants. So without breaking trajectory I turn and walk backwards, and face his direction, brandishing a fresh loosey, motioning for him to come get it if he wants it. I am walking with purpose. He will have to catch up with me, and if he does I will give him what he wants.

And you know what his move is, this standing-still, smokeless man? He slaps air with his palms at me like saying "Forget it,", and crinkles his face up like I've ruined his day; as though I have trampled on his rose garden. So I keep right on walking.

Off in the distance: the Northbound approaching. My legs are heavy and stiff like a tinman's. Sweat streams are falling down out of my hairline, beading and pooling where neck meets my collar. And that's when it hits me: the gall of the man! Is it fair of him to expect of me, Total Stranger, to stop what I'm doing, forsake where I'm  going, put aside my immediate needs and desires, in order to backtrack, deliver him charity, and only thereafter freely reembark?

But wait just a minute, hey, maybe he's hard-up. As long and depleting as my day has been, maybe his has been worse, such as he's unemployed and had door after door slammed in face all day long. Maybe he visited a brother in prison and couldn't stop stopping from coming apart. Maybe his mom has a clubbed foot and he's just bought her tap shoes. These are the things that I tell to myself.

The Northbound is braking and shushing the station, so I pause and rotate and the guy is still there. I begin walking toward him. We make eye contact; and I'm sure he will set out to meet me halfway. But hell no, he doesn't. He stays firmly planted, just stands flatfoot watching me close all the distance. I want to turn back, to run for the train, but my decision's been made, my trajectory rerouted.

I don't want to do it, but I just have to now.

An arm's length away, I present him the loosey, a concessional, sweat-slickened smile on my face. And the moment his hand's out, all receptive and shrewd, I pull up and kick the man dead in his balls. And when I say I kick him, I mean I really kick him, with my steel-booted foot, with a force that means "Don't ever procreate. I don't want more of you. Your lineage ends here you ungrateful @!%^."

He's there on the ground -- fetal nut-grab position. I let go the loosey and it plunks off his brow, rolls to halt in a puddle of spit. Just like that. And again I start walking. Walking with intention, with purpose, toward the Northbound.

RATE THIS CHAPTER!