nobody needs nobody

I was 19 and out on the yard with a group of girlfriends after dinner in the cafeteria.  We were having a good time, watching people and chatting when two random guys wandered up.  They weren’t students, but we were an open campus, rife for those seeking to prey on naïve college girls.  They started talking to us, and it was all good at first, but somehow, the atmosphere changed, and one of the guys singled me out to talk reckless to.  I am unable to pinpoint why it began, but my memory insists that it was unprovoked and out of the blue.

I remembered foremost feeling bewildered.  It was like locking eyes with a big ass crunk stray dog on your way to the corner store to get a honey bun and a Coke.  You really don’t want no parts of the shit, but it chose you, so you gotta deal.  So what do you do when every option your mind presents to you seems faulty and unwise?  I tried to wave the situation off, but dude kept on hoing and bitching me, so I started hoing and bitching him back.  He walked away, and I thought it was over, so I resumed a shaky conversation with my friends, but after a few minutes, he came back, reinforced.

            “Mane, you see this?  Red, got a big ass moose mouth.”

            I’m like, “Nigger, why your gums look like that?  Your teeth must be having a period.”

            “That mouth so big look like you could swallow like two dicks at the same time, Red…”

The worse thing for a college age black woman to be was a dick-sucker, and for him to say some crap like that--I couldn’t even form the words to express my embarrassment.  It was then that one of the girls I was with stood up and said, ‘Fuck this shit.  You not gone be disrespecting my girl like this.  How you gone be disrespecting a woman like that?’ 

Relief flooded over me.  It felt like the cavalry had arrived, and these bitches I regularly towed to Wal-Mart and the Palm Beach club hadn’t really left me out there like that.  After my girl said something, dude shut up immediately; he even my badded me or something to that effect.  I still love and respect her for that.  Still, the incident made me feel hurt, embarrassed, exposed.  Maybe my ass did look like his grandmother’s church pocketbook.  However, some things happen in dramatic fashion in order to shock you into the awareness of some major lesson(s) in life.  And forever when you think of that event, you’re like: whoops, I learned that lesson, and I never have to go through that again.

My first lesson was how dangerous silence is.  I am thankful that there was a peaceful conclusion to this incident, but things could have played out in a myriad of more frightening ways.  Because nothing is so dangerous to a woman than a weak man in an imaginary position of power. Dude’s friend didn’t say a word, and for the most part, my girls were silent. I know at least two other women who have gone through this exact experience with a man, and we’ve discussed the reason why we were left out there alone.  It came down to: to speak up for another was to sacrifice a position of safety, to assume the position of the victim.  If I stay out of it, I can keep my fragile hold on safety.  On a greater scale, this is the attitude that causes so much suffering in the world.  But an unchecked threat against one is a threat against all, and this is in all things—a man picking on a woman, a government picking on citizens, a country picking on other lands.

I also learned it takes unified action to rise up against a bully.  More than one person has to say this is some bullshit, and that is often all it takes.  The friend who came to my rescue  is everything that could be right about the world, the representation of the greatest among us.  At some point, you have to stand up, even in your fear, even in your uncertainty, even if it’s for somebody else. 

Maybe I was wrong to expect backup in the situation.  Maybe I was wrong for trying to defend myself at all.  Maybe I should have run at the first sign of trouble.  Maybe I was trying to make myself into another black bitch that got what she deserved for talking too much.  Even still, I thought there were understood rules of female friendship.  You come back with the girls you left with.  You watch people’s drinks.  You have people’s backs.  And that brought my final lesson was that if you don’t know the bitches you’re with will ride for you, you ain’t got no business being nowhere with them.      

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