A few years ago I read an essay called Street Politics by a black woman named Jamal Sharif. In the essay she speaks of a refreshing experience where she is warmly greeted on the street by a man, but the man is not coming on to her in any way but to acknowledge her presence. She goes on to talk about the barriers that she has erected over the years to avoid confrontations with overly obnoxious - and mostly black - men (like the ones who threw batteries at her one day when she unknowingly failed to acknowledge them) and how this encounter threw her off guard. She ends the poem by telling the man thank you on behalf of herself and all other black women.

I suppose that many women have similar stories to tell about being harassed by a man simply for not being interested in having that man's kids. I still think that most young black women that I run into these days are unnecessarily rude. I was raised in the South with the simple understanding that if you make eye contact with somebody, you acknowledge them. This acknowledgement can be via a head nod, smile, or verbal greeting, but it's just common courtesy to do something. When exercising these sensibilities, more often than not I'm greeted by either silence or audible disdain. When this happens, I try to think of Ms. Sharif's essay and let it go.

Today as I was leaving my building I walked past a very attractive young woman - a black woman. Here is our conversation:

AYBW: Hello
Rashid: Hey, how are you?
AYBW: I'm fine how about yourself?
Rashid: No complaints, just enjoying the day. You have a good afternoon.
AYBW: Thanks, you too!

And we both went our separate ways. I felt good walking out of my building. Not because I just got a smidgen of play from a lovely young lady, but because I had bonded with another human being - if only for a minute. It was enough to reinforce my thought that I was brought up the right way.

When I first got my job at GSU, I lived in Riverdale, a suburb south of Atlanta. This meant that I had to make a daily commute in the notoriously harsh Atlanta traffic. One day as I was coming home from work, I thought about the fact that I was burning an hour of my life every day behind the wheel of my car. I looked around at these other people in their cars - talking on cell phones, snacking on sandwiches, bobbing their head to music - all paying varying degrees of attention to the road. I remember wondering about them and what little disposable stories they have to tell. What kind of music is he listening to? Why does she smirk so slyly? I also remember thinking... is my time so trivial that I can burn 5 hours of it every week sitting in traffic?

The next week I started riding the MARTA train to work. I drove to one of the south side stations and rode into the city. While on the train, I was able to gather my thoughts, sketch out my day, read a little, stretch my legs... and talk to people. I never had any ultra-deep conversations about multiverses or dark matter, just pointless chit chat about the weather, the weekend, the music on my walkman, and the mystery of her smile. I felt so invigorated going into work after getting off of the train. Even when there was nobody to talk to, or nothing to do, there was always the ride. Looking through the window as the train and schoolyards float by without caring what's in front of me or worrying about the log jam of traffic up ahead. I pitied the people who were confined to their cars. Little did I know, providence would further emancipate me from my steel cage of solitude.

Right after I made the decision to move downtown, two things happened. My driver’s license was revoked (that actually happened a year earlier but it's a whole posting in itself) and my car broke down. The close proximity of my moving date caused me to not really care about either, since I was going to be within walking distance from my job anyway. I spent the next month bumming rides from the public transportationless suburbs and counting the days until my life was concentrated in one area.

Now here I am.

I don't ride the train to work anymore because I walk. My walk to work has been as short as two blocks but has mostly been seven to twelve. Right now it's seven. I find it even more stimulating than the train. It's like a running start on the day. Most important is that I am able to interact with a large number of people as I make my sojourn. Again, it's never anything deep, rarely do our conversations last longer than ten seconds - it's just the feeling. That feeling however, does come with its caveats.

When I tell women about how they need to lighten up when a man just wants to say hi, they go into super-defense mode. I'm talking Derek Jeter throwing behind his back to get Jason Giambi at home with a dash of Ozzie Smith, Bill Mazeroski, Brooks Robinson, Andruw Jones, and Johnnie Cochran defense. "You don't know what it's like to be a woman with all of these men all over you! You'll never know!" yadda yadda. They are not as right as they think they are. While I only have to deal with the occasional proposition from the homosexual male, I am approached daily by the homeless one.

On any given day I walk past at least ten homeless people. The straightest path to my job goes right through a couple of spots that are highly frequented by the homeless. After living downtown for five years, I know pretty much all of their strategies. The main one is aimed squarely at my southern sensibilities: they make eye contact, say hello, wait for a response, and then ask for money. Oh my God I was so change-less my first six months working downtown. Everyone that asked I was eager to give change to. I think that it happens to most charitable people who have to deal with the barrage for the first time, but something always happens...

For me it was a combination of things. First I went through a phase where everybody asking me for change had the distinctive tang of alcohol on their breath. This jibed right in with the off-handed remarks that some of my co-workers would give about the homeless, basically saying that they were going to do nothing but buy drugs or booze with it. I'm sucker enough to still keep giving after that, but then one day...

This man approached me asking for change. I casually looked at him and shook my head - I really didn't have change. He jumped up in my face and shouted "FUCK YOU NIGGA!!!" Yeah he was black, but it really wouldn't have mattered as this cat was obviously deranged and in need of medical help. I guarantee you ladies that an aggressive man with bad breath is nothing like having somebody who hasn't brushed their teeth or taken a shower in a month and with about 3 hours of fresh defecation in their pants pushing you around while screaming at the top of their lungs. Fortunately a few of his friends came up and restrained him and I was able to proceed without any real incident. To throw salt in the wound, I had no less than two more confrontations like this (physical contact) within the next few weeks. Either something was in the water or I was a marked man. It all ended with this white dude screaming "NIGGER! NIGGER! NIGGER!" at the top of his lungs when I was having a particularly bad day. One day I'll talk about my feelings toward that word but for now just know that I didn't do anything stupid because he was in the same boat as the first guy.

What do you do?

I started taking the long way to work. I still couldn't escape the realities of my surroundings as every now and then a fresh pile of feces would show up in the doorway to the building where I work. There were also certain alley ways where the stench of urine lingered like that lightly sour smell after a ferocious female orgasm. I thought about my childhood in Macon Ga. I started the first grade at an predominately black school but was transferred to a predominately white one because my old one didn't have a gifted program. I went through so much abuse there in the beginning. I remember crying in my grandmother's arms because I hated coming to school. I remember doing the loner thing for a while to escape it, but seeing the racial slurs in the bathrooms and on the desks. Just like the stench in the alley way. My dad sat me down and gave me the proper perspective. He told me that these people were sick with the disease of racism. He told me that their treatment of me was a manifestation of this disease. He told me that when a sick man vomits on you, you don't get mad at him because he is a sick man, you pray for his recovery.

There was nothing metaphorical about these people on Broad street. They were physically and mentally sick. They were also four out of countless others who would say "thank you" and "God bless you" when I would tell them that I had nothing. Similar to McKibben Lane Elementary School, I was being harassed by the exception and not the rule. I missed the faces of the rule on the way to work. Maybe it was because it put me in a more appreciative frame of mind before I went to work? Maybe it was because the walk was shorter? I'd like to think that it was because even though they mainly wanted money from me, we still had a bond generated from our daily interaction, and I felt its absence.

There was still the alcohol thing though. I felt really crappy about subsidizing somebody's addiction and possibly contributing to what is keeping them on the street. I got over this one day when a female friend of mine was going through my freezer. She saw a container of Haagen Dazs Butter Pecan ice cream in the freezer and immediately began to drill me on it since, according to my own creed, I don't eat nuts. Well I don't regularly eat nuts (they are terrible on your intestines). I tell people that I don't because I want to maintain personal control over any exceptions. Some people don't respect these things unless you dictate them in black and white terms. With that said, I have this weakness for Haagen Dazs Butter Pecan Ice Cream. I love it. Yes, it's a vice in direct contradiction to my stated diet but sometimes you just have to splurge.

On the Friday of the following week I was leaving the office and I saw a homeless guy, to who I used to normally give change, sitting in a doorway drinking a brew. It was a beautiful summer evening on Broad Street and the dusty sun rays were washing through the huge trees that line the street. I could see that he was enjoying every drop of his slow and calculated sips. As I walked home I thought, who am I fooling here? Did I really expect these people to be able to take my thirty-seven cents and turn their lives around? When I saw this guy drinking this beer I saw a man fully enjoying a fleeting moment of his life. He has no home and no pride, but he had that moment to enjoy life in a manner not much unlike millions of other men getting off of work around this same time. Knowing the possibility of giving one person the chance to transcend his social status like that was enough to get the change flowing from my pockets again.

Now I try to speak to every homeless person that I see. I normally don't have change and every now and then I get chastised but it's cool. I do the same thing with women and get very similar results. It's all right though, because there are guys out there who give nothing to the homeless and totally disrespect women on the street. I have accepted my place on the other side of the street-interaction continuum to balance the equation. In the end we're all just people, and even though some of us may be mourned more than others when we die, chances are that nothing will change as a result. The sun will still be 96 million miles away, humans will still hate other humans for innumerable reasons, and Baseball will still be the truest microcosm of life. Why not enjoy each other while we're here?