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7 & 1/2 Acres |
2003-05-10 - 10:13 a.m. I'm not kidding, I had to hold it back in or I was afraid I would outright sob watching X Men 2 last night. I loved it--right from the start and I trusted it--like the way I trust Micheal Moore. This movie was great. Yesterday, Frances told me about how the other day she saw this dude pinching his girlfriend's cheek in Walmart. I was out in the truck. He was pinching her hard and laughing she said and the girl was trying to get him to stop. I hear things like this sometimes and I just wanted to turn the truck around and drive back to Siler City, find that boy and kick his ass. I mean, tear that fucker up. Frances told me too, that her brother has been hanging around her parents' house alot--even when they're gone (he's long been banned this way, but guess that's forgotten). I think there are few times that I've felt a rage against somebody as I do toward him. I've told him to his face, I've kicked him off their property when he was drunk, I've hauled his ass to the hospital to dump him in order to remove him from her aunt's property and all of this hasn't done a lick of good. Like, let's say, I was in Walmart and saw that fella pinching his girlfriend. And, I did cool it down, said excuse me and put my arm around the fella's neck buddy like and walked away with him from the girl to whisper in his ear that I'd rip his nuts off and lay them next to the Mounds bar in the candy aisle if he touched her again--like let's say this happened. It would of been a momentary thing--and thats all. One time, one sunny Sunday afternoon I was hanging out with these two friends at Dupont Circle. We were hanging out on the lawn watching all the folks and boys on their bikes when I watched this big black dude, position himself for this gay white boy on his bike. When the boy rode by, the dude swept out his elbow and clocked the guy in the face and right off the bike. The dude jumped on the bike and started to ride away while his cohort slammed the gay fella a few more times, but who managed to grab the bike and be dragged along, fighting in all his smallness for his possession--his bike. The thief (let's call him that for clarity's sake) managed to break free and started to ride off. I didn't think but ran at a diagnol and was able to tackle him off the bike. He and I jumped up and he grabbed the bike and shouting again and again, "This is my bike, man." Jumped back on it and made his get away. His words made me pause. I would have stopped him otherwise. His words and the fact that he was black, and that the stomped fella was white and gay. For a second there, with him shouting that, with all us white folk around, I thought is this his bike. Though, I clearly saw the whole thing happen and knew it wasn't. I could only do something as long as I was doing it from a place of intuitive assessment, judgement, action. When the fella said it was his bike, the situation became complex and a whole history of injustice, racisim, homophobia plopped right down in front of me and I could no longer do anything. He rode away. Mark, Frances brother, discreetly pulls steaks from the freezer and cooks them on the grill when her parents are gone. Them special forces troops raid a school of mutant children. It's a female fighter pilot that shoots the mutant's jet down. Stryker gets it in the end--but he's only part of the real threat, which is Washington and people's attitudes and beliefs. Us against them, right vs. wrong, and that there are casualties on all sides. It's all muddled but boy it was good to hold back a sob in the movies.
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