The Martlet

I was biking to work down 41st Street on a grey Vancouver Tuesday. I cruised into a crosswalk in front of a guy making a right-hand turn.

He bleated his annoyance at me with his horn. Without even thinking, I let my arm trail casually behind me, with my middle finger in the air.

Ten minutes later I was standing at a bus stop when the guy reappeared. He’d somehow turned around on Granville Street (no easy-task during morning rush hour) and parked at the sushi joint right behind me.

“Hey,” he yelled.

Though I’d already forgotten the incident, I quickly remembered as he stormed towards me. He was bigger than me, a six-foot snarling construction worker dude wearing paint-speckled khakis and a pair of steel-toed work boots.

“Hey asshole, you gonna finger me now?” he asked.

If I’d taken a moment to think about it, I probably wouldn’t have responded the way I did. He loomed over me, but without a pause I said, “Yeah. Go fuck yourself,” and stabbed my middle finger towards his face.

The guy responded by palming my head like a basketball and dribbling it off the concrete sidewalk. He climbed on top of me, dug his knee into my neck, and punched me repeatedly in the back of the head.

“I’m sick and tired of people telling me to fuck myself! All I’m doing is driving to work,” he barked.

Then, he lifted my head and smacked it back down on the concrete. My sunglasses snapped and dug into my temple, little shards of plastic stabbing tiny holes in my face. Luckily, I was wearing a toque.

“Get off me,” was all I could muster.

The guy banged my head against the ground a couple more times, and my vision started to blur. Nearby, a gaggle of old Asian women clucked in panic, but no one intervened. Nobody said anything. Traffic kept hurtling by.

“Say you’re sorry, you little bitch,” the guy said.

“Fuck you,” I spat.

The guy punched me in the ribs a couple times and continued applying direct pressure to my head. The sidewalk sand-papered my face.

“Okay fine, I’m sorry. Get off me!” I yelled.

Maybe he was satisfied with this answer, or maybe he just realized that he was kicking the shit out of someone in broad daylight. But for whatever reason, with one more smack across the back of the head, the guy lugged himself off me and stalked back to his car.

“Have a good day, asshole,” he said.

The entire exchange probably took less than 30 seconds. I pulled myself off the ground, shaking. I leaned against the bus stop. I looked at the other people standing nearby, all of whom avoided my eyes.

A bus pulled up and most of them climbed on. After setting my bike in the rack, I followed the passengers up the steps and paid my bus fare. I stood at the front, my hand looped in one of the rings, and felt waves of electric energy pulsing through my body.

As I stood there, I felt hyper-aware of everything around me — the air I was breathing, the clunking shift of the bus gears. My head was throbbing, my back ached, and a small line of blood was smeared along my cheek. Then it occurred to me. This was one more experience I didn’t have to be afraid of. Sure, it hurt. Sure, it was scary. But trembling there, looking out the window, I definitely felt more alive.

As it turned out, I didn’t press charges. Sometimes I wonder where that guy is, and whether or not he makes a habit of randomly beating up people in the street. Sometimes, I feel sorry for him; other times, I feel angry.

But while I stood in the aisle of that bus, I mostly felt grateful.