Met: Ace

Met: Ace

“I just want you to know you got off kinda light with what you got, you know what I’m sayin’? I’m pretty sure I had a pistol on me that day.”


When I started this blog oh, so many weeks ago, I decided that to keep myself committed to this thing would be the biggest challenge. I generally tend to hate things very much and constantly find it very difficult to be dedicated to them. Besides, in this fast-paced world of soda and vidja games and shiny whosits, someone of my importance can’t usually be bothered to, you know, do things.
So I decided that if I miss a week, I’d need to recount a story about how I’d met someone in the past. Technically, a less than successful story about how I’d met someone in the past. I’ll say that with my busy, go-go world of being ill for the past three weeks, you may be in for a few of these.
So, without further delay, on with a new feature that I probably won't continue to call:

Having Met People Was Easy

Ace

Albany Park, Chicago
August, 2008

Cost: Sleepless nights, Selling friends out without a second thought, Free

There is a certain rage that builds within a writer and/or office worker. Putting up with corporate nonsense for money coupled with the weighty, important, capitalized role of Writer can build a furious anger within a man. An anger that can reach levels best described as impotent. It’s this intense, but ultimately pointless rage that makes that guy in khakis stammer ferociously at an underpaid checkout person about how the price on the loofah sponge was clearly marked as $8.99, even though it’s now ringing up as $10.99.
It’s this inconsequential wrath that so often results in the phrases, “Well, what am I supposed to do about it?” or “This is great. Just great!” or “I think I’m going to have to speak to your manager.”
I was in just such a state as I walked from an El’ stop to a Chinese food place on an otherwise nice enough August day. So, when a younger gentleman was approaching me, walking the opposite way, on my side of the sidewalk, I didn’t budge. My thinking was that if American roadways or The Goonies have taught us anything, folks, it’s that you keep to the right, and this fellow was pooping right in the face of those beloved characters and roadways.
So I didn’t move when we passed.
And we got somewhat close to bumping into each other. Very somewhat close.
After I’d taken a few steps away from this near-miss, a sense of smug satisfaction swelling in my cold, angry heart, I heard him say “Uh, hello?” with an altogether different brand of anger. One might call it a "threatening" or “real” anger. Instead of walking on (I had earphones in, I could have pretended not to hear him), I decided that a confrontation with a stranger in the city of Chicago was in order.
I turned around and said “Hi there!” I was going for a cool, disaffected sarcasm, but ended up sounding more like some sort of demented children’s clown. It didn’t help that my voice went up an octave. I didn’t get a very good look at this guy while passing him (what with the blinding, goofy rage and all), but now that I had turned around I saw that he was maybe 20, much shorter and skinnier than I am, with messy hair and paint spattered clothes. The word scrappy is almost too appropriate here. I also noted that he currently had himself a case of the crazy eyes – wide, looking me up and down at an alarming rate, and not even the consideration of blinking. The words “Hi there” were just a second out of my mouth, but I was already starting to think that this might be a mistake.
“Are you blind,” asks the scrappy, crazy-eyed young man.
I’m still trying for 'cool', but still only attaining 'cheerful, squeaky doofus' when I retort “No. Are you?” And then I turn and walk away, somehow thinking that this will settle it. I guess at the time I assumed he’d just shrug and, confirming that he was not blind, get on with his day. Or, at best, he’d misunderstand what I’d said and confuse my words with an actual, not fucking stupid retort and then break down and cry. Hell, maybe he'd even apologize.

Shockingly, he didn’t do either of those things.
“Hey yo, hold up, dude.”
I turn and see this guy ambling crazily my way; clearly the crazy has spread from his eyes to the rest of his body. And even knowing better from common sense and some past experiences, somehow I was still intent on arguing with him about this stupid situation.
“I don’t know who you think you are,” he starts, “But you don’t disrespect me, dude. You understand me? You don’t know me, all right? I will knock a motherfucker out, I swear to god.”
And then, on the ‘I swear to god’ part… he crossed himself.
I had my mouth open to say something, but that made me close it. I mean, he Catholic-style crossed himself. For really real, he crossed himself. And despite the crazy eyes and crazy walk, and general crazy air about this stranger, it wasn’t until that moment it dawned on me, full force, and I thought to myself “Holy shit, this guy is crazy.”
So I quickly mumbled an apology, trying to save some face by being sarcastic, but erring on the side of 'I'm about to cry' just so I might be able to get the fucking fuck away from this incredibly angry, incredibly crazy kid.
“I’m sorry if I bumped you.”
“All right, then.”
And he crazily ambled away.
And I went to the Chinese food place to get some sesame chicken and crab Rangoon. But after I calmed down a bit, I started to feel kind of bad about the whole thing. I’d antagonized this guy because I’d had a shitty day. I could’ve moved a foot to my left, the Goonies probably would’ve understood. So, I decided that if I ever saw this guy again, I would apologize, half thinking that there was no way we’d run into each other again.


Then we ran into each other again. A week later. At a garage sale.

I was set to move that October, and I needed things for the new apartment. So my friend Josh and I went down the street to a garage sale a friend of his was hosting in an alley behind their house. We weren’t there for five minutes when the guy rode up on his bike (non-crazily). True to my hastily put together word, I walked over to talk to him.
“Hi, I don’t know if you remember me,” I started.
“Yeah, I remember you,” he interrupted, a little coarsely.
“Right. Well, I wanted to talk to you about –”
“Yeah. Let's go over here, let me holler at you.” And he started walking his bike out of the alley and around the corner, well out of sight of Josh or anyone at all.
“I don’t know that we need to –” I think I was going to say ‘go to a second location,’ but he was already slipping around the corner, so I followed him. I did my best to try to rationalize this: He just wants to holler, Andy, just a simple hollering atcha. Sure he seems a little angry just now, but he certainly didn’t seem 'stabbingly' angry.
I turn the corner and he was still sitting on his bike, arms folded across his chest. I started to say something that would lead to an apology, but he interrupts me again, giving me a stern, just shy of crazy, look.
“Look dude, I don’t care if you was drunk or whatever, you gotta know how to handle yourself.” He’s calmer than the last time we spoke, but there’s definitely anger in his voice. “I just want you to know you got off kinda light with what you got, you know what I’m sayin’? I’m pretty sure I had a pistol on me that day.”
Pretty sure.
“And besides that, dude, you had your girl with you and I didn’t want to humiliate you or nothin’.”
Wait.
“But, I don’t have a girlfriend,” I say.
“Well whoever was with you –” He shoots back, impatiently.
“This was last week, over by the Chinese place,” I point, helpfully.
“I know who you are dude.” He seems to think I’m trying to fool him, and it’s only making him angrier. I wonder if he has a pistol on him this day, and whether he knows or not. “Look, if you were high, or whatever, that don’t excuse disrespecting people, you know what I’m saying?”
“I really think you have me confused with someone else. This happened last week, around 6:00,” I point again, more emphatically “Over there, by the Chinese food place. I sort of bumped into you.”
“Oh,” he looks at me again, closer. Suddenly his face shifts and he chuckles, his voice softening, “Oh, right. I thought you was this other, dude.”
I laugh too, still nervous. “Nope. I’m not.”
“I thought you was this other dude, I saw him over on Western last week, walking with his girl.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I was on my bike and this guy was walkin’ with his girlfriend or whatever, and he does this,” He raises his fists and shoves his upper body forward giving the universal sign for I’m starting some shit with you. “So I stop and I’m like ‘you got something to say, dude,’ and he’s like ‘no’ so I look around and see this like, brick, right? And I wait for him and his girl to walk down one of them side streets, right? And then I’m like –“
He makes a motion like he’s throwing a football. But as if they were throwing that football at Hitler, or a physical representation of Cancer, or something much worse than a drunk Chicagoan who did something stupid this one time. He grunts in to replicate the effort.
“I threw the brick in his face and rode off, you know? Like I said, this dude’s girl was there, so I didn’t start nothin’. Stupid motherfuckers gettin’ drunk and doin’ stupid shit, you know?”
“Yeah,” I say weakly, “They’re pretty, uh, pretty bad.”
“But no,” He says, sincerely, “I remember you, you were a man about it so, it’s squashed, you know?”
He shakes my hand, and I see that he’s covered with paint again; I notice that it’s in his hair, and on the lighter he uses to light his cigarette as we both say we were having bad days that day. It’s just a detail, really, that he’s a painter, but like everything else, it doesn’t give me an insight into who he is, or what kind of life he leads. Later, discussing everything with Josh, we both consider upbringing, or gang related territorialism, or the fact that he’s shorter, skinnier to have something to do with the aggression, but we can’t really understand someone who is ready to fight over bumping into a stranger or throw a brink a drunk asshole’s face.
He tells me that his name is Anthony, but that everyone calls him Ace. We both say that we'd been having bad days the last time we met that he'd lost a family member. He asks me where I live, and I tell him the general area. He tells me that the place where I live used to overrun with gangs, and that it got a little better, but that now a bunch of ‘yuppie assholes’ are building condos all over the place.
“Fuck them," he nearly spits, "Stupid fucking condos, you know?”
I’m living with my friends Josh and Becky (neither yuppies nor assholes) in their condo. I’ve just walked from there. Josh is a scant 10 yards away, but I don’t hesitate, “Yeah, fuck them. Bunch of jerks.” I shake my head.
I mention that I haven’t seen too much evidence of gang activity around the neighborhood, but he tells me it still happens a lot. He talks about the Stones and the Kings and that there’s still shootings and muggings all over the place. He tells me to watch my back.
In the middle of this his girlfriend walks by pushing a stroller and tells Ace that she’s going inside to make lunch. He lets her know he’ll be there in a minute and bends over to play with his baby for a second. After they’ve walked away, he points to a building and tells me it’s where his girlfriend lives. He tells me that the buzzer for her apartment is second from the bottom. He tells me that if I ever have any trouble with gangs, any trouble at all, that I should buzz his girlfriend and he’ll help me out.
And we shake hands, and he bikes around the corner, after his girlfriend and baby.
And I see him a few times after that, riding his bike down the street, waiting for a train, and I smile and wave, or shake his hand. I’m pretty sure he remembers who I am, but I make an effort to be extra friendly so that there’s no confusion. I never really had much of an opportunity or reason to talk to him after that day, and now that I’ve moved out of the neighborhood I don’t suppose I ever will.