Hey buddy (name withheld for anonymity but you know who you are)
I've been thinking a lot of how you've been feeling; the struggles you've had with visiting the other "neighborhoods" as it were. The feeling of not being welcome; of not being trusted; of not belonging. I have felt the same a great deal at times and it reminded me of something that happened back in the day. I'm trying to remember the conversations exactly. Some of it's verbatim; some of it's me trying to relay what went down from memory but it's all the real deal. So bear with me if you can.
....One summer night me and three of my friends needed to escape Detroit for a while; go somewhere where the lawns were big, the sidewalks had no cracks, the parking lots weren't full of needles and people were safe (yeah right). Anyway one guy had a car, this beat up piece of crap Dodge, and the other was flush with a $20.00 So we set off - the four of us (two guys, two girls) - to buy some Micky Dees and have a picnic on the street curbs of a magical place on the border of Motown where life was as different as day was to night.
We sat on the curb of a street not far from the fabulous mansions of people with surnames like Vanderbilt. We sat under the stars, quietly eating our burgers and dreaming the dreams of innercity kids surrounded by such staggering wealth.
Anyway, one of the guys looks across the street to this unbelievable home with like 20 rooms fronting the road and says, "Man it must be really sumthin livin in one of those. No worries about nuthin,man! Just spendin your dough and sailin on your friggin yacht."
The other guy with us looked at him and laughed and said, "Sheeyacht! Ya think these people don't got no troubles, dude? I guarantee ya somewhere in here there's some auto baron coming through the door, grabbing a bottle of scotch, and yellin to his kid to stand there, that's he's had a bad day at work and wants to take it out on the kid's face."
He shook his head and added, "Money don't got nuthin to do with that s**t, man!"
We all bobbed our heads and had some fries and started talking about what we'd do if we had us big cash. I'm sure it was the usual crap everybody else thinks of. Big pools shaped liked Maui and rooms with closets that you could live in for a year.
So there we were - four poor kids from nowhereville - sitting on a rich man's street curb, taking in the stars, eating food and feeling generous towards humanity.
And that's when The Boys showed up. They came cruising around the corner and pulled straight up to us, got out of their car, looked us all up and down and said (and this is verbatim) "What are
YOU doing here? Your kind don't belong here."
(In case you're wondering, that's cop-ese for "What are you white trash no good drug-dealing scum doing on the other side of 8 Mile? Don't you got some gas stations to rob?")
The guy that'd just stuck up for the rich people looked at the cop and said, "Hey Off'sir! We ain't botherin nobody. We're just sittin here talkin, man."
The cops said something about how there'd been a couple of robberies in the area in the past week.
And my two guy friends came back with stuff like. "Aww gimme a break! Those houses have state of the art alarm systems. How the f**k are poor white trash like us gonna break into 'em?"
That kind of thing. Pretty dang stupid come back when I think of it now.
Anyhoo...the long and short of it? My two guy friends ended up face down on the hood of the cruiser, legs spread in the customary position, being searched for whatever. The cops then "invited" the guys to get in the back of the patrol car and take a little ride to the station. After our two guy friends were safely "ensconsed" in the back of the squad car, the cops escorted us two girls back to our measly Dodge, put us in the back of it, ogled us and said (again verbatim), "You ladies stay put okay? We're going to take your men to the station, check 'em out and if it turns out they did something wrong, we're coming back for you."
I.e. We got the power over you south of 8 Mile tramps. Don't forget it.
It occurred to both me and the other girl as we sat in the car waiting for the cops to make good on their threat to us, that we'd only been in the neighborhood sitting on the curb for maybe....
maybe....ten minutes tops when The Boys arrived. So that meant somebody in one of those grand homes looked out their massive leaded-glass windows, saw us white trash sitting on the curb next to our rusted ghetto cruiser and called the Po'lice on account of we was poor so we was surely up to something.
You know how us government cheese folk are. You can't turn your back on us for one second. We'll steal your house, your dog and your size 6 skivvies.
Sigh.....
An hour or so later our "men" were returned to us and we all drove away, laughing and saying stuff like, "That'll teach us man. Us white trash gotta know our place. Only curb we're sittin on's the one where you duck when dude's drive past. Lesson learned (word deleted)."
Ah well....we shouldn't have been there to begin with. But I'll forgive us for that. We were young and still full of notions of equality.
So, here's what I learned from that, buddy. You sit on the curb in someone else's neighborhood, trying to take the world in, get some rest, have yourself some french fries and maybe aim at seeing things from the other guy's perspective. Because deep down you realize everybody's got troubles, everbody's got a story to tell, and just 'cuz you live in a clapboard piece of doo-doo and someone else lives in a stucco palace don't make their life any easier.
And then...right then when you're feeling some empathy.....the "cops" show up to throw you out because somebody in one of those homes was scared; afraid for their lives.
They don't want to know you because then they might have to know themselves. You're a walking reminder of how life can be when someone steps outside their comfort zone and comes down to the street below.
It's all about I don't want to know you. I don't want to sympathize. I don't want to see that maybe there's a reason you're who you are. That maybe there's a reason you've been where you've been. That maybe - just like me - the circumstances were set out for you right from the friggin start and you're simply doing the best you can with what you've been handed.
We never ventured across 8 Mile like that again. We got the message. Our kind weren't welcome.
Funny thing is though. That one guy who said that about money not having anything to do with abuse? He ended up being pretty dang successful. I'm only hoping he wasn't ashamed of where he came from. I'm only hoping he wasn't standing at his window one night looking down at the trash and calling The Boys to take it out for him.
I hope not.
Don't know if that story helped you but feel free to post anyways.
Wishing everybody a curb to rest on, a warm night sky full of stars, a bag of french fries with extra salt and the peace to enjoy it all in.