I wonder if the people that attend John's Hopkins University even check the crime bulletin board. It's active. Drew and I were driving. One night about ten Drew was driving down Woodbourne after picking me up from work. He was about to make a left turn and turned the wheel a little to prep for it, so he could go when things were clear. At that moment this big black man came speeding by the driver's side on a bike, completely heedless, in a very big hurry, and crashed into the fender. He went flying, but was soon up and had his bike working when Drew rolled down his window and said, "Hey, why were you going so fast?"

I can see you're laughing, that a working class guy like you would have expected this. But we were educated people and had no idea as to the reality of dealing with brutalized people on the street. Sure, rolling down that window was a huge mistake. Suggesting that this heedless person might have been at fault was a huge mistake.

This man was a big sucker—had the biggest thighs I ever saw. He just walked up to the car and in came the biggest fist I ever saw, smashing Drew in the eye and whipping his head around. He was out of it. So before he got hit again, I reached over and pressed the window button to raise it.

This happened while we were trying to conceive my youngest and it did irreversible damage to his self-esteem. Drew was never the same after that. His face was horribly disfigured for a time. But his sense of self as a man was forever compromised.

Of course we called the police. We were educated liberals. We didn't know until the police arrived, that they would be totally unresponsive and just shrug the attack off as nothing, making no attempt to find the person, not even interested in a description. I'm not a liberal anymore and no longer live in denial. It occurs to me—having so many liberal friends—that they savor the life of denial, that their delusion is a kind of refuge for their false notions.

-Carmine