one time i was on a crowded subway (in vancouver) and this older guy standing beside me started making these racist asian comments quite loudly to no one in particular, but mostly looking at the asian people in the car.

i looked and saw most people could hear him and were disgusted but no one was going to say anything.

i'm a tolerant guy of a lot of things...except the intolerance of others. for things like...oh...say racism. that'll press the right buttons in me every time.

so i started staring at him until he noticed me with a look of death stare. then i got up real close to him and said, in a firm but not-quite-loud tone, "shut the fuck up you racist asshole".

he tried to talk again, but every time he did, i just kept repeating, "shut up now", before he could finish his sentences. he saw that i pretty fuming and probably ready to do something else, so he got off at the next stop (really i'm not sure if it was his stop or not).

now, i know i probably could have been nicer or polite or something or just ignored him like everyone else, but i couldn't.

then when i looked around the train after he had left and a bunch of people shook their heads in approval and smiled at me.

cail {paul@pseudofamous.com}

I am a native of Nigeria. This was my first trip back since birth (my family emigrated to the US when I was 1year old) and I looked forward to it. The layover in Amsterdam was fun--I bought chocolates and observed all the well-dressed people trying not/to look too important. But when I got to Lagos, I was harassed because I didn't have an accent. Therefore I couldn't *possibly* be an expatriate and had no business carrying a Nigerian passport.

Now, if I was American and a US Citizen, why would I put myself through the trouble of holding a stamped Nigerian passport?? Tell me!

Onye

I was eleven, the new kid in school yet again, only this time I had to suffer the indignity of arriving after the year at already started. my teacher had to borrow a desk from the seventh grade classroom next door.

at recess there were three clear-cut social divisions: the cool boys played basketball, the cool girls stood together and gossiped, and everyone else played four square.

I had never played four square before in my life. by the end of my first week there, I had gotten good enough that I wouldn't be eliminated on the first bounce, but I still never made it past the second square.

the next week I decided I would rather do something else. never mind that I was the only kid spending recess alone. I stood on a low bench near the edge of the playground, leaning against the chain-link fence, and read a book (from the mixed-up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler, for the fifth time).

claudia was plotting her escape when the book was suddenly knocked out of my hands and I looked up to see a big girl wearing giant golden earrings and glaring at me. wordlessly I bent down to pick up my book, but before I could reach it the girl snatched it up and threw it over my head. it landed facedown with its pages crumpled up against the sidewalk.

my adrenaline surged. without thinking about it I whirled around and grabbed at the girl's earrings, the first things I could see to get my hands on. I wanted to tear them off, to rip them away and hurl them across the concrete. before I could get a grip, though, she shrieked and backed away with her hands to her ears.

feeling a little sickened by my retaliatory instinct, I turned and hopped the fence to retrieve my book.

I was halfway back over when the fist came down on my shoulder. the book fell to the asphalt again, and for some reason the sound of fluttering paper smacking against the ground made me angrier than the sharp new pain where my face had met the fence wire. I wanted to break something.

it was my first fistfight. when the teacher found me bloody and limping, she sent me to the nurse, where I filled out a wholly false accident report that claimed I had fallen playing four square.

rabi

in 7th grade a kid walked up to my friend and said "hey you fat nigger"

i lost control of myself. i felt like i was watching myself beat the shit out of the kid. like my body went out of control and my mind was left to observe.

a similar incident happened this year when a kid thew an icicle at me and it hit me in the eye. my primal instincts made sure his eye was worse :T.

sean

When did I get angry?

Even the simplicity of asking myself the question inspires the film reel of the act in my mind to replay. It’s on a loop.

It was the 24th of December, 1999. It was at 5:47 pm. It was in the hallway of the building I live in.

On that day, at that time in the hallway of the building I live in all of the fear that had turned to numbness that had turned to something that had made me turn against me, on that day at that moment that fear gave birth to anger and rage.

I had just cancelled a trip to Puerto Vallarta, for that fear that had numbed me, I had quit studying French, that fear, I had started going home for lunch to take a Soma and die for an hour or two. Everything had narrowed down to nothing and everything was in jeopardy, that fear that had numbed me.

It was simple, really. An ex boyfriend, someone I had dated for 6 months, decided to stalk me. Every day for 7 months following the breakup I was emotionally raped. It’s not a big boo-hoo story, just a simple story of one person deciding to deconstruct the life of another. And I let it happen. I had no artillery, no training in how to fight the battle of the mind-fuck. I crumbled, I hid, I stopped living in the misguided notion that no one would hunt the dead.

On the 24th of December at 5:47 pm I lay resting on my couch in my living room. I heard the keys, the locks on the doors turn, I heard the door begin to open as I lay resting on my couch and I uttered not a word. I knew in an instant, all the pieces came together that moment. Amazing how quickly the mind can work. The cancelled trip to Puerto Vallarta, the confirmation of said trip that came via email, the email that sits open on my laptop in my home behind the door that was at that moment being opened by him, my stalker. All of the letters and phone calls and emails that made repeated coded reference to things that he had been reading in my emails as he broke into my house every day as he was doing today as he thought I was on vacation in Puerto Vallarta. In that moment of recognition, when I knew, I saw the mocking of those references, saying to me “I’m not just outside watching, I’m inside”.

This is when I got angry.

I jumped from the couch, he heard noise and retreated back into the hallway, the hallway of the building that I live in. I ran out into the hallway, to him holding the keys high and away from me. I pushed, all 5 feet, all 100 pounds of me became 6 feet tall. I pushed and he stumbled back and I was screaming words tumbling at some inconceivable velocity from my throat all of my anger unleashed in rage and my arm pulled back and slapped and then my fist was there and I hit his jaw and his head snapped back again.

The exquisite release of defending my life.

[Had him arrested, did the whole court thing, got a restraining order, will probably move a a couple thousand miles away soon, the restraining order ends in 18 months. End]

Cie

when is was in 6th grade, a 4th grader knocked my little sister to the ground. i beat him up.

when i was in college, a boyfriend broke my little sister's heart. i wanted to beat him up.

when i was living in california, the father of my little sister's child threatened her (and my mother) during a nasty custidy battle. i called him and let him know if he ever so much as raised his voice toward my mother or sister again, i would beat him up.

the italian life. good food. fast cars. big noses.

and don't ever mess with the family.

The Mighty Jimbo

Last night I got an e-mail from a reader. Usually that's a mighty fine thing.

She began her message with praise for my stories and writing skills. She even quoted from different sections of the site to make her points.

But her message quickly shifted. I was obviously "deeply troubled and tormented" (?!). I'm "depressed" by "bad choices I've made" (WTF?). Surprise. She has an answer for me. She can fix me with her religion.

Here was a person who went to the trouble of reading a lot of my stuff and then, instead of honoring my stories (that I give away for free), she tries to turn them on me as evidence of serious dysfunction.

That *really* pissed me off. And so I wrote about it on the site. I told my readers what happened and how angry I was. It helped. I felt a little better right away.

christopher

We all get angry, including me. There are the stupid things, like the idiot who almost killed me on the highway this morning, the time Owen called me a whore, all those times I "wasn't allowed", or "Had to because...". There there are the times that cling to the very fabric of you, that you wish you could stop remembering and let bygones be bygones. However, most of these times are ones where I have been angry at no one except myself. The last time I ever saw my grandmother, laying there as if she were all but consumed by the cancer that killed her slowly and painfully, the last words she spoke to me, asking for a hug. Just a hug, something I so easily could have given, and yet at six years old and never having seen real suffering first hand, I refused. The fury I feel toward myself for my selfishness that day will haunt me until the moment I too will die. I hated myself for turning away from the pleading children on the streets of Cairo, the one little girl holding a tattered shoe and begging for money, what could I have given her? Anything would have been more than I did give. I try not to envision her wide, wise eyes and empty hands. I was angry at myself for being able to buy clothes, shoes, and food. I am angry about many things, all of us are. But what is most important is to learn to forget the wrongs and forgive the mistakes of others as well as ourselves.

Erica