Chicago Adventures

"Why you looking at me like that?! White bitch!" The short, stocky man was barreling in on me. He shouted rapidly, not all of it words that I could completely understand, getting "all up in my face" as I like to put it.

I had been innocently eating an oat and honey granola bar on the sidewalk in front of the Harold Washington library. I must have been concentrating pretty hard, because I tend to look angry when I do so. The man came out of nowhere, obviously enraged at the assumption that I was "looking at him wrong." Naturally, I glared and walked away, around the corner toward the brown line Library El stop. I sighed and raised my hands to my sides, palms up in a shrugging motion.

Instantly he was racing toward me again, shouting garbled words and repeating "white bitch, white bitch!" I turned to face him and thrust an outstretched finger in front of his face.

"Hey, you get the fuck away from me!" I yelled. I had lost my temper, but I felt strangely calm, and what probably was a sense of release. He paid no attention, but did not advance or back down. He did not lunge forward or grab my finger and break it as I had feared. He shouted after me as I turned away and kept walking, down the street and around another corner, craning my neck only once to look over my shoulder. He hadn't followed me. I avoided State and Van Buren, taking a less populated street to sit in the plaza in front of Barnes and Noble. I breathed in the cold air, tranquil and satisfied with myself. I smiled.

"I finally got to yell at someone in Chicago," I said quietly. My smile grew wider and I laughed.