Zurtlespace

A little over a year ago–back when I was enduring the vaguely kafka-esque purgatory of trying to move around in the greater Los Angeles area without a car–I had an encounter that shook me, birthing within me a sinister tendril of disquiet that has never quite released its grip on my heart. If that sounds overly dramatic it is simply a result of my continuing unease over what happened–or didn’t, as it were.

I was working downtown and was going to meet my girlfriend in the valley after she got off work. She is a much more responsible person than I am, and also happens to enjoy her work, so working late was a common occurrence for her. We planned to meet at the Universal City Red Line Station, where I would wait for her to pick me up, since she had a car. It was exceptionally hot that day in the valley, and I had an hour and a half to kill, so I found a shady spot, sat down, and opened a book. After about an hour the heat made reading uncomfortable even with the shade, so I closed my book (Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale; a fabulous book on style and grammar) and made to explore the immediate vicinity for the next half hour.

Anyone who has been to the Universal City station knows that there is basically next to nothing of interest there, with the possible exception of a hot dog cart. The only buildings nearby are a hotel and the NBC Universal Plaza. Everyone knows this.

Everyone except me, that is.

The hotel, as far as I could see, was located up a long and steep hill I wasn’t in the mood to climb, so I walked up the steps of the plaza instead to explore. There was little of interest there either; a small group of people walking to the parking lot; another group leaning against and sitting on the rails chatting; a gazebo next to a small pond with some ducks swimming through a maze of lily pads. Concluding that this was the single most boring place imaginable I decided to head back to the station, find a new shady spot, and keep reading my book. As I turned around I was approached by a sausage in a necktie–more commonly known as a security guard.

“Excuse me” he said, almost tentatively, in not-too-thickly-but-still-clearly-spanish-accented english, “…do you work here?” He was holding his radio in one hand and the other was behind his back. His posture was slightly off-center and forward tilted, giving his small but heavy-set frame (what is it with short, thickset latino security guards?) an even more aggressively mongoloid bearing–a classic readiness posture.

Understand my appearance at the time. I am fairly tall–about 5’10–but lightly built. At 160 lbs on average I possess neither the muscular frame of the classic hooligan, nor the malnourished, reedy, chronically sleep-deprived look of the Unabomber. I have a dark “jew-fro”, glasses, and some mild stubble at all times. My usual “style” consists of a black t-shirt, jeans, and a backpack (book-in-hand optional). I look, well, average. Like a student. Which I suppose I am. My forgettably innocuous appearance–an image carefully cultivated throughout my school years–was and is my practical distillation of the wisdom of Sun Tzu: the best policy for dealing with the enemy bigger kids is to simply not be there noticed by them.

To be blunt: this guy was ready to spring into action and save the day. For no discernible reason. Mildly annoyed, I answered “No, I’m done here” and proceeded to walk back to the stairs. As I walked, out of the corner of my eye I could see, to my astonishment, that no-neck was following me. He wasn’t even being subtle. He matched me step-for-step, always staying just slightly behind and a few paces to my left whether I sped up or slowed down, and maintained his aggressive dick-swinging stance. I stress that he wasn’t even pretending to not be casing me. Eventually, after reaching the bottom of the large staircase, I looked behind me to see the human sausage say something into his radio, stare at me for another few seconds, and then slowly walk off.

Despite the heat, I would have liked nothing better than to have one of my old, oversized snow jackets from high school to disappear in and escape the cold. I did not know what to think at first, or even what I was feeling beyond a chilly unease. Then, as I looked back at the NBC Universal building, I caught myself wondering which parts of the building were the weakest, the easiest places to hit it so that it would come crashing down.

I would like to stress that this was an extremely brief and completely idle fantasy–even had I the means and expertise, I would never do something so horrifying–but the surge of righteous fury that I felt in that moment conjured the vision in my mind, and that knowledge has sat with me ever since.

Is this what it feels like to be profiled?

It seems absurd that I would ever be subjected to this. In all likelihood I am misinterpreting the situation, and the fact that nothing actually happened makes me feel slightly ridiculous for caring enough to remember it at all, but the simple truth is that this does not matter: this is what I perceived in that moment, and how I reacted to it, how it made me feel. And that is the key detail about profiling, and its ugly uncle, prejudice–how the person who perceives himself to be under that cloud is being made to feel. The other people involved, their thoughts, their intentions don’t matter. The sense of unjust persecution is overwhelming in even the slightest doses.

The slightest doses. That bears repeating because anyone who has experienced, truly experienced, any kind of real oppression will laugh at this whole story even harder than you probably are now. And yet, if this is even a fraction of what it feels like to be oppressed in any fashion–profiling, racism, prejudice–then I begin to see why so many of those who feel themselves victims of such can have such visceral and unreasonable reactions when confronted with it; reasonability flees in the face of such injustice, real or imagined.

Was I imagining it? Does it matter? The fact that I felt this way–continue to feel this way–at all, suggests that something was going on, but what? Am I being neurotic for dwelling on this? Or did I, in some small way, experience a moment of empathy, connecting me, however tenuously, with people in situations I can never fully appreciate or understand?