Mugged

June. A Sunday sometime between 1988 and 1990—I can’t remember exactly, and I’m too lazy to try to find out, but this was when I rented the top floor of a big old house on the corner of Third and Jefferson in Lexington. Wednesday through Saturday, I opened at Comedy On Broadway with Art Divitas featuring and Dennis Piper headlining. My first real stand-up comedy gig. It paid $200. Cash.

Sunday was unseasonably hot in a month of unseasonable heat. $200 in my pocket, I decided to walk up Second Street to see if there were any yard sales worth anything—antiques, pre-60s photo albums, LPs or singles. Stuff I didn’t need but would probably buy because comedy money was burning a hole in my pocket.

Unfortunately, the people with the yard sale weren’t much older than me, didn’t have much of interest to sell. Mostly wedding gifts they couldn’t use and stuff they priced too high for a yard sale and too low to make anything near a profit on. So, I looked around and, finding nothing worthwhile, said “Thank you,” and headed home.

I was crossing Miller Street when I noticed a couple of guys walking toward Second. At that time, Miller was more of an alley, a low-rent area where the servants and others who worked in the bigger homes on Second and Third Streets lived. Through the decades, they had fallen into disrepair and disrepute and been relegated to the homes of poor black folks and poorer white trash. No street lights. Generally, not a good place to be, even for its residents.

Just after I crossed Miller, I heard the two guys I had seen peripherally fall in behind me.

“Hey! I asked you what time it was!” called the taller of the two, a thin mixed-race kid with rusty hair. His friend stayed silent.

I stopped and turned, and started, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear-” but before I could finish, he punched me in the nose—not hard, but enough to knock my glasses off and start my nose gushing blood.

Stunned, I bent to pick up my glasses while he threw another couple of punches at the side of my head. His friend stepped forward and half-heartedly slugged me in the back of the head. Through this, I kept walking, knowing that if I fell, the kicking would begin, and I would be in a world of hurt.

I asked him, “Why are you doing this?”

His answer was simple and not at all surprising under the circumstances.

“I don’t like white people.”

I kept walking, and he kept hitting, and I was soon leading them to the middle of Jefferson Street, hoping a passing car might scare them off. But this was Sunday, before noon, and there were no cars, no people out for a stroll. At any rate, as I stepped onto Jefferson, they broke off and headed back downtown.

I got back to my apartment and cleaned up. I didn’t feel like I was hurt, but I figured I had better call the police just in case. As I said, it had been unseasonably hot for June, and there had been news reports of racially motivated attacks in certain areas of Lexington, the kind of stuff that happens when people get hot and sweaty and short-tempered and lash out mindlessly.

The officer who came to take my report seemed annoyed to be there, but I couldn’t tell if it was at me, or the situation, or the fact that he was taking a report about me being accosted by a pair of African Americans on Sunday morning. As he was leaving, he suggested I go to the hospital to get checked out. I went, but there was no concussion, just some bruises.

As I was on my way to the hospital, I saw the two kids laughing and high-fiving as they came out of the Victorian Square shops on Broadway. I was still a little shaken, and not-so-seriously considered driving up on the curb to confront them.

But I was fortunate. No harm done to me physically, and I wasn’t robbed. I’m not sure why, though, but I never did stand-up comedy again after that. I returned to Comedy On Broadway and, later, Comedy Off Broadway to perform in two in-house improv troupes (Merry Muckers of Mirth and Malignant Humor), and I have always missed stand-up, but I guess the mugging somehow flipped a switch in my brain.

As the years have passed, I realize why I never got truly angry at my attackers. That mixed-race kid most likely had been abused or abandoned or both by his white parent. The Baby Blue leisure suit he wore that day, although like-new, was over a decade out of fashion and likely a thrift-store purchase or a charity gift. "I don't like white people." I was the white guy he thought had dismissed him, like so many before. I wasn’t a target; I was a convenience. It could have been anyone.

I’ve never really been afraid of “the other” like so many. On many levels, I am or have been the other. On some level, we are all, sometimes, the other.