2:12AM

It was 1:59AM, 13 minutes ago. It took me 13 minutes to get home. I was passing the Annex, a bar in Madison. The music I had playing in the car was serene; then, I passed the Annex.

Outside, a man and a woman were fighting. It was obvious, they were shouting and gesticulating at each other. But, as I passed, she slapped him across the face after a particularly violent fit of his.

I could not believe I watched him raise his right hand – as if he were throwing it into the air at a concert – and form a fist. With the fist in the air, he jockeyed his feet, positioning his body for leverage.

She weighed maybe 100 pounds.

Maybe she said to him, “I dare you.”
Maybe she said, “You wouldn’t hit a woman.”
Either way, he did.

His left hand grabs into her long blonde hair at the scalp, yanking her head to the left and down; his right hand – all along a fist – swings into her face.

I’m past the scene, and the blood is draining quickly from my forehead down. What do I do? I slam on the brakes, screech into a bank, U-turn.

What would I be to just drive by? Who would I be? What kind of animal?

For better of for worse, there are two police cars, lights aflare, already approaching, quickly. I’m only a block up, so I watch as they pull over, and the officers jump out to cease the man beating upon the woman’s face. She is on the wet sidewalk. I can hear her crying and screaming; his right fist is still in her hair.

I do not get out of my car and run over, because I will be arrested for murder. I will kill him. I will remove his hand from her hair, and I will remove the life from his body. I know this. I leave the scene.

I call 911, and give them my number. Testify.

It took me 13 minutes to drive home from the scene; it is now 2:19 – six minutes since my life changed.

All together, it's been twenty minutes for me to think: How many women I know, love, cherish; how many suspect that they could be that woman? But really, what I think is: How many men I know, love, cherish...suspect that he could be that man?

I think – could I do that? Am I capable?

And now, at 2:22, I think, Of course I am; I am human.

Fuck you if I can't cry over this. Fuck you if I can't hate this.

Fuck you if you read this and feel nothing.

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