Slummerville

There are times in your life when something odd happens to you and no one around you reacts to the event that in your mind is too weird not to react to. I have just had one of those moments.

I had just come out of the health club and was still on my exercise high listening to my ipod and living in my own world. I stood on the corner near Porter Square and waited for the cross walk sign to change when I noticed a couple standing near me arguing.

This couple epitomized why Somerville is nicknamed Slummerville. Both appeared as if they drank/smoked as a profession and both of them may or may not be homeless. I stood on the corner trying to ignore their fight (which was escalating) thinking that if I was a better person, or my sister, I would go over and mediate their fight. I could tell them statistics on domestic violence and maybe they could become better people. Instead I continued to ignore the now loud shouting of the man to the woman to “keep walking” and the woman who’s finger and face were mere inches from the mans face to “never tell her what to fucking do.”

The woman was holding a Dunkin Dounuts coffee cup in her hand and at what could be described as the climax of the fight the man drop kicked the cup out of her hands. As the fluid in the cup spewed towards me I began to imagine my life as a burn victim. I would have to invest a lot of makeup just to leave the house, maybe I could even get a telethon. Instead as the liquid showered down on me I was not burned but instead covered in a liquid that had smelled a familiar smell now covering my hat/coat/pants. That smell was beer.

I froze, looking around, to see how other people reacted. I, a simple pedestrian was now covered in some drunks hair of the dog. No one around me even looked. Everyone else kept staring at the crosswalk and hoping the light would change soon. I looked back to the man and woman hoping for some king of apology and instead saw the woman, arms around the man, hugging him and yelling “I love you so much baby!”

I had no idea how to react so I j-walked myself out of there and home where I promptly took a shower.