A true story:
It is 1978. I am 22 year old, standing on lower Sixth Avenue, under the marquee of the Waverly Theater, waiting for a friend. It is July: the muggy air feels like a damp quilt hanging on my shoulders. New York City is tense, still reeling from the recent financial crisis and the looting during the Great Black Out the summer before. Black-white relations are bad and on everyone’s mind.
(Basically, all you really need to know is that Jimmy Carter is in the White House, and everybody believes things suck.)
So, I’m standing on the street, minding my own business, wearing (if I recall correctly) the plaid sports jacket my father bought me when I went off to college. I am truly a whiter shade of pale. I hear him when he’s still a hundred yards distant:
The World’s Angriest Black Man.
A block away, walking toward me on the sidewalk, is a black guy in his mid-20s, wearing a white dashiki, skullcap, and jeans. Not big, not tall, he is extremely wiry and muscled. He has a wispy beard and feverish eyes and he is carrying on a high-decibel, furious monologue with a friend, gesticulating broadly. I have never seen anyone so amped up in my life.
“….So this motherfucker pulls a knife on me! And I tell him, ‘Asshole, whaddya think you’re doin’ wid that?”…
There are other people on the sidewalk and his effect on everyone is electrifying. Palpable tension shoots through the crowd as fast as a window pane cracks.
“….So I pull out my own knife then, and I look that asshole in the eye, and I say to him, I gonna cut you first!..
It’s like a moment in a bad spaghetti-western, when the meanest, most ornery outlaw west of the Perdenales rides into town, and all the law-abiding, upstanding townspeople scurry to seek cover.
“….Then, I start chasing that motherfucker down street screaming,’ I’m gonna kill you!…
The World’s Angriest Black Man is striding closer. I’m right in his path. A horrible, heart-rendering collision is inevitable. It’s like 60 seconds before the Titanic hits the fateful ice berg—except in this case the ice berg stands six-feet tall, weights barely 135 pounds, and hasn’t been in a fight since sixth grade. And the Titanic could really, really use a Valium or two.
“….So he takes off and I take off and I’m running as fast as I can and I’m close to gettin’ him…
I try to stay cool. I mean cool. Hey, I say to myself, I know who Amiri Baraka is! I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X! Twice! I own a bunch of classic Miles Davis records! I read Newsweek every week!
“….And then I take hold of my knife!…
The World’s Angriest Black Man is mere feet away. He sees me. I’m face-to-face with distilled nitro glycerin in human form. One false move, and the WABM will go off on me.
“….And then can you believe what the mofo tries to do!…
Now the World’s Angriest Black Man is right in front of me. Our eyes meet. I can’t look away. And abruptly, like a shift in the wind, his voice changes. It’s no longer the furious voice straight off Cathedral Parkway, but resonates of the Upper East Side.
“Actually,” he says to me in a placid, self-assured tone, “I’m really passive.”
Brave New Whirl 