Desperate enough to beg money from strangers???

I haven’t been home for an hour – in fact I’m still on the BART from the airport to my home - & already I get into a fight, on that very BART.

A young womon lugging a baby dangling from a sling on her chest is holding up a handwritten note on a piece of crumbled cardboard asking for spare change. I give her a couple of dollars and watch as she approaches two other stony-faced women seated across from me draped in fancy scarves with matching high heels and several new shopping bags clutched to their chest, women who refuse to look at her.

She then approaches a tall white man decked in the latest biking sportswear leaning in front of his thousand dollar racing bike. He jerks the headphones out of his large ears and accuses her of driving an audi in Fremont. She shrinks back from him as he demands again if she isn’t the one who was driving an audi in Fremont. Before she can say a word he snarls a bet that the baby she’s holding probably isn’t even hers.

I jump up with my own demands for him: “Have you ever been so desperate as to have to ask strangers for money? Have you?”

He doesn’t want to answer my question but of course we all know he never has even had to consider this way of trying to feed himself. He gestures at the womon frozen in place as he claims she is wealthy.

I demand “Really? Wealthy? Do you really think if this womon had an option of a good paying job – like you obviously have – or of begging for money she’d really be here?”

“Didn’t you watch the special on TV last week? There’s a gang of 30 {muslim/brown/immigrants understood in his pointing} of her people who are going around begging for money and they’re RICH?”

I know my mouth is wide open by this point. I say to him “So all muslim people look alike to you? And so fuckin what, if she has an audi or a mercedes – only white men like you are entitled to own such cars? And only white men like you get to say what jobs or means of making money entitles you to an audi?”

“She’s just ripping us off” he retorts, as he leans toward her and tells her she’s illegal. Illfuckinlegal.

Now I’m REALLY hot. I raise my voice even louder so everyone in the car can hear me. “Oh you mean like how our country is bombing the hell outta her country, ripping her people off, forcing her to flee only to come here and face assholes like you?”

He pales a little under his perfect tan, grabs his bike and heads for the opening doors. “Again, have you ever been so desperate as to have to ask strangers for money?” He turns to give me the finger as I shout with disgust “Asshole”.

Towards the next stop yet another man waiting in front of the door turns to tell me the white guy was right, she is participating in a scam, like he has seen this particular womon on TV.

“So all brown people look alike to you also?” I demand incredulously. “And I’ll tell you what a scam is: a scam is men making more money than womyn.” He protests loudly claiming he’s on disability so I tell him “That white man you’re defending probably saw a TV show about Black people scamming disability too & would accuse you of ripping him off!”

Geez are all the men on BART ganging up on me? I should have said “You want to know what a scam is? A scam is a multi-billionaire sitting in the White House that we’ve turned over control of trillions more dollars, and you males pointing the finger at a womon with a baby asking for spare change. THAT’S a scam!”

I did look around scathingly – not one person meeting my eyes nor standing up to support me. I then inform the car that “We live in the MEANEST country in the world?”