In front of everyone, right there in front of the concession stand, right there in front of her mother. The man swayed over and started pawing at the girl's neck. She shrugged him off and the mother smiled. Maybe he knows her, maybe he's her Father, I thought. The thought of it made me sick. There's no mistaking that look, that sick hunger.
His eyes saw only the girl and his teeth came out in anticipation of consumption. The girl, only seven or eight, sipped happily from her Fanta. He swayed like a sapling rotting from the inside out. His eyes were blurry but their intention and desire were sharp enough. I wanted to spit on him.
The girl and her mother walked away oblivious. With my eyes, I shot him in the gut with every bullet I had but he didn't even notice. Shit of a man. He stood for a second, swaying, and made a "fuck it" look with his face. His eyelids shut with the weight of the alcohol and when they opened he had forgotten the girl and staggered off.
I tried to memorize his face and his sway as he stumbled off but he disappeared into the crowd. I imagined him passed out in a filthy gutter, hoping the alcohol would overtake his consciousness before he crossed paths with anyone else.
And here is my dilemma, my contradiction, my hypocrisy: if I saw him so much as look at any girl like that again, if I saw the extension of a single claw, I really would kill him. And I would not have one problem with doing so.
So much for relentless faith in humanity.
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Its hard isn't it? We want to become better and we want to make our world better. Sometimes, those ideas are at odds. It seems to me that any decision to do the right thing is easy. The hard part is trying to make your life after the decision, fit into what the idea you had for you life before. Its difficult to balance conscious and comfort. I try to remember; don't spend it all in one place. For me, it just means do good for a long time for a lot of people. Don't go all-in on one event.
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