The Specifc Anger of America

I stop paying attention to the news around 10 pm as a rule.

I try to do something else. Anything else. Play video games. Write some short fiction. Clean my kitchen. My bathroom. Something else.

I was listening to the third book in the Armored Saint trilogy and painting.

I heard my front door unlock. I have four people that have a key to my whole living space and two of them are among my unofficial godchildren.

“Hey,” I started to say as packed up my brushes and went toward the door. It was just another base coat anyway and one of my godchildren is standing there.

And this look on their face. It’s not accusing. It’s not saying I hurt them.
It’s the face of a scientist who has disproved a theory that another old scientist said was true.

I say this all the time, that Baltimore is per capita no more dangerous than any major American city. And it’s not. Baltimore is barely a major American city in terms of population.

But it terms of American Blackness, it’s among THE American cities. This is not something I concluded. I was told this.

The problem with that is if I tell you who told me that, you might want to ask him if that’s what he said to me and when and did you give away the game to a guy that looks like Charles Xavier joined a metal band?

I’m a veteran. I make jokes when I’m upset or scared or angry or bored.

So I make jokes a lot.

And I couldn’t make a joke tonight. This morning.

I couldn’t say a goddamned thing that was funny.

I said “I got Streets of Rage 4 on that Playstation if you wanna start a game,” and my godchild just nodded.

I was out of everything. I had Gatorade, water, and leftover coffee from the last amount I put through my French press that I won’t throw away because I don’t want to be wasteful.

I texted their dad and told them they were here and safe.

My godchild looks shocked and numb as the game screens scroll.

“Hunter’s unlocked, if you wanna play him. I’ll rock Blaze,”

“I just wanna play Axel,” they said.

I press start and their phone rings.

They answer and I pause the game.

I know their dad.

He’s sharp and kind and he used to piss off a lot of people because they would ask for utterly stupid shit and he’d not only tell them no but could - off the top of his head - go line by line as to why it was stupid shit.

I’d follow him into hell.

We only trained together, and never deployed to the same place at the same time.

I can’t hear exactly what he’s saying over the phone, but the tone is there. It’s heartbroken and overjoyed at the same time.

If you’ve ever feared the worst and seen totally not the worst happen you’ve had that tone in your voice.

“It doesn’t look like anyone we know was shot,” they said after the call ended.

I press start to keep that feeling of falling backward unexpectedly far far away from my mind.

We go pretty hard on Streets of Rage 4, burning through levels as a team like we’d been playing this version of the game forever.

We both died at one point and the CONTINUE? screen came up. I was tired, and they said they were tired so I closed the game out and went to the linen closet to get some beddings for the couch.

It was barely ten feet away and they were out like light: sawing wood snoring like their dad did in advanced training.

The whole floor could hear it and I almost lost it laughing as I put a blanket over them.

They are safe in my house.

And I feel this cold rage at the idea they even had to come here. I realized I didn’t ask if they Uber’d or walked or took the Morgan State Bus or a Baltimore City line and and which one and hey, that Lidl right there is pretty good..

I just get angrier. In that stupid young man’s way I still get angry.

The fuck am I asking these questions for? They’re safe. They’re fine.

I can engage in all the power fantasies I want but it doesn’t matter.

You can’t train for a mass shooting. Mass shootings rely on the mundane chaos of everyday life. Mass shootings rely on panic. Mass shootings rely on fear to make people stupid.

And my anger makes me stupid.

I’m so angry at the very idea of me being anywhere near a mass shooting that I can barely English good.

But what hurts the most isn’t the helplessness or chaos.

It’s that I feel like I lied about the goodness of the entire world to a child.

And that is a very different kind of anger.