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I was in Powell Station waiting on a BART train to the East Bay. Sitting on one of the round ceramic benches, earphones on, Kindle out, working my way through Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. The bench was mostly empty when I sat down, since I’d just missed my train, but there were a few people sitting near me and a more milling around. I could hear a loud talker through my headphones, but wrote it off as typical San Francisco. It wasn’t that late, maybe 1715, but it’s easy to find loud drunk people. I kept reading.

A girl sat down near me, close enough to make me notice. The lady on my left was sitting a ways away, comfortably distant, but the girl on my right was within inches. There was no more room on the bench, I guess. I looked up from my book and saw the girl share a look with her friend, another girl. One of those looks that’s full of information. You know the type. “This is awkward.” “This is weird.” “This is a little scary.” “This is really awkward.” I saw the look and pulled my earphones out. I slid over, and offered the other girl a seat. With my headphones out, I could hear the loud talker even clearer. He was on my left, just past the lady, standing close to and talking loudly at an older white lady.

“Happy Thanksgiving!”

The old lady smiled and said, “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“You’re older, you’re my grandma’s age!”

Silence.

“I like you! You’re pretty!”

“What’s your name?”

“I like the cute ones, you’re real cute. What’s your name?”

“I’m gonna think you’re racist if you don’t answer me!”

And on and on and on.

And I watched him, waiting to see if he’d do the usual drunk douchebag thing and wander away, but he kept it up. I put away my Kindle, zipped up my bag, and said something to him. I don’t remember what, exactly, probably some variation of “Hey man, leave her alone. She’s not interested.” Dude jumped like he got scalded.

“Yo, blood, I wasn’t—I wasn’t even talking to you! Don’t butt in!” He turned back to her.

Leave her alone. Back down.

He turned to me instead, talking over the lady to my left. “Hey, hey, you got a big mouth! Nobody was even talking to you.”

I don’t care.

“You need to mind your own business, man.”

Yeah, sure. So do you.

He got madder. “You… I’m just trying to charge my phone and you’re over here bothering me.” He kept on for a bit. “You… you got a mohawk, man! And you’re talking to me!”

It’s true, I do have a mohawk.

“You need to cut it!”

He wandered off, briefly, and the girl I offered a seat to whispered “That was sweet” in my ear. He wandered back, but he kept his distance this time. He was slinging weak arrows from safety.

“You can’t have that mohawk! That’s not for us! If I had a mohawk, these people… I couldn’t go outside!” I got what he was saying—mohawks aren’t for colored folks—but I didn’t care. “You need to—you forgot to cut the rest of your hair!” He kept on trying to explain why I was doing wrong. “You need a fade! You need to get some dreads!”

I told him that my hair’s too short for dreads and the lady to my left laughed under her breath. He ambled away again, fuming, and then ambled back.

“You should kill yourself. You need to jump down on those train tracks and kill yourself and your mohawk. But it’s okay, I’ll stop the train before you die. You should commit suicide and kill yourself!”

He moved to walk away. I said, “That guy must really hate mohawks.” The lady on my left laughed. The girls to my right did, too. He didn’t come back around. Eventually, maybe ten minutes later, my train showed up.