Lilith and the man in the MAGA cap

I leaned over to take photographs of a broken monitor with leaves scattered on it. The man who'd just gotten out of a van came toward Lilith and me, saying "it can probably be fixed," though he changed his mind when he saw it. He was a Hawaiian man, carrying a guitar case on his back, wearing an Inauguration 2025 MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN cap. I said I was sorry to see his cap, as Trump is leading us to ruin. 

 

"Oh no! Biden's one socialist. They're communists! The media doesn't report that the last election was stolen." He put his face in mine and yelled obscenities. I called him on calling liberals "pussies." He looked and pointed at the relevant point of me, said "women have them." I said that if you use the word as an insult, you're being misogynist. "I can't use the N word, but a Black person can," I said. "I call a N----- a N-------, because that's what they call me!" 

 

We walked to the Hui Iwa crosswalk across Kahekili; we were both crossing, and the light was against us. He started yelling at me about my privilege (he's got that right) and my living in a fucking castle and how I don't know anything. He gets his information on the internet, he said. I asked where. "RUMBLE." He's going to put his podcast there. I said I would look for it. He started to walk into the highway and I cautioned him, as the traffic was going by. "I take care of MYSELF," he said.

"There are all these people on the streets," he said, "poor," and said Biden had never talked to a homeless person. His son was convicted. He pardoned him. I asked if Trump had talked to homeless people. Oh yes, he saved some of them. I told him I'd had a grandfather who was homeless. "That's your grandfather, not you. You're shit."

 

"I bet you don't believe in God, do you?" he demanded. "I'm a Buddhist," said. "I knew it!" As Lilith and I continued up Hui Iwa, he turned up Kahekili toward the cemetery. I could still hear him yelling. "You're shit!" 

 

At the light, I asked if he heard himself. At the light, I asked myself the same question. I had yelled back.