The first time he pushed me, I ignored it. It must have been an accident.
He just wants to dance.
The second time his shoulder hit mine, a little bit harder, I ignored it. It must have been a series of accidents.
He’s just drunk.
The third, fourth and fifth times he hit me made it clear he wasn’t dancing, because he wasn’t touching anyone else. They were standing back, enjoying the music.
It’s more nudging than hitting, really.
Before the sixth, seventh and eighth times, my friend Hugh tried to stand between him and me, but he stepped past Hugh and pushed on as though his shoulder was trying to colonise mine.
Did he even touch Hugh?
I lost count of how many times he’d nudged me. Instead I changed my tracking method to how many meters I’d moved and how many people I’d been pushed into.
Only a couple of meters. I can see the band better from here anyway. This is fine.
‘Do Not Let Your Spirit Wane’ had just finished. I’d been waiting to see Gang of Youths for months and could guess what song would be played for the encore after looping the album, end to end, for the weeks leading into this night. The nudging stopped, but before any relief could come his face leaned in towards my shoulder. It was red and dry and smelt slightly of beer.
I’d really prefer the nudging.
“Maaa-aaate,” he said, slowly, heavily, breathing more than necessary. “Don’t—go—a-waaaaaay. They’ll—play—more songs. It’s—called—an—en-coooooooore. This—is—an—en-cooooooooore.”
His face stretched into a self-satisfied smile that I imagined he would have after cleaning his pantry and putting everything in its right place.
“Thanks.” I said. Fuck off.
‘Go Farther in Lightness’ began and the nudging recommenced, harder than before. His body swayed from side to side, and he used the swing of his hips to build momentum in his shoulder that eventually, inevitably, ‘coincidentally’, bashed into mine.
My body was pushed into places it didn’t want to go, and my mind followed. Nudge by nudge, I entered that place where I had no explanation for why this was happening to me aside from the fact that I looked different to everyone else in the room.
I guess this is what’s happening.
“Let’s make for the doors. We’ll get out faster when they finish,” Hugh said from my other side. I nodded.I didn’t want to leave so soon, but I also didn’t want to stay. To stay would be to allow the dickhead to keep telling me I didn’t belong here. To leave would prove him right. I closed my eyes and thought of Yossarian.
Wait, there is literally somebody on that stage who looks like me.
But there weren’t many people in the crowd who looked like me. Did that matter? Should that have mattered? Should someone have done something? Could they see that this was happening? Why did I feel like if I did something, I would be the bad guy? The hypersensitive, paranoid, aggressive-for-no-reason guy.
Maybe that’s how power works.
When I was a kid, I used to have dreams where I would lose all of my physical strength. My sisters or the school bullies would be taunting me, enraging me, and I’d try with all my will to bring my fist to their face. It felt like it would take hours just to get there, and when it did connect it would have all the impact of a falling feather.
That night almost had the same surreal quality, because knowing that I did still have my strength made me feel even more enfeebled.
Jung Kim doesn’t look like me. But maybe to this guy. Or maybe not and that’s the problem.
The dickhead’s t-shirt said Say Yes to Life. Apparently not my life though, and I still can’t quite figure out why. If he targeted me because my skin is dark and my eyes are slit, then why did he pay $65 to see a band of mostly dark-skinned guys—one with slit eyes—play music? If he was going to be racist he could at least have given us the courtesy of consistency.
Can’t he at least punch me? That would make things easier.
It took me so long to acknowledge what this was about, but it’s obvious now. Before the nudging even began, when the band was off the stage and the encore was being called for, I saw him point at me and giggle with a friend. I pretended, hoped, that it was about something else, and I held onto that hope until I couldn’t deny it any longer. He wasn’t typically aggressive: he was passive-aggressive and microaggressive. He gave himself some plausible deniability over what he was doing. He made me and anyone who might have been noticing and watching want to convince ourselves that he was doing something else. He used our own kindness, our optimism, and our belief in people to be decent and good against us.
Maybe that’s how discrimination works.
Say Yes To Life.
I love this song. So did he, according to his shirt. I wondered how he would remember this night in the months and years ahead, if there would be any cognitive dissonance between his love for the band and his disdain for me. I knew that mine would be full of both regret and content at not sinking to his level. I wondered if his recollections of the encore and—presumably—his favourite song would include pushing the only Asian person he could find in the audience across the crowd, and no one lifting a finger to his mastery of petty aggression. I knew that mine would need to include this. I wondered if there was a place reserved in his mind for people of colour like Gang of Youths to be gods rather than people, exempt from his toxicity, so that he can enjoy them without guilt while still looking at everyone else as less than human.
Maybe that’s what white privilege is. Being “colour blind”.
Cover image by Bruce from Sydney, Australia (Gang of Youths), via Wikimedia Commons
About the author
Eugene is a Chinese-Australian writer based in Melbourne, with works published online in Global Hobo and in print in Mous Magazine, Eyebag Magazine, and Page Seventeen Literary Magazine. He is overly emotional about food, has a fear of giant squid, and posts at mr.pocari.