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[7colourfulmind]

Violence in the early morning

It was a cloudy morning during the week. I arrived at the busking pitch around 10 am and waited for my friend to come. He was playing guitar during my show and significantly increased my income by doing so. Another busker showed up just a little bit later on. A dancer and occasional drug dealer. We all agreed to wait until 11:00 to start playing.  So far, it was just me, my friend with the guitar, and the dancer. As we waited, a man, carrying a 12 pack of beers, approached me: “Hey, do you want a beer?” “No, thank you. It’s not even noon yet,” I said. “What about you guys?” he asked my friend and the dancer. They both declined. As the guitar player and I slowly started setting up our equipment, the man asked us again and again if we wanted a beer. We repeatedly declined. The man had sat down on a bench, close to the busking pitch, and continued drinking. But he wouldn’t stop talking to us, asking us to join him in his alcoholism. We finished setting up and were getting ready to play our first song. By now, the dancer was getting annoyed at the guy. He told him a couple times to leave us alone, but the drunk didn’t listen. We started playing and quickly gathered a crowd that applauded after we had finished the first song. We played the next one. By now, the dancer had gotten into a heated argument with the drunk, and it had escalated to them going head to head, right behind me, while I was sitting on my little keyboard playing upbeat songs about love. The dancer loudly told the man to back off, but he didn’t budge. So he punched the man in the face. The man fell over backward, and his head bounced off the concrete. He was out cold immediately. The dancer bent down and punched the man again, UFC style, before backing away. The crowd in front of us was stunned. My friend and I finished the song to confused and sparse applause and stopped playing. I turned around. The man was knocked out, and blood was dripping down from his head onto the ground. A small puddle of blood formed next to him, and somebody called the police. They arrived shortly after and quickly taped off the entire busking pitch and arrested the dancer. While they put the handcuffs on him, he asked me for a favor: "David, my backpack. Take care of it." Oh, his backpack. He wants me to give it to him. I thought. I quickly got the backpack and showed it to him, but he was obviously unable to grab it with his hands cuffed behind his back. His eyes grew wide. He shook his head. "No, no, man. put it back." I didn't fully understand. "I thought you want..." His face grew more intense: "Put it back," he said through clenched teeth. I put the backpack back to where it was. Then it dawned on me. The backpack was where he kept the drugs. I had almost made his situation much worse by giving him a backpack full of drugs that the police would inevitably go through.

The knocked-out man kept lying on the ground and didn't move for about an hour before the ambulance came and took him away. Afterward, another police car came, with people in apocalyptic hazmat suits that investigated the crime scene.

I played one more show that day, in another place, but everything felt quite odd. As far as I know, the man is alive and well. I haven't seen the dancer in a long time.

[7colourfulmind]

Men don’t cry for help, and a woman showing her bottom during my show.

Today I locked myself in the bathroom and took a shower. So far, so good.

I dried myself off and turned the knob to open the door up again. As I turned it, the knob suddenly came loose. I held it in my hand and looked at the hole that was where the knob had been just a few seconds before. I could see the bolt that had been connected to the knob and was now loosely sitting in the hole. The bolt was the key to unlocking the door. It was too far inside the hole for me to reach it, though. I was stuck. Locked in my bathroom.

I’m going to die in here. That was my first thought.

No, I’ll yell for help.

I made a few half-hearted attempts at calling for help. However, I soon stopped, as I felt silly.

Men don’t yell for help. I thought.

That same kind of reasoning almost got me killed when I was five years old. I was drowning. I had underestimated the depth of the water on the beach, but was too embarrassed to call for help. Even though a woman was standing comfortably right next to me while I struggled to keep my head over water, I couldn’t bring myself to call out for help. Luckily my mother had seen me and quickly jumped into the water to save me.

I haven’t learned anything from that, apparently.

I decided to kick the door open. The door to my bathroom is wooden, so I figured it couldn't be too hard.

I was wrong.

After five minutes of intense kicking, the door finally flew open. I had damaged the frame of the door but not much else. I called my landlord.

He wasn’t too happy but told me that he would fix it as soon as possible.

Later on, I went out to play some music on the street, as that is my main source of income at the moment.

Lately, there has been a woman showing her bottom during my show. She is a little bit older and possibly homeless. Quite a nice person, though. She does wear underwear, so it is not too provoking. The crowd usually screams when she lifts up her dress, and it is definitely very entertaining.

When those kinds of things happen, I often face a weird conundrum. On the one hand, I enjoy the craziness that can happen on the street. But, on the other hand, I try to make sure that there is a certain order to my show so that I still have the audience's attention and get paid.

Usually, I don't interfere with whatever the audience is doing unless they start touching my equipment or try to sing into my microphone.

My overall philosophy is to tolerate anything that doesn't hurt anybody. After all, it is a public space, and I really have zero authority over anyone. So who am I to tell people what they can and can't do.