"fucking niggers"

And when this was uttered, exclaimed an hour or so ago, I just shrugged my shoulders because life is rough and this is Sarasota, and I deal with these things. I am learning how complex things are.

So, one of the guests at the Best Western left their room to go their friend's room for five minutes or so, and he left the sliding glass door leading out to the pool unlocked. Five minutes later he came back to his room and noticed that his car keys were not there. Then he noticed that his car was no longer in front of his room. And then he noticed that his wife's purse, and his new camera were also MIA. He came to the front desk soon after, told me this - I called the police, set off an alarm in the office that would not go off until I called three managers and figured out how to turn it off, and I wanted to cry - it was this high pitched whistling sound that could cripple you to your knees if you were a slightly weaker person. And during this already tense time where I was having to deal with a car robbery, where I was already a little stressed, I seriously just wanted to cry, I was so close to the weakness threshold, where had I reached it, I would have been on my knees, in fetal position with covered ears.

And his friend was there too, waiting for the cops to arrive. He was the one exclaiming "Fucking niggers" to himself, to us, astonished, somehow trying to explain things, why the world is so fucked up. And they could have been black, but I really think it was a carful of Latin kids that circled through the parking lot earlier. They also could have been white. It should be irrelvant. But nothing is. Especially here in this town.

A week or so ago, I ordered Dominos and when it came, Lance told me about two robberies. Two drivers beat up while delivering pizzas out into Newtown. One of them, his father, who was pistol-whipped. And this is how perceptions of race are formed right there. Countless incidents had happened with Lance and pizza deliveries in Newtown. He has proudly kicked the shit out of people who had messed with him. And he was sad that he wasn't delivering that night, because he would have done something, he thinks. And he has no embarrasment about making generalizations about blacks because most of his encounters with black people have not been pleasant ones.

And stuff like this gets to me. I am never mad at the person who utters these sentiments - I don't even think of them as racist sentiments - I understand them and where they are coming from. I don't know. But then I think of how bad a person's situation must be to pistolwhip someone for twenty bucks and some pizza. And poverty is the problem, is probably the biggest hindrance to democracy. When things like this happen, when someone's economic situation is so dire that wanton violence becomes a neccesity for survival than democracy is endangered. Our humanity is endangered when someone is degraded to these conditions where this would even become an option, where we are thrown back into animal conditions. Our humanity rests on such fragile and mutable conditions. When people resort to violence for basic survival, either the bridge dividing humans from animals is shown to be just a stupid myth, or that we are failing in our responsibilites and are devolving into animal conditions, forfeiting our human essence for whatever short term benefits we reap profitting from class inequalities. We are fucking humans, of the same species as those early Greeks, as Jesus, as Augustine, as Emerson, as all those beautiful minds who helped develop this conception of the human, and we can fucking do better, we must.

And last week, I checked this guy into the hotel. A white guy, if it matters at all. And he had just been released from jail that day, and he told me his whole life story, his current situation. His name was John and he had been released without notice because his parole committee had just realized that he had been sentenced for too long, and had already served 10 or so months more than he should have. And so he was released from jail, kicked out into the street with no money. And goddamn fucking shit, this is our criminal justice system. I was so pained to see that it, that we (we are it - this is our government, us) did not care two shits about rehabilitation and just released someone without a dime to their name out into the streets where to survive, to even eat enough that day, they may have had to do something to risk going right back into jail.

And I checked him in, with a credit card authorization done over the phone from his wife in Georgia (which we are not supposed to do). And I got reprimanded at work for this for checking someone in without a credit card, and appearantly the card given to me over the phone was not legit.

Bob, the night audit guy, asked me about that tonight, and he told me that he has encountered so many scams in his years there, and said, "You just can't trust anyone." And perhaps because I liked how it sounded, I said, "I am learning that." And then I felt gross, I was chilled to think that I could ever utter such a sentiment, when I need to live like Christ and trust everyone. I need to be outrageously compassionate and think the best of people because otherwise, my worldview would be horrible, my life would be. And Jody, the manager was so scared about me biking home and told me to be careful, be careful, are you sure you are going to be safe. And I laughed and said I'm not worried about. I am not worried about it. And then I biked home, soaked up the stars, the bright, trusting things."f