In 12th Grade, in New York City, in 1983, I was a bike messenger. It was not just a job, but also extra training for weekend bike races in Central Park, so I loved it. I got to see little snapshots of a great big city, every day after school. One day, however, I’d just as soon forget: it was my first real exposure to domestic violence.
I was riding down 18th street, a narrow street in the Garment District. It was a beautiful day, and I was (for once) in no particular hurry, coasting past a row of cars stopped at a light. All of a sudden, I got “doored” – that is, the passenger side door from a pickup truck opened into me as I was riding by, knocking me and my bike down. As my feet hit the ground to break my fall, I noticed someone – a young woman – get out of the door, step right over me quickly, then tear down the sidewalk as if she was running for her life.
In the next few seconds, three men (all pedestrians) came up to me to help me back up, just as the driver of the truck – a guy – jumped out of the truck and ran down the same sidewalk. Moments later he returned, holding the woman in a headlock, dragging her back into the old pickup truck through the still-open passenger door. She struggled, but she didn’t even yell for help.
The remarkable thing is that the three men who had so kindly stopped to help me barely even noticed the commotion going on just a few feet away. The guy forced the women back into the truck, then kept her in a headlock as the light turned green and he drove slowly away. I got up, realized I was unhurt, and started to get back on my bike. The whole thing took maybe 20 or 30 seconds. It was surreal.
Just before I left, one of the men said, to no one in particular, “I wonder what she did to him.”
My family had problems, to be sure. But not problems of violence or intimidation. So the barbaric incident simply made no sense to me. It wasn’t until a minute or two later that I realized I hadn’t remembered the license plate number of the truck. The sadder thing was realizing that even if I had, I’m not certain I would have done anything.
I wonder about that woman sometimes, being brutally kidnapped on a busy city street as three men ignore her and instead pay attention to a fallen cyclist who wasn’t even injured, didn’t have a scratch. No wonder she didn’t even bother to scream for help. The world she lived in, 26 years ago, didn’t much care.
I’d like to think that we live in a different world today.
