I was attacked tonight. It was around 11pm, and I was walking home from the gym, and for some reason I decided to take the Other Way. I walked down Valencia to 15th instead of 14th, and headed for the block that is supposed to be one of the worst in the city, along the side of the Valencia Street Projects. It was a beautiful warm night and tons of people were hanging out outside. There seemed to be some drug deals going on, but usually no one bothers me. I was wearing my torn jean jacket that I bought 13 years ago in high school, my jogging shorts and old Nikes, and my hair was all a mess. How on earth could I look like a rich person? I was walking down this particular block, thinking to myself, “wow, racism is a bad thing.” And then I thought about how this block had been one of the first things people warned me about when I moved to the neighborhood, and how mad my ex-boyfriend John would be at me if he knew I was walking down that street, and how my parents would be pissed, and actually, logically, it was a pretty stupid thing to do. But I made eye contact with a guy who was kind of cute and he smiled at me and I smiled at him and kept walking, thinking, "well, there are some nice people in the projects." I was......the center of the card......ds them. "You pathetic losers! You have my money, but you don't have my pride." (Sure it's cliché, but hell, give me some credit, I just got mugged!) "You two are the losers for doing this!" Why bother filing a complaint? These skinny kids have enough problems without having to have the police go in there and remind them how desperate and undignified they are. In the war between good and evil, it's not always who walks away with the goods, but who deserved them in the first place, and how they got them. So I rushed home to write this. Thirty dollars for a story to tell. Not a bad deal, really.