U Street Blues.

I live sort of in the "hood," right. I mean, not really, but U Street is no Foggy Bottom. I've lived in this city for half a decade without ever running into any problems and suddenly I've found myself in situation after situation to the point where I don't feel comfortable walking the one block to my local liquor store, sometimes even in broad daylight. Good news for my liver, bad news for my state of mind. It sucks to be afraid of your neighbors. It sucks to be afraid of strangers on the street. It sucks to feel like you have to change your route because you see a man further down the block. It sucks to call 9-1-1 on a teenager outside your house. It sucks to put serious thought into buying mace.

Mace, as it turns out, is very confusing: much like I'm not sure what situation warrants someone harassing and assaulting me, I'm not sure what situation warrants me spraying mace in their eyes. And how useful is a tiny can of mace when faced with that group of 5-10 huge teenage boys who loiter outside my apartment every day? If something happens in that environment, I'm sh*t out of luck. I'd need to be Bruce f*cking Wayne to get out of trouble. Save me, Batman! Maybe there's something to that -- an alter-ego that involves a body-hugging bullet-proof costume. Or maybe that's just schizophrenia.

I was telling my mom about how I had to call the cops on a guy who had purposely scared me, then laughed about it with his friends. Erol came home 10 minutes after I did, all upset because he had witnessed them doing what they had done to me to some other girls on the corner. I got away okay, but the guy actually touched this other girl. Not okay, dude.

"You know what bothers me?" I mused to my mother. "When I first got home, I felt bad about my reaction. When that boy turned around and came towards me I was scared to death, and I showed it. I gave him this look of sheer hatred, total contempt -- I hated him before he even had a chance to say anything lewd to me, before he could touch me, before anything more could happen. It must be so damaging to that kid. He's what, 17? 18? And white women are terrified of him. We hate him. And yet, he was assaulting me. He was trying to upset me and potentially, trying to hurt me physically. He could have stolen from me or hit me or raped me. Anything. He knew he had that power to make me fearful, and he was exploiting it. That's wrong, and yet my reaction was to feel bad about what a racially insensitive *sshole I am. It makes no sense."

"Imagine how victims of rape must feel," she said. "Hold on to that empathy."

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to deal with the constant cat-calling, or how I'm supposed to feel comfortable walking through that group of teenagers who get drunk and high every day and loiter in the street. I resent that I'm afraid to leave my yard by myself, even to walk to the metro or to a good place to catch a cab. But I can't hold on to this fear of strangers forever. And I don't want to contribute to the already pervasive racial tension that dominates the mood of my neighborhood. I shouldn't have to feel afraid; likewise, my neighbors shouldn't have to feel like second-class citizens "allowed" to live where they do by the generosity of state assistance.

Ah, the politics of home. Who knew it'd come to be so complicated?