Standing in front of Jack London Cinemas, down by the water. Amy calls it Jack Klugman Square, which usually makes me laugh, but nothing seems very funny right now. Talking about Bulworth and race relations with two friends. Paula, full of energy left over from her first boxing lesson earlier in the evening, and her husband Roger, my environmental defense lawyer friend, who is lean and articulate.

Two passers-by stop next to us. One of them is very tall and girthy, the other squat. They're black, and wearing all black. Glints of gold. The tall one puts a couple of fingers in my back and tells me to give him my money. Because the fingers are so unconvincing, I assume he's joking. I laugh. He jams his hand down into my back pocket, going for my wallet. My arm instinctively juts down and knocks his hand away.

In a flash, the fist of his other hand is flying toward my face and there's nothing I can do. His knuckles land on my cheekbone hard like a brick, but not with as much force as I expected. I can feel the dent of his ring in the left side of my face. I'm still standing. "All right, all right." I open my wallet and hand him all my cash. Around 50 bucks. "Is that all of it?" Yes, I say, then double-check. I missed a ten, and am about to hand him that too when he calls me a liar. I start to explain that I just missed it, I didn't mean to lie, then stop myself.

Why am I explaining myself to standing evil? What does it matter? I just hand it to him.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Roger's wallet flying toward his face, having been thrown back at him by the little guy. Paula is dropping hers back into her bag. I turn back to Mr. T and he's gone. They're both gone. We're in shock. Nobody knows what to say, having just stood around talking about race relations for the past 30 minutes, and now this. Serves us right. The entire event was totally stereotypical. A standard, run-of-the-mill, storybook mugging with no particularly remarkable details to recommend it. Almost comical.

I seem to have lost a lot since I landed back in Oakland. I've lost a lot to thieves all over the country and the world. But I've never been physically assaulted before. Paula says later that the little guy had a small gun, but she's sure it was fake. It all happened so fast. There's nothing to say. I just feel really really low.

Bulworth said on national TV that all the races in America should just fuck and fuck and fuck until we're all the same color. My face hurts.