by There was a Spanish fellow I knew a few years ago in the Bronx — we’ll call him Georges — and he was a gang banger. He had a wife and many children with several women. He wore a bald head by choice and he was as wide as he was tall but muscles packed his small frame. He used to hang out in the building where we lived and he was always around and if the guards would ask him to leave, he’d just meander back — and that is the true definition of Evil — always there, always percolating, forever readying an attack in the guise of friendship and faked normalcy. Every time I saw Georges my stomach would twist.
There was something about him that proudly spoke “Pure Evil.” His eyes were Black Holes where no light escaped and all light disappeared. His tensed muscles were always ready to twitch to find a gun or create a fist. I have never known a man who so perfectly embodied black tar Evil so deeply within every essence of his body and spirit. I tried to avoid Georges. He always found me.
He loved me.
He thought I would be a perfect “money mule” for drug dealers because I could get paid $4,000.00 a day to hide $40,000.00 in cash in my living room closet. “No one would suspect you,” Georges told me, “because you’re White and you have a job.” He smiled and then whispered, “We can make a lot of money.”
When Evil directly propositions you it takes some cunning and some wile to refuse all offers without being obvious. If you turn down Evil flat, then you are not respecting the Armageddon-like destructive power of Evil and Evil sets against you to prove its strength. If you go along with Evil then you become ensnared by Evil and a slave to its every desire. Evil is best defeated, I learned, by becoming a nodding pillow: You nod your head you understand what is being said without ever agreeing or disagreeing with anything and then you become a quiet place where whispering Evil falls and then, you hope, smothers in its own darkness.
That plan of attack worked with Georges as he told me stories of killings with 9mm Glocks aimed at arteries; and shaving the head off a man with a broken, 20-pound, shard of glass taken from a one-inch thick shattered store window pane; and beating a betraying brother with chains wrapped in, and then swung from within, gunny sacks. Who knows if all those stories were true or not?
The truth of the tales didn’t matter because the reality of the Evil from which those stories fell was real and tangible and submitted as direct evidence in the world. A more noble man might have taken Evil head-on by snuffing out its smirking, glimmering, wick — but sometimes the path of Righteousness is to neither feed nor starve an Evil that only lives to be disturbed so it may gain a brighter flame in an ever-darkening world.
You are, in fact, a strong man for being able to resist such a grand temptation (or is that a four grand temptation? :P)
Hey Gordon!
It wasn’t much to resist. You knew it was blood money. You knew once they lured you in you would be in forever with the only way out being your death. It was a pretty tense moment trying to buy enough time to let the idea play away.
There are many evils out there today. This world is indeed a very harsh place. I commend you for the way you handled that Situation. The one thing about evil people is that if they think they have an audience, they’ll go on and on about their so called “conquest” till they’ve forgotten what they asked you in the first place – not not only are they evil, they also don’t have a brain.
Just to let you know at this point that I’m taking a short break from blogging. Last Saturday, my friends fiance was killed in a head on Car crash less than 4 hours before they were due to marry. Understandably we have all taken it terribly. To add another problem to that, my partner last night told me we couldn’t afford OUR Wedding, so my Wedding is now officially “On hold.” To say all this has hurt me isn’t really surprising. My heart feels like a vise is wrapped around it.
Anyway, I may still call around to read your posts. (I never could resist them) I have no idea how long I’ll be away from the blogging world for. It could be a few days, it could be a few weeks – who knows? I just need a little time to recover from the blows that life has thrown at me recently.
Take Care David.
Hi Dawn —
I’m so sorry to hear about your wedding being postponed. I think you’re smart to take a moment to reflect where you are now. Put everything on pause and look all around you and decide if you’re in the best spot to catch some future happiness.
Keep the Faith! If you cannot, try to allow the Faith to find you.
I will miss your spirit here. I always appreciate your fine and intellectual and spiritual comments. I respect your kindness in letting us know what’s up with you so we won’t worry something terrible happened.
You are right about Evil loving an audience. Once they hook you, though, you have to be careful how you move along without them or they’ll get their feelings hurt and come after you.
Hi David,
Sometimes becoming a nodding pillow is the best way to defuse any situation where you don’t want to enrage someone, but you don’t want to compromise your position.
I use that method all the time when I’m at court working with debtors. I want to resolve the situation in a way that benefits my client while providing a compromise that makes all parties happy.
Sometimes it’s best to gently say you can’t do something while nodding and being empathetic, than to enter into a direct confrontation by saying something that would require the opposing party to try to “save face” by escalating the situation. Speaking gently is often the best way to “win,” whether avoiding becoming entangled in Georges plot or any other situation involving human conflict.
The one good thing about evil people is that they always seem to like to brag about their evil nature. It is usually their downfall. It also provides a warning, if we are willing to listen.
It’s also amazing that instincts can also detect evil.
If I ever get a “bad vibe” from someone, I always try to get away from them as soon as possible. I’ve only felt that way a couple of times, but it wasn’t a feeling to be ignored.
Hi Chris!
You make a lot of sense and I thank you for expanding on ways to be an effective nodding pillow. In your line of duty you have to interact with all sorts of personality types and I know you have lots of effective tools for calming down evil intentions.
I’m horrified.
I’ve faced evil eye to eye and the scar it left never fades. Sorry to be so cryptic but I’m not able to put to words my experience even though it happened over fifteen years ago.
David…I’m very pleased with you at the moment, not to say I wasn’t before. To say, “It wasn’t much to resist” tells me your character is strong and true.
I wish I could write more but my heart and soul is still reeling from the dialogue between you and Georges and frankly, I feel like vomiting.
Thanks David, you are always thought provoking and an inspiration to me.
Hi mayrose —
Thank you for your wonderful comment. I appreciate your thoughts and your good wishes and I certainly understand the impulse to vomit. That’s exactly how I felt each time I saw him approaching me.