My husband is visiting Vinaka right now–the café I haunted in my youth.
I can picture it perfectly. The patio at night with cheap black metal furniture. The clink of ceramic hourglass-shaped mugs. Chess boards scattered across tables. Old men hunched over games, teenagers lingering with nothing better to do, all of us orbiting the same caffeine-soaked gravity.
I spent so many nights there. Smoking cloves. Drinking chai lattes. Reading Kurt Vonnegut, Bukowski, Palahniuk. Philosophizing with friends who felt just as hungry and restless as I did. I learned how to play chess there–really play. The kind of chess where you learn patience, pattern, restraint. The kind where you lose badly before you ever win.
One night I was there with my girlfriends. There were four of us, and at the time, we called our group The Seasons. I was Winter. Dark. Cold. A storm cloud. In hindsight, this was definitely an early indicator of one facet of my personality that I clung to desperately…
We were walking along the patio when we reached a narrow passage near an open door. A group of people stood clustered there, forcing us to slip through single file.
My three friends went ahead of me.
As the first passed, I saw him. A striking man. Dark hair slicked back. Sleeves rolled up. Tight shirt. Cuffed jeans. Dark boots. I took a moment to drink him in, enamored by his handsome features and strong presence.
Then I watched him do the ugliest thing I’d ever witnessed.
He turned and spit.
At first, I thought I was mistaken. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he was chewing. Maybe I didn’t see clearly.
Then my second friend passed.
He did it again.
Then my third.
Again.
I stopped.
I stared at him. And I realized I recognized him. The 666 tattoo on his neck. His name: Armando. A reputation that followed him at school. Rumors that lived somewhere between myth and horror.
I looked straight into his eyes. What I saw there wasn’t bravado. It was pain. Rage. Something feral and furious.
I told him I saw what he did. That he had deliberately spit on all three of my friends. That he should apologize.
My friends were frozen off to the side, ahead of me. I could feel them even though I couldn’t see them. I was fully inside that moment. Defending them, defending our right to pass without being degraded.
I had never experienced that kind of hatred so directly before.
I don’t remember the exact words that followed.
I remember his hand.
The sound. The heat. The shock.
He slapped me hard across the face in public.
Everything went white-hot. I lunged toward him without thinking, ready to tear him apart, but my friends caught me. They dragged me back as I screamed and thrashed. Obscenities ripped out of me like fire. He smirked. His friends laughed.
Our pain was entertainment.
Someone called the cops.
I remember the lights; blue and red cycling endlessly, like a nauseating carousel. I was hysterical. I couldn’t tell the story without choking on tears, spit, rage. All the officers could understand was that I had assaulted someone.
They told me I was going to be arrested.
Somehow, my boyfriend arrived. He hadn’t seen what happened, but he listened beneath the chaos and he spoke clearly when I couldn’t. He pointed to the man who hit me.
The officers recognized him.
They released me immediately.
Later, we learned Armando was arrested and formally charged for crimes that went far beyond that night.
I hated him.
And I felt devastatingly sad for him.
The reason I tell this story is not because of the violence.
It’s because of what didn’t happen.
That incident occurred at one of my favorite places in the world. One of my safe places. One of my happy places. And it did nothing to taint it.
I went back to Vinaka again and again.
I was fearful of him, not the place.
That distinction matters more than I understood at the time.
My parents could fight, but my home never felt unsafe. It wasn’t the house, it was the people in the moment. Pain lived in bodies, not walls. Harm had a source, not a geography.
As a teenager, I had enough safety to be able to develop discernment.
I knew how to separate the container from the content. I knew where the danger lived, and where it didn’t. I knew what deserved my fear and what didn’t get to steal my joy.
That ability–to see clearly without collapsing everything into threat–has shaped my life more than I realized.
I see it now as wisdom. A capacity to hold complexity. To recognize that something can be both beautiful and touched by darkness without becoming ruined.
I forgive Armando for hitting me. Not because it was acceptable, but because carrying him no longer serves me. I hope he found peace. I hope whatever pain lived in him loosened its grip.
What I feel most when I look back isn’t regret.
It’s pride.
I stood up for the people I loved.
I named injustice when I saw it.
I leaned into fear instead of letting it calcify inside me.
Yes, I was punished for it. And yes, some of my power was stripped away over time.
But not all of it.
It did not strip me.
It sharpened me.
And now, as I keep returning to myself, piece by piece, I recognize that discernment again. Older. Wiser. Still intact.
Still guiding me.
