It was a warm Saturday in July and crowds of revelers were everywhere in the newly gentrified streets of Bushwick. Both the older dance clubs and the newer bars had crowds of young people congregating around them. Not a single seat was empty in the outdoor seating areas of the new trendy bistros that had opened up. Friends walking and talking greeted each other with loud, celebratory platitudes as if reconnecting after long periods of time apart. Traffic was at a crawl as their passengers took it all in on the way to their destinations.

We had no where to go and my partner was enjoying the plentiful eye candy of scantily dressed women as we drove around. I was focused on women who had put obvious time and effort into the way they looked walking hand in hand with men who were wearing the same stained t-shirt and jeans that they had probably rolled out of bed in. My partner and I would point out people that matched our interest despite knowing the other was only truly looking at our own particular fixation. There was much to watch and see, while we made our way down the long blocks of eateries and bars, appreciating the lives of people who didn’t have to work on weekends, or at 1 am.

We eventually found our way onto a long avenue of popular social activity. We trailed behind a souped up car whose two male occupants had decided to provide commentary to every woman walking nearby.

“Yo, Mami! Let me put a baby in you!”

We figured out early on that offers of semen denoted rare approval while most of their loud yelling was reserved for those they were unwilling to reproduce with in their current state. The unasked for critques were exclusively devoted to women. The men wearing stained T-shirts and sporting unruly beards would have to seek unbiased assessment elsewhere.

“Is that a bird’s nest? Your hair looks like a bird’s nest. I’m telling you that I don’t like your hair.”

“It’s a shame all of that thickness is around your belly and not your ass where you need it.”

“That face is mad ugly but it’s ok, girl, I can’t still bang you from behind and I won’t have to look at it.”

With all this charm and personality it was hard to imagine these two men were single and their car wasn’t being swarmed with multitudes of attractive women begging for their attention.

Eventually they took advantage of our tailgating ambulance by incorporating it into the statements directed at unsatisfactory women.

“Even the medics can’t fix what trauma happened to your face.”

“Maybe the ambulance can fix what that ugly stick did. I doubt it, though.

We felt it was important to follow them proactively since we felt it likely that one of them was going to get punched in the face eventually. I at least hoped that one of them would get punched in the face. It might even be helpful from a medical perspective if we were nearby for that..

Much of the crowd were speechless, regarding the comments with shocked looks of outrage. Some of the recipients of the harsh critiquing made hand gestures or shouted back expletives, which made the motorists howl with laughter. Here and there, individuals smirked or outright laughed. The two men in the car seemed to take great enjoyment from their audience.

There was a steady stream of yelling until another woman caught their attention. She was by herself with a serious expression on her face and seemed to be determined to reach her destination. The men became laser focused on this one woman who failed to inspire any sexual desirability in either of them. The loudmouth in the passenger seat decided to let her know why.

“Holy cow, girl! That outfit may have been cool 30 pounds ago but now you gotta put that back in the closet until the Slim Fast kicks in!”

She didn’t even glance in his direction and just kept walking.

“Hey girl, I like my women thick but you really pushing the envelope!” Shockingly, she didn’t seem to be too interested in being one of his women and just kept going in the same purposeful way of walking that she always had.

They continued yelling stupid things at her. Everyone was looking in her direction and waiting to see what she did. But she did nothing, just kept walking. Some other women were also walking nearby but the two men decided to devote their efforts on the one who ignored them.

She made it to a corner where a food cart had been set up. She stopped there and appeared to order something. The car in front of us paused at the green light there and used the opportunity to harass the woman further for getting something to eat.

“Man, you just can’t help yourself, right? No man wants you so you eat, and then no man wants you because you eat so much. That’s your problem.”

They laughed and laughed ignoring the honking of horns and the toot of our siren.

She received her order very quickly and emerged from behind the food cart with a huge oversized plastic plate piled high with food. She also had a large paper cup with a cover loosely placed on top. In the beam of the streetlight I could see the steam coming off whatever was on that plate.

The passenger in the car made some snarky comment about the super-sized order and how her clothes wouldn’t be able to handle any extra expansion.

What followed was a spectacle worthy of media broadcast on the level of the moon landing. I think I join every other person in the vicinity who was witness to it in remembering all the details about that time and date, what we were wearing, our exact location, and who we were with.

It happened relatively quickly. Walking purposefully over to wide open window of the passenger side, the woman threw the plate and everything on it, directly onto the vocal man in the passenger seat. Up until the moment the food was airborne the man had maintained a stream of demeaning commentary. Perhaps he was distracted, thinking of more insults to hurl before he could figure out what was happening. But instead, she had turned the tables on hurling things. She also thrust the contents of the large cup at the driver, tossing the empty container onto the hood of the car, where leftover contents oozed and began to solidify, thanks to the heat of the engine. Then she simply turned and walked away. The woman’s face never once deviated from the purposeful, serious expression she had started out with. My hero of the day disappeared into the crowd of awestruck pedestrians, vanishing forever.

It had been done with such purpose, as if evening the score with misogynists had been her intention all along. It was unlikely given the randomness of those two men out at that particular time but I’d like to believe the universe had a plan that day. My heart beamed in admiration for this wonderful, anonymous woman who had bested these crude and nasty men.

I cheered something out my window that I hoped the woman would hear and I started clapping. I was joined in my applause by a few other women on the block but mostly everyone else just stood around stunned, but also smiling. I was so proud of this courageous woman who had returned the unfavorable feedback the men had been dishing out. It was a beautiful moment of well-deserved vengeance.

Very soon public attention was redirected at the men covered in hot ethnic street foot. Fingers were pointed and loud laughter could be heard from far distances.

The passenger door of the car opened and I watched as food rolled down the man’s chest and lap and onto the street as he got out and stood up. The tossed components still emanated with fresh-from-the-grill steam.

The driver was even more infuriated. He got out much quicker, looking at his chest and flicking off whatever had adhered to his white linen shirt as if it were poison. He removed the cup from his car and tried to wipe away the congealing food before thinking better of doing so with his finger.

The passenger looked directly at me and yelled “Did you see that? You saw what happened right? Look at me!” He called the woman a rude expletive, considered by many to be gasp-worthy, and rather than try to find and confront the woman who had made him the object of ridicule and mirth, he marched over to me.

The astonished man presented me with his right arm which was covered in a thick, brownish red sauce with little pieces of rice and lettuce still stuck here and there. The combination smell of the food and a very powerful men’s cologne wafted into the cab of our vehicle and made me a little nauseous, but also a little hungry.

“Look! Look! I’m burned!” he told me.

His arm was slightly red but it was difficult to tell underneath the generous helping of an unknown culinary specialty. The brown/red sauce was on his face and chest. His shirt, formerly, mostly white and made of linen, was covered in spackled colors of Asian food. There were long noodles stuck along the low V created by the few buttons on his club-wear that were closed. His particularly long chest hairs made an ideal trap for the smaller sized ingredients to adhere to. I wondered what kind of dish had both rice and noodles. It also contained a generous helping of an unusually smelly chili-type soupy sauce. The noodles alone quickly had me craving carbs and I made a mental note that I would have some before the shift was finished. But for now I had an irate man demanding something be done for the injury underneath his spilled entrée.

We went to the back of our ambulance where I doused the man with some of our water. After his face and arms were wiped down there didn’t appear to be any significant injury but the man insisted that he had been scarred. He searched his skin for evidence that his flesh was not peeling away.

His friend came by and remarked that he thought the food that was flung at him had been chili, but it smelled different. He was angry that the car he kept impeccably clean was now covered in unknown food from what he presumed was an unsanitary, unregulated cart. He began musing about how soon he could get his vehicle detailed and wondered if the smell could ever be fully eradicated.

His friend was outraged. “I’m burned and all you think of is that car. I could be scarred for life. Disfigured, even.”

“That’s really awful,” I sympathized. “You know how scars affect your attractiveness. Big, big turn off for women. Almost nothing worse. What will all the ladies say behind your back?”

The man considered my sarcasm with a serious aura of disappointment, and possibly nervousness. He continued to mutter curse words about the devil-woman who was now the bane of his existence. Despite his protestations the man did not seem to have any kind of burn. But he insisted on being taken to a burn center for evaluation. We didn’t mind because the hospital he requested was surrounded by many still-open take-out places where we could find some Asian noodles of our own.

So we headed to the burn center where the mostly female staff there had many amusing things to say about his imperceptible burn and about their shared loved for Asian cuisine.