Swol' temple

So.... I just got mugged.  Well, by "just" I mean two hours ago; going to the NYPD precinct is really a comprehensive endeavor, it turns out.[fn1]  I'm bleeding from my upper lip (where the guy hit me), and also from my knee, where I fell onto (when the guy hit me).  Neither hurts bad, and neither is particularly troubling, medical-wise, and the emergency services mostly just asked me my phone number and social, because "it feels kind of swollen, like when you bite your cheek" and "I fell down but didn't lose consciousness" apparently aren't great dramatic scripts.  
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fn1:  Yeah, "it turns out" is code for "footnote:  shit EVERYONE KNEW except for me."  Sorry.  
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As an aspiring author of great dramatic scripts, this is useful insight.  

So what happened is this, and by sheer coincidence this is exactly what happened the last time I got mugged, which was 8-9 years ago:  I left a bar, thinking nothing of the local circumstances, because, fuck, I'd just left a bar.  One block later, I was awakened to the wrongness of my presumption when someone ran up on the side of me and struck me with his fist. 

Let me pause here.  To be punched with a fist is a ... variable experience.  Had the person striking me been Mike Tyson, I have no doubt I would have surrendered my possessions, my sexual availability (Mike, of course, don't play 'dat, but as a matter of respect purely I would have offered---call me Mike!), and if he had expressed interest I would have chaired his presidential campaign.  But Mike Tyson is more than merely human.

Mere humans one reacts to differently.  When it happened to me 8-9 years ago I merely scampered.  Tonight I hit the concrete (that's when my jeans tore and why my knee bleeds).  Both then and now, the purported brigand had not thought through what to do, and when I offered up no money, he had little to do besides.  Last time he merely asked for "your money"; this time, he thought to specify iPad, et cetera, but when I didn't have anything to proffer, both times the robbery turned pretty disappointing. 

So I found myself in a police car outside an apartment building where a guy was being handcuffed, and cops were asking me if the guy looked like the guy who hit me (he did), and people who knew that guy were asking the cops who the fuck was I this guy in the back of a squad car wearing some gangster had (I swear to god I didn't think the hat was gangster).  So... I guess I'm not wearing that hat anymore.

Other than that, I have no comment on the police investigation.  It's just... almost seven in the morning.  Perhaps some day.  

This day, I have a throbbing head---I hit the pavement, when he hit me---and I'm exhausted and I just don't feel good about anything.  I would love to have some refuge in music or books or a recent baseball event, I wish there were something that besides-all-of-that remained a source of solace and joy, but...  I just don't.  

He didn't get my wallet, and he didn't get my iPad.  He got my solace and joy, though.  Shit.