It is not accurate to say that I was born in Banning, California. I was born in Redlands, California, because it had a hospital. Banning didn’t, which tells you everything you need to know about that small desert town in 1946.

Let’s fast forward to 1962. I am living upstairs from my father’s doctor’s office. Why? Because my parents’ disastrous marriage has turned into a disastrous divorce, and my brother and I are living there. No, not in the office, but upstairs. My father had created an apartment up there. And there was an outside staircase leading from this apartment straight down to the back door of his doctor’s office and onto the outside world.

The outside world could be frightening. Particularly, the outside world at night. Why? Because to a sensitive kid, a mother who had decided to take out her fury on me, her oldest son, would eventually send me into five-times-a-week psychoanalysis…on an actual couch with one of the last surviving analysts trained by Carl Jung himself…but I am getting way ahead of things.

For now, it is night, and where is my father? Possibly at Banning’s newish hospital. And the doorbell downstairs is ringing. That is to say, the front door to the downstairs office. Which is kept securely locked, because my father has drugs in the refrigerator of what used to be the kitchen of this big house he remodeled in 1956. Time flies. And I am flying down the stairs, albeit reluctantly, because I don’t like opening the front door at night. Where is my brother, by the way? I just can’t remember. But he had more friends, more social life, and he could have been hanging out at another kid’s house. And meanwhile the front door bell is ringing. I get to the front door, wisely turning on the porch light, which is quite bright.

I unlock the bolted front door, swing it open and find a man standing right in front of me, not even partially shielded by the screen door. He has pulled back the latter, his hand raised as though to hit some thing, possibly me. But, no, I am able to process this information fast enough to realize he is raising his hand to knock on the wooden front door, because it has taken quite a while for someone to open it.

He is a black man. It takes no time to process this. I am terrified. He starts talking. He has a Bible under one hand, and it doesn’t take an extremely fast computer (of which none existed at that particular moment in Banning) to realize this guy is a preacher. But I am realizing nothing. All I am realizing is that I have opened the door to a black guy who is looking very serious and only a couple of feet away from me. I glance beyond him. No one on the street. After all, we are living on the so-called edge of so-called downtown. The few people that actually live around here are old and in bed at this hour.

In retrospect, I must have looked completely terrified. Too terrified for him to even launch into his Jesus pitch.

But back to that moment…and I am so terrified that I can’t control myself, my facial expression locked in don’t-kill-me mode. It never got unlocked. This man finally gave up on exporting Christianity and said something along the lines of “you’re scared. Why are you scared? That’s not good.”

This must have slightly reassured me, but not enough to do anything but nod, maybe force a smile, then shut the door. Which I quickly locked. And I am certain that I went into my father’s actual office in his office and stared out the window to watch this man and his Bible reach the sidewalk and head somewhere else. Adrenaline being what it is, I probably continued listening for sounds of his return. I left the porch light on, probably, and headed back upstairs to wait for my father.

An historical note. Banning had almost no black people in 1962. There was a black woman who worked for my mother. And then more recently there was Verda, a very nice woman who cooked meals for us in the upstairs apartment. But my father fired her, telling me that she had a limited repertoire…which had included a stunning fried chicken. And more importantly, had included her warm presence in our kitchen, making our bachelor household a little less lonely.

So, this black preacher outside our front door in 1962. Why was I quite so frightened? OK, I was frightened in general. But if I had seen a white person standing there, particularly with a Bible, I would instantly have put two and two together. Thanks, I would have told him, my dad isn’t home. And being a precocious 15-year-old, I might even have glanced at my Timex watch.

It is perfectly true that in 1968, in North Berkeley, I was shot in the spinal cord walking home at midnight. But that came six years later. So, what could have been terrifying about this black man? I have an answer. It has taken decades to coalesce. And it simple.

I live in America. 

As an adolescent, I was already paranoid. Could the people of Banning see that I should have done more to save my parents’ marriage?

But more importantly, I live in America.

Banning was segregated. Which never occurred to me, of course, believing that the word applied to the public schools in Alabama, the ones I saw watching TV news with my father. 

I live in America. Centuries of racial abuse have seeped into our bones.

And I live in America. Where if racial fear isn’t genetic, it’s damn close. And in 1962 I was already carrying this body load of fear and guilt and unconscious hostility and projected aggression. And I live in America. And now my street in San Francisco, in fact this entire neighborhood, doesn’t seem to have a single black person living in it. Citywide, the black population has plummeted.

But I am not plummeting. I talk to the black guy who runs the wine department at Canyon Market whenever I get the chance. I am less scared of him than I used to be. I am completely crazy. And I live in America.