When I was 21 years old, I moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. After a short amount of time, I started spending some evening and early mornings having conversations with a Danish man while nude and horizontal. At the time, he worked for a very popular bar that was equal parts wholly unclean and wholly necessary for every single person in the city under the age of 35.
This bar was so popular that there was a long queue almost every night. Sometimes over an hour long. Even in the freezing winter months. Why? Because the inebriated masses need to pray before the debauchery altar and this bar was ripe with debauchery.
This bar was in an area many Danes considered dangerous. This was almost entirely due to its proximity to a neighborhood populated by immigrants. Its worth was debated by politicians by day, exalted by the inebriated (and horny) masses by night.
The bar had a security guard to both monitor the queue and protect the inebriated masses from the neighborhood — and themselves. This guard was a man, not very tall and incredibly good at his job. I know this because I often tried to cheat the line and he always caught me and because I once saw him break up a sudden violent fight quickly and efficiently then keep hold of one of the perpetrators while still keeping control of the line.
I also know he was good at his job because one day the Danish man I was seeing who worked at this bar told me a story. While telling, he was nude, I was nude, we were horizontal and I was just toying with the idea of what it meant to “be sexy’ and nude with another person. For this reason, I’m not positive I have all of these details correct but I will try to convey them as best as possible.
This is what the man told me. He said it was a story about justice:
ACT I
A funny thing happened this past weekend. A guy came into the bar — he’s been in before and he always gives off a bad vibe and keeps dodgy company of known criminals. So we keep an eye on him. Soon we start getting complaints that things are missing from various guests. We watch him a bit and we see that he is stealing. One of our guys goes to tell the security guard. The guard comes in and confronts him and then this other guy just loses it and makes a huge scene. Yelling and spitting everywhere and shouting really nasty stuff at people. The security guard tries to calm him down and restrain him and they start having a pretty wild fight. Someone calls the police. It looked like the security guard was getting the guy under control until all of the sudden the guy pulls out a knife. He starts threatening everyone and waving the knife. Somehow the security guard manages to get him to go outside, but by kind of coaxing him into a fight. So the guy is still acting completely crazy and yelling and threatening people on his way outside. Just then the police show up and the guy takes off running. One officer goes after him while the other stays to take statements from people and get more information.
The next day, the security guard calls up the police station to ask if they caught the guy. The police officer says “As a matter of fact, yes. This is the guy with the knife, right? Funny story. We did find him. Much later. He showed up at the hospital, he’d been stabbed. By a different knife. He died.”
ACT II
About a year after this story was relayed to me, I was back home in California on a short visit. I was on a bus in San Francisco going south on Divisadero. As with anything in San Francisco, there were homeless and mentally ill people present and being actively ignored. One on the bus was a heavier, middle-aged Black man wearing a poncho. He had some sort of cooler on wheels that he was constantly and purposefully rolling into the legs of the woman sitting next to him. It looked like it hurt but she was actively ignoring him. This man in a poncho kept mumbling about justice. Sometimes just repeating the word over and over, making everyone uncomfortable and causing us to wonder if we were all about to be collateral in some unknown retribution. Eventually, he stood up and yelled, “SOMEBODY TELL ME SOMETHIN’ ABOUT JUSTICE!”
I looked at him and said, “I’ve got a story if you want to hear it.” He looked at me, nodded, then sat back down in his seat — no longer rolling his cooler.
I then told him the story I just told you.
He listened attentively the whole way through. When I finished, he said, “Justice. Yeah, that’s justice. That’s beautiful.” He then thanked me as I got off the bus.
The next morning, I was in shambles from and evening of reunions and being an active member of the inebriated masses. I was slumped against the window at Kate’s Kitchen with two other friends who were also in shambles. We were nursing beers at 10am. I as debating whether or not I could stomach the breakfast plate I’d just ordered. Suddenly there was an intense banging on the window I was leaning on. The whole restaurant jumped, every single patron. A few drinks were knocked over. It was the man in the poncho, now sans cooler. He pointed at me through the window and yelled, “JUSTICE!” I pointed back and said, “That’s right, man. Justice.”
He threw up the Black power fist, nodded at me, and walked away.
ACT III
I’m not sure if I think what happened in Copenhagen was justice. No, actually, I am sure. It wasn’t justice. I find that story incredibly disturbing. Yet it keeps coming back to me. There was a sense of reckoning and consequence for an ill act. This sense brought people to a reserved and somewhat celebrated acceptance of a traumatic moment in the past.
A sloppy resolution to a violent problem did not bring happiness, but it acknowledged the danger and pain caused by the original offense. And the offender was penalized — quickly. That seems to bring calm. The man who told it to me treated it as a parable, a modern day Aesop’s Fable. When I shared the story with the man in the poncho, he softened. He called it “beautiful.” I think it may be because in the story justice wasn’t sought, necessarily, but it was delivered somehow.
I bring these tales of justice because the United States is to have the inauguration of its 46th president tomorrow at the nation’s Capitol building. Where the memory of an unrectified bloody exchange full of vitriol is still so fresh in our minds I’m hesitant to even call it a memory. There is a nation of people who feel entitled to justice or retribution for wrongdoings surrounding that event. Many of their conceptions of wrongdoings are in complete opposition to each other.
So can justice surface? How often are justice and morality not synonymous? Can something be just and fair and also completely unreasonable?
I’m one of the people who feel entitled to justice. But the kind of justice I want will not be the one I get. It will not be poised. It will not be respectful and thorough, apologetic and directly in proportion to the magnitude of the effects of the offense. It will be sloppy. It will likely be somewhat hidden. I’m fearful of all the collateral damage this justice might require in creating consequence.