I watched a drunk teenager mock my service dog and threaten me in the back of a midnight crosstown bus, laughing to his friends that I was just a deaf old man who couldn’t fight back.
When I straightened my back, the oversized canvas coat fell away. It slipped off my shoulders, no longer hiding the thick, slab-like muscles of my chest and arms. Standing to my full height, I seemed to fill the entire back half of the bus. “Or,” I finished, my eyes boring holes completely through Tommy’s skull,…
