14 Mile

They say that Eight Mile Road is the economic and racial dividing line between the rabble and ruin of Detroit’s city limits and the suburbs surrounding the town. This was famously memorialized in rapper Eminem's movie of the same name.
Supposedly, on the south side of the road - toward the city skyline - gangs roam freely, picking off innocent bystanders and randomly beating prostitutes. They say it's a real life Grant Theft Auto game: cars burn throughout the night, casting an orange glow through the urban smog, illuminating the struggling families caught between their impossible desire to achieve the American Dream and the violence of the dealer wars on the corner.
However, evidently on the north side of that road - just a pedestrian bridge toward suburbia - no one locks their doors and they have ticker-tape parades every weekend celebrating their whiteness; unicorns graze on candy corn flavored grass and children frolick hand-in-hand chasing rainbows through the lollipop forest.
This isn’t true. In either case.
Yes, there are places in Metro Detroit, from Downriver to 21 Mile, where anyone, black or white, shouldn’t be walking around at night without a high caliber weapon. But there are also places, some just blocks from the aforementioned zones, that one can enjoy music, food, entertainment, and culture safely and freely.
I live on 14 Mile Road. The area where I live is sort of the melting pot of Detroit. It’s safe enough to feel comfortable living there, but I still deadbolt the door. Last month there was a serial rapist on the loose just north of my apartment complex and although he was targeting only college-aged women, I don’t want to have my door unlocked when he decides to switch hit.
And it’s a little different than Indiana. I’m the only white dude in my building. I stick out like an pudgy albino sore thumb.
I do go to school right downtown at ground zero, however. It’s not so safe. I have to duck down a dark alley to get from my parking lot to the building entrance (editor's note: in the writing world, we call this 'foreshadowing'). But don’t tell my mother; she’ll worry. My admissions counselor told me that a few of the students carry baseball bats in their cars for protection. Obviously she's never seen me play softball. I couldn't hit a beach ball off a tee.
So I’ve kept a journal of these experiences between the fourteen miles that separate me from the true danger across the river: Canadians. The forthcoming is a semi-truthful account of how I’ve spent the first time of my life when I've truly been by myself. Some of it will hopefully make you laugh, maybe make you cry, but definitely make you pity.
Enjoy.

Originally written August 18, 2002.