Have you ever had something bad happen, while you were actually trying to do something good?
It’s kind of that old phrase – no good deed goes unpunished.
There was a thread about this online. This is what one person wrote:
“I ran in the middle of a busy road to rescue a kitten. I went door to door until I finally found the owner. The first thing she did when she saw me holding her kitten was accuse me of stealing it. Every single animal I’ve ever rescued I’ve either been ignored or yelled at for trying to return. One guy yelled at me to get off his property despite the fact I was holding his lost cat.”
When something like this happens, it just doesn’t seem fair. You go out of your way to do something nice, and somehow you’re the bad guy.
My guest today is Cesar. Cesar is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. But there was this one time when he was trying to help someone. And he almost lost his life because of it.
If you’d like to contact Cesar, his website is: https://CesarCardona.com
Beauty in the Break podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beauty-in-the-break/id1795211471
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/217
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
Have you ever had something bad happen, while you were actually trying to do something good?
It’s kind of that old phrase – no good deed goes unpunished.
There was a thread about this online. This is what one person wrote:
“I ran in the middle of a busy road to rescue a kitten. I went door to door until I finally found the owner. The first thing she did when she saw me holding her kitten was accuse me of stealing it. Every single animal I’ve ever rescued I’ve either been ignored or yelled at for trying to return. One guy yelled at me to get off his property despite the fact I was holding his lost cat.”
When something like this happens, it just doesn’t seem fair. You go out of your way to do something nice, and somehow you’re the bad guy.
My guest today is Cesar. Cesar is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. But there was this one time when he was trying to help someone. And he almost lost his life because of it.
Scott
Back when this happened, you were into boxing and sparring. Do those skills actually translate into being ready for a fight?
Cesar
They do. For the most part, they do. Yes. You find that very easily, since you’re training with people who are really equipped at hiding what they’re going to throw at you when you’re sparring or training at any person out and about. They’re going to just do a full windup like every guy does on YouTube, So you just see it coming a million miles away. Your job is always to extinguish it and remove yourself.
Scott
You’re talking about a street fight now or in a ring?
Cesar
Yeah. It translates over to the street fight. If you are in a street fight and you see somebody coming towards you, 9 out of 10 times, they’re going to try to wind up really far to throw a haymaker, but that’s not really effective. It requires a lot of–
Scott
That’s called a telegraph, right?
Cesar
Telegraphing. It requires a ton of energy to be used. You can move out the way in a second and their whole body’s going to go with them when they miss. And because you don’t do that, you can strike quickly three, four times and you can extinguish the situation as quickly as possible and then remove yourself from it as quickly as possible. That’s the goal, obviously.
Scott
Now in this case, what we’re going to talk about, you were kind of taken by surprise.
Cesar
Correct.
Scott
Alright, so we’ll get into that in just a second. So let’s talk about when this happened. How would you describe yourself and your lifestyle at that time?
Cesar
At the time of my life, I was juggling a lot of things – some unhealthy, some moderately healthy. I was playing a lot of music. I was writing songs, playing shows. I was also this trainer who was teaching boxing as a fitness. Aside from those two things, everything else I was doing maybe wasn’t the best. I wasn’t being good to myself. I wasn’t eating well. I was drinking. I was sleeping around. I was just not being healthy in the world that as a person should be. The default is just to exist and not overdo anything, and I was overdoing everything. Too much music, too much training, too much drinking, too much partying, too much friends, too much this. So I was chasing–
Scott
A life of excess.
Cesar
A life of excess. I typically say I was a slave to my impulses.
Scott
Now you mentioned you worked as a physical trainer. What does that mean exactly? It’s more than just boxing.
Cesar
It is, yeah. So boxing is an amazing physical sport for the full body. Most people think it’s arms, but there’s so much that comes with it. Your capacity, your cardio, your footwork, and your ability to use your thoughts and your mind to decipher what’s going on for defense. Defense takes out more energy than offense, honestly. So it’s a full body workout except for running and swimming. It’s one of the best full-body workouts. With that comes condition training. You want to be conditioned to maintain the endurance of boxing. You want to maintain your capacity for cardio. You want to train your mind to not be as responsive when you get hi. Habitually, we get hit and we want to swing back immediately. As a boxer, you’re taught to take it. Don’t respond in that way. Then, that does bleed into life as well. Don’t immediately respond. Give yourself a moment before reacting.
Scott
There are some lessons there.
Cesar
There are some lessons there, yeah.Look at every single boxing match you’ve seen. For the most part, when they’re done fighting, after all that talk and the deed leading up to it, they hug each other because they recognize that there’s not a personal thing there. There are two energies clashing against each other, and that person trying to get through your energy is not about you. It’s about the pushback of the energy in the world. That’s why they get along and respect each other so much.
The zen of boxing – I’d never heard that concept before – is huge.
I mean, my first trainer was Dave Gilmore – not the musician from Pink Floyd. Then I was also trained by Gene LeBell – he’s a grappler – and Benny Urquidez who was a kickboxer. The last two – Benny and Sensei Gene – would have what’s called an attitude adjustment. Somebody came in there with their chest out and wanting to be aggressive and show how strong they were. One of them would say, “We’re going to have an attitude adjustment round.” Everyone in there knew what it was except for the new guy. Then, we would put somebody on him who was much stronger than him, but wasn’t being a bully, and was showing him, “Hey, your strength should not be matched with your arrogance.” So he would easily take that guy down. Then, when he would get up, one of the sensei would say, “You don’t come in here with that attitude. Everybody deserves respect and you learn that.”
Scott
I’ve seen videos like that on YouTube of some big street guy coming into the gym and everybody knows he is going to go down. It’s just kind of fun to watch, actually.
Cesar
It is. It’s a humbling thing. It’s very humbling to go into a ring and realize, “Whoa, everything I had planned is not going to go the way I want to as soon as I get punched one time.” And Sensei Gene, rest in peace, he knew that and he would hold onto that and everybody had to have respect for each other there. That, at some point, again, bleeds out into the world.
Scott
Let’s talk about what happened. This was you and your partner at a restaurant late at night. This was, like, 11.30. Take us through what happened that night.
Cesar
My partner at the time and I went to an event before that – it was like a kids-friendly event – and it was very lighthearted and fun. We spent a couple hours there and we had a great time. We were going to go home. Then, one of our friends messaged us and said, “Hey, come out to this place where we are. Some of our friends are here. Come hang out.” I remember this part very vividly because we were on the highway driving. Both of us were saying that we really don’t want to go to this place, but we didn’t want to be there. It’s honestly not our kind of place anyway but we went anyway. One of our friends told us– and again, here we go, slave to our impulses, right?
Scott
Those little decisions that change your life.
Cesar
Right, right. I mean, my goodness, I think about that moment in the car as much as possible. I even remember what song was playing on the radio at the time we got there. We’re in line. We walked in. We spent about an hour or so there, maybe, and we got some drinks. The people that we knew who were there were popping in and out, going to other sets of friends, and walking around. We had one friend staying with us. My partner and I are friendly people. I’m still a friendly person – I assume that they are still as well, but everybody is kind of like a neighbor to us. We don’t really try not to talk to people, so we were standing next to this woman who we had spoken to briefly.
Scott
This is a woman you did not know previously?
Cesar
We did not know her at all, no. She was just standing next to us. When you bump into someone or you just catch eyes with somebody, you smile at them. “Hey, what’s going on? Nice to see you, whatever. It’s great in here. It’s not great in here. Whatever.” And we began to have a quick conversation in passing. Then, my partner and I went back to just having dialogue, just us two. From there, at some point, the woman that we’d spoken to was talking to a guy and she wasn’t feeling comfortable with this man. She caught our eye at some point because he was being aggressive or just being creepy or whatever. She just wasn’t feeling the vibe. He could have just been a dude that she wasn’t interested in or who knows, whatever. She turned to us and she mouthed the words like, “Help me.” It wasn’t scary, but it was, like, “Give me a hand here. This guy is kind of a problem.” We walked over or leaned over towards her, put our arms around her, and we said to the guy, “Hey, this is our friend. She’s with us. We’re together. We’re hanging out, whatever. Please give us some time.”
What I do remember is, very faintly in the back of my mind, still to this day, I remember the image of his stare at me when I told him, “Hey, give us some time. Please go somewhere else.” I remember that image, the look in his eyes, and it was very malice, very not friendly. Of course, what happened– and because of the accounts of people that were around and the video footage there, he didn’t like that, and a pushing match started from there. We were told, “You guys should probably just get out of here.” If I remember correctly. He escaped or dipped out into the crowd, and they were like, “You guys should just go. Just go and get on out of here.” So we walked away. We walked outside. We got just outside of the location.
In the meantime, while we were walking out – this crowded place is a very crowded place – he went and got a few of his friends and told them, “Hey, come with me. We’re going to go beat this guy up.” So we turned to walk away. They came outside behind us. They jumped on us. They knocked me down, knocked my partner down. This was in the parking lot in, like, the sidewalk area, right where the street starts passing traffic. There’s no parking lot there. They knocked me down, knocked her down. One of them held her down for a bit. I tried to get up. They pushed me down, started stomping me. They started kicking me in my face and in my abdomen, in my body, kicking me, stomping me. At some point, I went completely unconscious. They didn’t stop there. However, they continued to kick and stomp my face, my head, my body. At some point, one of them picked me up to punch me a few more times and then threw me back down. Now, all of this happened within a time span of 10-15 seconds.
Scott
Do you think, at this point– I mean it was three of them, at least, against just you. I mean, I know they knocked down your partner as well, but you were the primary target. Do you feel like they were actually trying to kill you?
Cesar
I feel like they didn’t care if they killed me. We live in such a world of dichotomy. Did you want this? Did you not want this? I think it’s more so these people, and especially from a sense of anger, I’m just trying to get out this anger until I can’t. I don’t have the energy to sustain this anger enough. Whatever happens to him, not my problem – that’s what I would assume because, at some point, after 10-15 seconds, they ran off.
Scott
It’s such a minor interaction. I mean, how fragile does a person’s ego have to be to prompt an attack like this after such a little thing that happened?
Cesar
Absolutely. We really forget how much our anger is owned by us. I didn’t make them angry. They didn’t make me angry. We each made ourselves angry, and if we don’t know how to manage that, then it’s explosive. It spreads like wildfire. From there, they ran off. I was completely unconscious, knocked out. I don’t have any recollection of this except this one moment. Imagine what it feels like when you wake up from a deep sleep. It felt like less than that. It felt so removed from being in this waking world. I can’t even explain it. It’s beyond deep sleep. But all of a sudden, my eyes opened up, and I could feel I was on the ground and people were talking to me. I couldn’t really hear it. I could taste blood in my mouth. Someone picked my head up and put something under it, and then something in me said, “Go back under. It’s much better there.” I remember that very vividly. Even to this moment. I remember that.
I don’t remember the rest of this part, but I was picked up by the ambulance. This was in the middle of the street, by the way. The ambulance came, picked me up. Again, I was awake this time. When I woke up, I started saying things to everyone there, saying things to my partner, “Take photos of this. Take photos of this. Do it now. Do it now.” And then also, “I have to pee really bad. I have to pee.” When the paramedics heard that, they unbuckled my pants and they said, “Go ahead. You can relieve yourself.” And I couldn’t. Now, at that moment, they realized that there was something wrong, because what happened was they stomped and kicked me so hard in my torso, they punctured my bladder. Now, they didn’t puncture any skin, but just the bladder.
So on the way to the hospital in the ambulance, they recognized that my front teeth were shattered out of my face. The bridge that’s above those teeth – that bone that’s behind the gum – shattered as well. My face was swollen completely. My right eye socket was fractured, so the whole eye was really puffy. The bridge in my nose was also fractured and indented. My opinion, what’s worse is that the front of my tongue, from whatever kicking and stomping, had been cut off by about 80%. The tip of the tongue– 80% of that was cut off. So they told me that the tip of my tongue was hanging off my tongue, and they had to take scissors and cut it right off.
Scott
Why did they have to do that?
Cesar
I don’t know why they would have to do that. I can put two and two together now and say that I don’t think it’s all of the tongue, but I think a large percentage of your tongue does rejuvenate. It took me some years for the front of my tongue to not feel numb, but now it’s back to normal, so maybe that’s why.
Scott
That’s amazing.
Cesar
I guess there’s no point of stitching the tongue close. What is that going to do? It’s wet. It’s not going to dry. What do you do with that?
Scott
And it sounds painful for them to just cut it off.
Cesar
Yeah. There’s a faint moment of me feeling the pain, if I try to remember it, but it also feels like a dream, so I can’t ever make sense of it.
Scott
Why do you think you were asking your partner to take pictures right away?
Cesar
I don’t know. I don’t know.
Scott
Just to document things, maybe, or something.
Cesar
I suppose. Maybe I already went into, like, record keeping for stuff. I mean, it’s a habit for me to video or photo document a lot of things. I have tons and tons of photos of so much. But I don’t know. I have no clue.
Scott
That is an extreme state of organization when you want to document things when you’re laying in the street having been beaten almost to death.
Cesar
I’m like, “Give me my journal. Give me my journal.” Like, what do I do with that?
Scott
Dear diary…
Cesar
Yeah, I have no clue. I’m a pretty spiritual person, so there’s so much of me that feels there’s a larger– I could answer from that perspective, maybe. I’m a public speaker now. And again, this is all the spiritual side for me, but a lot of me feels like documenting this because, at some point, this will be your story.
Your mess will turn into your message – don’t know if that’s the case or not. I mean, I am on here, on this podcast talking about this. Who knows? I don’t live with that as my intention. I believe it and that it doesn’t inform my actions at least, or maybe it does – my subconscious mind, perhaps.
Scott
What’s the danger of a punctured bladder? I mean, you said they knew something was wrong and it sounded serious.
Cesar
The danger of the punctured bladder in your stomach is whatever’s inside your bladder can leak out into the rest of your body and that can start to bleed into other organs. You’re bleeding out inside – internal bleeding. You also have whatever in your body that made it to the bladder by this time, which shouldn’t be there as well. And if I’m closed up inside, then it’s just being kept in there, it’s not draining anywhere. All matter that goes to your bladder – by this time, it should be out of your body, that’s why you’re urinating it out – is now in the middle of your organs.
Scott
That could lead to some kind of infection or something, probably.
Cesar
Yeah. They got me to the hospital. By all hospital records here. I was awake, lucid, talking to them. A doctor told me that “You need to do this. We have to do this surgery. Are you okay with this?” And I signed off on it. I said, “Yes, do it.” I have no recollection of this whatsoever. And then they put me under. They cut my abdominal wall open. Excuse me. First, they tried invasive and they couldn’t get to it. So then, they cut under me, just below my belly button and just above my pelvic bone – just that whole middle line there. They cut me open, stitched, closed my bladder, and then stapled my abdominal wall shut. It was about 15 staples, I want to say, maybe, at least
Scott
- That’s the only abdominal surgery you needed then to get to the bladder and fix it up.
Cesar
That is correct.
Scott
And we have pictures of this too, if anyone wants to see the abdominal stitches.
Cesar
Yes. If anybody wants to judge the job of the doctor and say, “They could do better than this. I’ve seen better stitching at Office Depot.”
Scott
Not impressed, huh?
Cesar
I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. I don’t even know who the doctor was, honestly, because I have no recollection. They saved my life, so I’m sure it was a great job. I was under for some hours. I don’t know exactly how long my partner had to call my family back in Florida where I was born and raised and tell them what’s going on. This was by now the middle of the night. I, at some point, hours later, came back to. After surgery, the nurse woke me up. I woke up, I looked at the nurse and I said, “I’m dead right?” She said, “No.” She told me where I was and what was going on. Then, I looked at her and said, “Could you do me a favor? Could you please kill me?” Now, of course, she said no to that as well, and I pleaded a little more. I said, “I’ve just had a long life and I’m tired. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m tired. Could you please do this for me?” She wouldn’t.
Right after that, not too long after my partner at the time came into the room and started talking to me, they rolled me after that at some point into my room where I was going to stay for a little while. They couldn’t do any work on my face at all because – the face is just a face – it’s all smashed up, whatnot. But my stomach had been tended to, of course. I felt at the lowest point of my life, sitting there, laying there. I don’t mean that from an external sense. I mean that only internally. I feel like I had nothing to give to myself at that moment. There was no “How do we get through this? You’re alive. Be thankful.” There were none of those thoughts. None of those thoughts occurred to me. I had nothing. Just an empty gas tank.
Scott
The picture when it shows you in the hospital bed showing your loss of teeth– is that when that was or was that later?
Cesar
That is about an hour later or so.
Scott
Okay.
Cesar
By the time I woke up, it was early, early in the morning. So when the sun came up is when we started taking those photos.
Scott
It looked like that was pretty early on because you weren’t really cleaned up. The impression that I got in looking at those pictures is that you just had a look of complete despair. Would you say that is accurate?
Cesar
I would. I would even say that’s probably even an understatement. I don’t even know if there’s a word for it. Despair is definitely it. The grieving of my life has now changed forever. However, my life before is gone, lost. I wasn’t rooted in the ground anyway at that time. I mentioned that I’m a spiritual person now. I wasn’t then. I was a very strict, materialistic, reductionist, atheist. If it’s not proven, then it’s unacceptable, but there’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. For me, it obviously got me to a point that wasn’t the best. I didn’t have anything to grab at that time internally. There was nothing for me to surrender to, so I was just at a complete loss. So that photo shows exactly that. I look at that photo sometimes and I remember that feeling. I remember that moment. I remember that sense of despair. It was like a shadow. Wherever I went, I was there.
Scott
You said your partner came in. Was she trying to cheer you up, so to speak? Or what was that interaction like?
Cesar
For the most part, my partner was caring, tender, supportive, and then the other part was informative – what’s going on, what they’ve done so far, culture, family. I told our friends here, they’re going to come visit, that sort of stuff.
Scott
Now, just as an aside, she was attacked as well, but her injuries obviously weren’t nearly as serious as yours.
Cesar
Yeah. There was a pushing match that occurred that was involved with her as well. Somewhere in there, she had, like, a scrape on one of her arms. When we were outside and they hit her, they knocked her down and there wasn’t much else. They kind of hit her and just kind of held her down. So from there, I had to spend a couple days there. What’s more is that, with your abdominal wall being cut open, anything you do is used with your abdominal wall – sneezing, coughing, laughing, talking, yelling, whatever it is, standing up, sitting down, walking, staying, standing, going from laying to sitting to standing – every single moment you’re going to use your abs. So that means any movement I did, I could feel the pulling of the staples in my stomach and it was very painful. What’s more is, the front of my tongue is exposed and the front of and the gums in my mouth are exposed as well. So anything I’m taking in to eat, if it has any sort of flavor to it, it completely burns my mouth. You can’t stop sneezing, you can’t control coughing. These things would show up and it would just be just utter brutal and there’s no relief. There’s no relief whatsoever in any of this stuff.
I know there were a lot of times that I would still put on a face. I live in LA. There’s a lot of, “You got to be strong, you got to be tough.” The level of that “You got to be prepared. You got to be on it.” Probably the best way to say it. So some of me was still trying to save face there a little bit, but it just wasn’t good. There were times I would break down because it would just be too overwhelming to think about all of the changes that are going to occur and what happened to me. I don’t know what this could cause. I can say all this stuff now, what they did to me, but when they told me all the stuff the doctors did to me in the hospital, your first thought is, “Did they get everything? Did they get it all taken care of?” You don’t know this stuff, so you’re living with that thought. It’s a little fearful.
It took me some days. They told me that I wouldn’t be able to walk for a week or so. Four or five days or so, I was able to stand up and walk slowly. I had a catheter in as well, so that made it a little easier if I needed to get up, I didn’t have to. From then, I’d say about four, maybe three to five days – I forget how many days – they’ve said, “You were able to go home. You got to just come check back in the next couple days to take the catheter out and we’ll inspect you and see how everything is going.
Scott
Was your partner living with you at the time?
Cesar
Yes.
Scott
Okay, so you had sort of a live-in caretaker other than when she couldn’t be there to go to work or something, right? Is that kind of the arrangement?
Cesar
She had a job. She told her job this, and they told her to take the time that she needed. That actually wasn’t true. Unfortunately, she lost her job because of it. But on top of that, neither her nor I were in a space of healthy coping mechanisms either. So my mother, father, my other father, my biological father, and my sister, they all flew out in the next day or so – I think it was – and came to visit me while I was at the house, to be there for a little while. I was in so much pain. Everything hurts. You can’t chew food, you can’t swallow the food. You can’t have anything in your mouth that has to do again with salt or whatever. Your whole mouth is on fire because your tongue is gone, and so are your open exposed gums. But I need to eat.
Scott
What were you eating?
Cesar
Man, it was brutal. The first thing that we did was we pureed something and it wasn’t something you should puree. I forget exactly what It was. It was not good. I would take a straw of the puree of the food, put the straw to the back right corner of where my cheek and my teeth meet, and then just suck through the straw there and try to swallow as much as possible. Now, this what, this is what else happens? This is Sisyphus rolling the ball up the hill because you have minimal control over your lips, your teeth, and your tongue, which is what you use to suck through a straw. So if I do it too hard and it shoots the back of my throat, my reflexes kick in and I start coughing and, of course, there goes my pain in my stomach again.
Scott
Oh man.
Cesar
Yeah. It was just brutal in every way. Sneezing was horrible. You can feel the sneeze coming on, so you know this is going to be miserable and it’s so violent. Sneezing is so violent. I would grab my partner’s hand or leg and I would sneeze. If I sneeze more than three times, I’m just going to cry because it was just too much pain. I would just start crying right then and there. The very first time we went– when I was able to shower, we were in the shower, she was there with me to help me wash. I closed my eyes and the water went into my mouth because I couldn’t really close my mouth because my tongue and my lips were all swollen and my teeth were missing. The water would just go right into my mouth and I would be reminded of what it felt like to have that liquid in my mouth from when I was laying on the ground, and it would put me in a full PTSD state and I would go crying right there.
Scott
Can you talk about when your mom first saw you?
Cesar
Yeah, so my mother and I are really close. By the time I was about 19, she and I started getting closer and closer. By the time I was 24 and I moved to Los Angeles, her and I just really bonded. Now she’s a mom, so she knew that I wasn’t being so healthy with myself, but she was always close and connected to me and we only got closer. I was sitting on the couch and then hell arrived. My mother walks in the front door. She walks straight to me. She starts kissing my beaten face, and she looks at me in the eyes, she makes a full 180, goes straight to the bathroom and vomits. I don’t think I’ll ever understand what that feeling is. 1) I’m not a mother. 2) I’ll never be a mother. 3) My mother feels things tremendously more than I have ever felt anything. She feels things deeply most of my life. I’m like, “Listen man, this sucks. But it sucks and it hurts and miserable, and I had all these pains, of course, but she feels– a guy that she knew who worked at a gas station would pass away and she’d cry for a day or two. She would feel it. So her own son going through this.. when she was in that bathroom, I thought to myself, “What have I done to my mother? What have I done to her?”
Scott
So you actually felt guilt about this because of how she perceived it.
Cesar
I felt a lot of guilt about all this stuff. I didn’t want to go there to begin with. My thoughts were already like, “What are you doing there around these sorts of people doing this sort of stuff? You shouldn’t be there anyway. You know you shouldn’t be. You should be spending more time writing music. You should be spending more time being better to yourself” when I wasn’t. Once you’re in that cycle, sometimes, it’s just hard to stop a thing – being unhealthy, drinking too much. The pain started to get worse and worse. But then when I saw it personified in her – how I felt internally – then it just changed everything. It didn’t change me immediately, of course, because, well, people don’t change like a switch -.it’s more like a dimmer. But my partner and I, since we didn’t have the best coping skills here, my mom was there. When they left, my partner and I were just miserable. So I started drinking to numb the pain. I started using drugs to numb the pain because my body would just be aching.
Scott
You must have been prescribed some pain medication, right?
Cesar
I was.
Scott
But you’re talking about, like, illegal drugs – is that what you’re saying?
Cesar
Yeah. Harder stuff. Illegal stuff. Those pain meds, I don’t remember why I didn’t take them, but I remember that, by the time I was walking and back to some sort of normal, I still had those pills left. I don’t remember why I didn’t take those. I don’t remember, honestly.
Scott
That seems so odd to me that you have the pain medication and you were in pain, but you opted to not take that and go a different way.
Cesar
Like Jerry Garcia says, “What a long strange trip it’s been.” I just can’t get my head around some things sometimes about my old self. And life in general, of course, is one big mystery. But in this capacity, I just made every choice that seemed clear. I was like, “Nah, do the other thing” for reasons I don’t know. I don’t want to go to this place. I go anyway. I don’t want to be out this late. Eh, stay out. We got to be the people to save this woman? Nah, do it anyway. Be good, be helpful. Like all these other sides of thoughts, I was just doing anyway.
Scott
So it was a while that you weren’t able to work.
Cesar
Yeah. I was a physical trainer, so I wasn’t able to work and neither was my partner. She was taking care of me for a little while and she missed enough days that they just said, “Sorry, nothing we can do about it.” Maybe that’s illegal. I don’t know. We never sought that afterward. I had a house in Florida that I bought when I was 20, so I had some money still coming in from renting it out. By this time, we’re playing catch up on all the bills, and of course we are self-medicating. It just got worse and worse and worse.
I shouldn’t have worked for months, but that’s not how it works, unfortunately, not in this society, not this economy, and I went back to work. I can’t remember the exact time, but I want to say it was about two months at least. I told my clients what had happened and I lost a good amount of them. They’re like, “Okay, hit me back. I’ll reach out to you later. I need to take a break.” I just never heard from them again. Some clients were really distraught. Two clients came to my house and saw me. They brought me soup – I think it was probably soup and, like, a blanket – very kind of them. Another client, by the time I was able to go work out again, I met up with her and she walked up to me and she had about three checks, and she handed them to me and she said, “I already budgeted for this, and I know you probably could use it right now, so take this money.” It was all the checks she would’ve given me that I missed anyway. Maybe very emotional. I wanted to hug her. She’s not really a hugger. She’s still a client of mine today. I adore her so much. Very grateful for that sort of generosity or spirit.
Scott
Yeah. That’s some empathy.
Cesar
Yeah. Truly.
Scott
You had mentioned sleeping on your back was a problem. Why was that?
Cesar
Majority of people have an overbite, right? For the most part, your top teeth kind of go in front of your lower teeth, right? You have an overbite. Not only were those teeth shattered, but so was the bridge. They’re a kind of rounding bone that’s below your nose, above your top lip. Both of those are shattered, so it’s just pushed in. So my overbite was completely reversed. I had a complete underbite now because there were no teeth there in order to fight over. Because of that, my mouth was constantly open unless I would have to consciously keep it closed. All my speaking was kind of like this a little bit because I had to use my lower teeth to speak. There was so much air going through.
Scott
I’m picturing–
Cesar
All I needed was a cat and I was a godfather.
Scott
Yeah, that’s what I was just going to say. Marlon Brando from The Godfather, except he had some kind of an insert in his mouth to make it happen that way.
Cesar
That’s right. I’ve seen that thing online, that model. My goodness. So what would take place is that I would be sleeping– couldn’t sleep on my side because there was pressure on my staples. I couldn’t sleep on my stomach for the same reason. So, I slept on my back. But of course, if you don’t have these sorts of teeth problems, denture problems, over time, while sleeping, your mouth will open up. So without teeth, my mouth is opening up even more. That means that all saliva washes the back of my throat. Because I can’t turn over, the saliva’s just accumulating and it would get to the back of my throat and I would wake up in coughing fits. So every time I went to sleep, I was worried about things. At some point, I started propping the pillow up a little bit to kind of keep me at a downward trajectory but, then you’re not going to get any good sleep that way.
Scott
That sounds uncomfortable, yeah.
Cesar
It was very uncomfortable, just so much in so many ways. And there’s “Laughter is the best medicine.” Okay, let’s try to laugh now with our stomach stapled shot. There was no out. And for a person who had been a slave to his impulses and was always on the go, he now had to sit with himself. He now had to recognize cause and effect in the world. Not blame, just an understanding of what you put out in the world has a cause and effect to it, and what you do has an effect as well. Now, I had to look at every single thing that I had done because I couldn’t run away from it anymore. I didn’t deserve what happened to me without question and – not but – I could have been in better places. I could have been treating myself better instead of jumping from one impulse to the next in my life.
Scott
How old were you when this happened?
Cesar
I was 28 years old.
Scott
Okay.
Cesar
I lived in one of the best cities on the entire planet. This city, Los Angeles, is a microcosm of the rest of the planet. It’s amazing here. I love it. This is my home because there’s everything available to you. So, of course, a 28-year-old is going to go out in the world and be like, “Well, what can we get into now?”
Scott
There’s a line between “I didn’t deserve this” and “I brought this on myself.” I mean, at what point does it go to you kind of victim shaming yourself?
Cesar
I got to say, there’s a lot of me that still tries to find that line. Now, without fast forwarding too much here, the thoughts don’t occur to me. They don’t affect my mood. When I say occur, they don’t activate anything in me. The thoughts just show up. But I fundamentally believe that every person in this world, whatever their stance, whatever their thoughts, their assertions about the world, whatever it is, they’re not incorrect, but they are incomplete. That means that a portion of what they’re saying has some accuracy to it. My job is to find out what part has the accuracy and discard what doesn’t. So I still work through that in my thoughts. Now, how much have we needed to be at that place? How much have we needed to push back when they pushed? How much of me needed to say, “Let’s help this woman?” And then what’s more is who gives this group of men the right to jump on somebody like this who’s, by the way, walking away? It has already ended, and you decide to go and push further. And you’re not standing there with your friends. You went and got them to plan this out. I can hold both of those things in my hands at the same time.
Not too long afterwards, we were contacted by the police department. There were some records that were taken there because of the accident. There’s some witnesses that were there. Witness pointed out one of the persons. When the police department contacted me, they told me that they’re gathering the video footage and they’re asking more witnesses for more information. They don’t know who these people are, but they’re going to try to find out. I remember the detective being super helpful, but not being nice. I mean, he was so ready to get this taken care of, but he was so just black and white, just rigid about it. There was a coldness in his voice. He would talk to me on the phone and say, “I’m going to get the footage for this because I’m going to find out who they are and I’ll be in contact with you, but you’re going to have to wait, okay?” I’m not doing a good impression here, but it was so– you want someone on your side and also to be like, “We got this for you.” It just seemed like he was like, “Nah, this is what needs to be done.”
Scott
Well, you were just another victim. I mean, he’s just doing his job.
Cesar
Yeah, right. That being said, he still was super helpful. When it was time to activate things – and it took him a year to the date he had located who the people were – he located them and he showed up to where they were and arrested them. All of them but one didn’t resist whatsoever. But when one of the first ones got arrested, one of the other ones left the country, and to my knowledge, they’re wanted for two felonies as aggravated assault and then there’s another one called mayhem. That is when you receive some sort of bodily injury where a piece of your body has been cut off or removed from you. In this case, my tongue,
Scott
I had not heard of mayhem as a criminal charge before.
Cesar
Neither have I until that. Then, I got to say, that’s a very unique name to give to a crime – mayhem.
Scott
That’s what that scene was, though.
Cesar
Yeah, it really truly was. It took a little while because they were doing all the investigation, but I had to watch the video footage of it happening to me. I had to see the photos of me on the ground as well, laying there, unconscious, face, everything, complete mayhem. The sounds of people’s bodies being forced to impact someone else’s body, the sounds of people around trying to stop it, the sounds of my partner at times screaming at the top of her lungs for help, and then the sounds of the commotion of everybody saying stuff like, “Call the cops. You need to call them now because he might not make it.” Just all of these things, you have to listen to – absolute mayhem, to go back to your point.
Scott
That had to be traumatic for you to watch that.
Cesar
That is the most traumatic thing. That physical pain is one thing. Emotional pain is much worse. I felt defeated listening to that. I felt scared listening to it. All the fears in the world that we have of strangers hurting us came true. I think most people have dreams about their teeth being shattered or cracked. This actually happened to me. Every single worry that we have about the other person in the world and what they’re going to do to you happened. I had to listen to what happened and watch my own body be kicked and stomped around. I can’t do anything about it, but I’m watching that video and I have this feeling of wanting to jump in and save him and help him, but do I really want to help save and help his body or did I want to just go back in time and save the person? The person who was led by his impulses, the person who was asking to be killed by the nurse.
Scott
You encountered one of the attackers in the courtroom. Can you talk about that?
Cesar
Sure. When that detective arrested them, they started going through the court proceedings and there was a hearing for them and it was with a group of other hearings going on. I’m not too sure why I wanted to go, but I did. I wanted to go. What’s more is that I have no recollection of this, so I don’t know what they look like. I have no idea what they looked like because I couldn’t remember it. That face that I remember of them staring me down with that malice. Great. Cool. Let me just try to spot that at a Target near you. That doesn’t work that way.
Scott
Right. But that’s the face you remembered from that. Okay.
Cesar
That’s the only face I remember, yeah. It just could have been any face. I don’t know how to say this in any other way, but he looked like a lot of people. He didn’t have a unique face. So I could have easily just seen somebody with the same hairstyle and the same quasi facial hair and the same sort of dress style. My partner and I drive to this court place and we want to go in there just to be there to hear what’s going on. We sit down and it’s rows and rows of seats because they’re doing a hearing. Now, hearing Randall Ranson – not a real name. Now hearing Lisa Frazier – again, making up names here. So on and so forth. So you’re waiting and waiting.
At some point, I could feel somebody looking at me and I turned all the way across the rows, not on my same row, but close enough. I could feel this person staring, and I looked at him and I immediately thought, “Oh, that’s him. That’s him.” It wasn’t a recognization from a visual conscious, the feeling in my body reminded me that it was him. Then I remember, well, one, I could feel that fear that’s there, but I’m not a person to flight in that capacity. I can feel it. I’m just going to stay there anyway, so I just look back at him and I’m able to clock what expression I was getting from him. He was looking at me and I could see him looking at me in less anger, which I’m sure there was some there, understandable. But upon more investigation, I think he, just for once, recognized this is a human. He walks, he lives, he dresses up, he’s here. That was the only time I saw him.
They did the hearing. It wasn’t much. It was almost pointless in my opinion. My partner and I got up and we left while he had to stay there and everyone else had to stay there because we were just there.
Scott
The judge contacted you to ask about your preference as far as the sentencing. What was that conversation like?
Cesar
It was through channels. It is either the judge to my lawyer, or it was a judge to someone that works for them to my lawyer. But from my lawyer’s point, it was, hey, the judge wants to know, so on and so forth. For the sake of a conversation, the judge asked, “Would you like me to give maximum sentencing?” Again, I’m speaking very vaguely here because I could also have just asked on top of that anyway.
My lawyer’s saying this to me, “Hey, the judge wants to know if you want to write something down to ask for maximum sentencing to these people.” I had so much time, I had so much power that I could have taken right then and there. My vision, my thoughts told me immediately, “This is your opportunity. This is the way you can get them back.” Because, I have friends who had heard about this, and they contacted me and said, “Hey, if you find out these people are, you tell us that doesn’t feel right.” Then, I get this channel here that’s healthy, that says, “This is the most appropriate way to get the kind of response to these people. They hurt you. You go ahead and hurt them and give them maximum sentencing because you know they deserve it, because they broke the law. They did this thing to you. And look at how much your life has changed. Their life should change as well.” All of those things are speaking from a space of anger.
Now, I grew up in families– both sides of my family are very angry people. They yelled, they were violent constantly, so I had it in me. In my whole life, I’d been not able to manage my own anger and something in that moment changed. I could see clearly the cycle that was going on in this world in my life, in their life, in the world we created. And also, you could see it happening in the world externally removed from me, the “I hurt you, you hurt me back.” And the cycle keeps going.
Now, I didn’t know this at the time, but I say this now, the word “karma” is Sanskrit. It means fruit of action, action that you have fruits gives life. And then of course, that fruit, there’s a seed. And then from there, of course, the cycle continues on and on. So then the question bears fruit, I guess. What karma are you giving yourself? What fruit are you putting in the world that bears a seed outward? Now, I didn’t know this information at the time, I guess with words. I didn’t know it, but I could see what was happening here.
I had spent all that time by my own self investigating my own actions, indulging, self medicating, being miserable, being sad, being depressed. Then there’s a space for that to be justified by making that person suffer more. That means I have signed myself up for a lifetime of anger. That means that if I sign myself up for a lifetime of anger, then those people will have beaten me down for the rest of my life every single day because I allowed their anger to affect the anger within me. I couldn’t put this to words at that time. This has been years now, but it’s clear as day right now because, since then, I’ve become a spiritual person and I’m a Buddhist on top of it.
Buddhism talks about nothing but how to resolve suffering and anger and calm your mind. At the time, I just had a realization of, “You know what? This anger stops here. I’m not going to do that. I am not going to ask for maximum sentencing. I’m going to allow the cause and effect of the objective mediator, the objective rule keeper, the judge, the court, whatever, to make that determination because they’re speaking from a place of non anger, hopefully.” Either way I am not activating from it. And that little bit gave me freedom to step out of that circle, that cycle of fire that keeps going around and around. I remember I got off the phone with the lawyer and I felt just a little lighter, just a little bit, and I mulled on that for a while and people in my life were like, “What did you do?!”
Scott
Don’t you want justice?
Cesar
Exactly. “Don’t you want justice?” Right. And clearly, of course, without question. Cause and effect is a thing but where I was doing it from is a state of anger. There’s this old story of this Jamurai – Japanese samurai – whose master was killed by another samurai. When he went out to find that samurai, that murderer, to avenge his master’s death, he finally found him. He confronted him. When he cornered him, he pulled out his sword to avenge his master’s death. Right before he did that, the murderer spit in his face and it angered that samurai. In that anger, the samurai recognized his own anger and put the sword back in his sheath and walked away because now he was doing something out of anger instead of out of duty. The story of the murder, that’s obviously a different situation, I don’t stand for any of that stuff, but what it does recognize is from what is your intentions? Is it from fear? Is it from anger, from hope, from peace, from malice, from threat, from scare, from abundance, from scarcity? From where?
When I recognized that is when I started to investigate a little more of where else am I speaking from a state of anger. But it’s in doing that that I started to see the actions clearly and clearly that they didn’t give me anger, and I didn’t give them anger. They were already angry people to begin with, and they took out their own anger onto me, and now I have my own anger as well. So I said, “No, let this happen the way it’s supposed to happen.”
Now, fast forward some while later, I was with a friend of mine and, on television, we were watching the news or whatever it was, I forget, and they were showing a family whose family member had been murdered by somebody. And when they interviewed that family, the family member said, I forgive the assault, the murderer. At that moment, I saw myself in them. I immediately said, “Now I understand why these family members always forgive the victims, murderers, because the forgiveness lies within yourself. You’re letting yourself go by holding onto that anger.” If I stay angry with them, it’s not going to change how they are, but it will change how I am. The Buddha has this really great line that says, “Holding anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” That forgiveness relieved me a little bit, and to be more practical about it, for the first time in my life, it changed a cycle. It broke a cycle that I had been living in constantly, that I’m reminded of in the world, by the way, war, traffic, road rage, YouTube videos.
Scott
You see a lot of traffic out there, I’m sure.
Cesar
Yeah, constantly. That traffic is the thing that tries my Buddhism the most here.
Scott
Your attackers, if they got out and you just happened to see them, a random encounter, how do you think that would go?
Cesar
Well, there’s a lot of scenarios that could take place. Of course, I can’t speak on what they would or wouldn’t do, but I can say that I checked on this. I asked my lawyers. When they went to prison, I called their arresting officers and they were instructed that at some point from now until the rest of your life, if you see him, you need to go somewhere else.
Scott
So it’s unlikely that’s going to happen anyway.
Cesar
It’s unlikely. Who knows? But again, who thinks about law when they’re angry, right? But for me, I can only control what I do, obviously. My hope is they do exactly that. They see and they go somewhere else. They leave. I would leave as well, probably. I’m going to see them at a Trader Joe’s or something like that. By 11 o’clock these days, I am sleeping, my friends. I’m not seeing them there. But that’s what the main hope is. If they had an interaction, if they wanted an aggressive interaction, there’s a difference now. My back’s not turned. There’s not multiple of them. I would do everything I can to not have to defend myself. As a Buddhist. We’re nonviolent, but I have 10 years of boxing. I would not want to defend myself. I would do everything I can to not defend myself. And what’s more important is if – and this is the part that would be beautiful in my opinion – instead of any of that, they spoke to me, I would turn to them and let them know you are beautiful where you are. I hope whatever anger you had in you is gone because I have left my anger and I hope the same for you. I have no problem saying that to them. I have no worries about that stuff. I’m not too scared about it. There’s just vigilance – probably the best phrase.
Scott
It’s been seven years since this happened and, just by pure coincidence, today, as we record this, is the anniversary of the attack. What goes through your mind when this day shows up on the calendar? Do you do anything or you just try not to think about it or what?
Cesar
I don’t do anything specific. I’m aware of the date. There’s no physical ritual, if that’s what you’re asking, but there is always a check-in every year. Where am I now compared to who I was then? What have I done with that situation in my life? I’m less angry seven years later to the date I have forgiven them. I’ve forgiven the world. There was a large line of people that watched it happen that didn’t do anything. I forgive those people, forgive myself for whatever cause I had into part of that, whatever it is. I do a check-in every year and see how am I feeling about it now, and I can observe myself feeling more peaceful and lighter. I can see photos of myself. I did a photo shoot about a week before that happened. I can see that photo and I can look at a photo of me today. I look younger today. I’m not holding on to those things. They’re not weighing me down. So every year is a reminder of where am I with this, how am I living, and then the more physical side, how my stomach feels, how do my teeth feel, how’s my head feeling.
Scott
You still have physical reminders.
Cesar
Physical reminders, yeah. If I do too much ab work, I’ll get stomach pains in the scar tissue. There’s almost always pressure where the teeth are and where the bridge is. The tongue took about four years to stop being numb and sometimes it was fluttering on my right peripheral. Every once in a while, I get a little bit of pain in my head. There was some brain trauma that occurred as well. If I’m out in public and there’s a lot of people standing really close behind me, I got to shift and move a little bit because my body tells me this stuff. My mind is like, “Okay, people standing around, that’s what you get when you live in a busy city.” But my body doesn’t feel it. My body’s like, “We’re not feeling this. You got to go.” So I usually would just, like, shift to the side or turn sideways or something like that. If it’s too much, then I’ll just leave. I’ll leave where I am.
Scott
I heard this story because of your podcast. It’s called Beauty in the Break. Can you tell us about that and also your public speaking that you do?
Cesar
My podcast is called Beauty in the Break, as you said, and it’s hosted by me and my current partner. This is not the same partner from before. Her and I, my current partner, come from very different lifestyles, but we have the same fundamental beliefs about unity, resilience, perseverance, and finding the beauty in all the broken moments. We have a ton of stories and life stories to share. So the show is about resilience during our toughest times and what we learned from them. I think a lot of people would agree that we live in a time where it’s very tough. We got a lot of information coming to us more than ever, and we are really inundated and it could feel really hard. We want to make a show that reminds people that, in every scenario, there’s something beautiful to grab onto. So we tell that story.
Now, I’m a public speaker as well, and my job for the most part is to help people, remind them of how beautiful that they already are. No matter how tough things are, they have what it takes already by way of separating yourself from your thoughts and your feelings and your actions, particularly your anger and your fears in the world. I’m certified in mindfulness. I spent time as a Buddhist. I spent some years with Buddhist monks, and my job now is to go out and speak about my story and help someone remember that beautiful turn of events that’s in my life is also in yours. I’m no more special than you. You have one of these for your own self, and it’s something beautiful already waiting in you. In order to find it, you got to remove some of the anger, the fears, the worries, the division from you and the rest of the world, the scarcity mindset. So my speaking is for that. I speak to crowds and audiences. I do one-on-one guides as well.
Scott
If people want to get in touch with you, your website is the best way to do that.
Cesar
Yeah. My website is cesarcardona.com.
Scott
And we’ll have links to that. Just as an aside, this podcast is audio only, but if they go to your website, they will see you – and, also, we’ll have some pictures on for the episode notes for this episode – and people will realize that you have the best hair in podcasting.
Cesar
(Laughter) I appreciate the compliment.
Scott
You got great hair. Do you like your hair?
Cesar
I love my hair. I didn’t even know my hair grew like this until 2021.
Scott
Oh, wow. Because I saw pictures. You had it short earlier, right?
Cesar
Majority of my life, it had been short. I kept it really short so I didn’t have to deal with it, get it out of the way, whatever. It was either super short or mohawk, like a buzz mohawk because I was boxing. But my grandfather passed away in that year and I don’t know. I went to Florida to bury him. I was really distraught because we had a very specific link and bond. Come back to LA and something said, “You’re not going to cook your hair now.” So I’d never not cut my hair and it started growing and then it started doing this. For the first time in my life, I’ve been able to say I love my hair.
Scott
By now, everyone’s curious. “We got to go see what his hair looks like.”
Cesar
I hope it doesn’t disappoint.
Scott
All right, Cesar, I really appreciate you coming on. I’m glad you survived and you have taken the situation and improved yourself. It changed your life for the better. Would you say that?
Cesar
I would actually. I actually would. I think that the cave you fear holds the treasure you seek. I really believe that.
Scott
Anything else you wanted to mention?
Cesar
I’ve done some interviews here and there before, and anytime I do it and on my show, I end with the same phrase because I think it’s the most important thing that should be said. Be kind to yourself.
Scott
I have to tell you, I think Cesar is just an amazing person. He and I had a great conversation, which you just heard, and when I told him he had great hair, and we were both laughing about that, I sneakily grabbed a screenshot. So you can see us having a good laugh, and you can also see pictures of Cesar shortly after the attack, in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/217.
Have you ever seen something weird happen on an airplane? That was our question this past Tuesday in the Facebook group. If you have a story that answers that question, come on over and comment because we’d all love to hear about it. The Facebook group is free, and when you join us, you’ll see why 8,894 people are in there. LOTS of great discussions. WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And now we’re gonna hear this week’s Listener Story. And it’s disgusting. And if you have a story I’d love to hear from you, even if yours isn’t disgusting. It can be funny, sad, interesting, anything like that. It needs to be around 5-10 minutes long, and you can just record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This listener tells us about something that happened one day while she was working in a retail store.
Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.
(Listener story)
What I do for work is I run a women’s clothing boutique. We’re very specialized in the customer service that we provide. Being an associate that’s a little bit more engaged, maybe in the experience with the customer, I seem to come in contact with very unusual people. I just wanted to tell you about this insane story of something that happened to me while I was on shift. On this particular day, I was opening my store at this location. We didn’t get payroll allocation that allowed us to have double coverage in the morning, so I was working my morning shift alone. The next person was scheduled to come in at, I think it was 12.30, and we opened at 10. So I’m alone.
We weren’t super busy or anything but at one point in the morning, a gentleman had come in. When I greeted him and asked him if there was anything that had him perusing them all, he said that he was doing some shopping for his nieces. He said that one of them had a birthday coming up and he just wanted to pick something up for her, and I thought, “Oh my gosh, that’s so nice.” I said, “Well, did you have anything in mind?” We started walking around the store together and I was giving him some ideas. We were just kind of bouncing off each other really. This man was very conversational, very nice. He was a little bit older, not like elderly or anything, maybe his early fifties, late forties, kind of give dad vibes. I don’t know.
Once I had shown him a couple of these things, I asked him, “Do you want some time to do a little bit of browsing and take a look instead of me just showing you things?” And he was like, “Oh yeah, that sounds good. I’ll do a walkthrough.” I’m like, “Great, my name’s Vicki. Anything you need, I’d be happy to help you.” So I kind of break away from him.
Another woman had come in, so I went to chat with her and she’s dress shopping. I’m up in the front of the store, like, really going through some dress options with her, and I have my head up. I’m kind of making sure that, if this man needs anything, I’m also available for him. I saw that he was casually passing by the register, so when I could, I said over to him, “Oh, are you all set? Are you waiting on me?” And he was like, “Oh no, I’m still making some decisions.” I’m like, “Okay, not a problem. Don’t be afraid to let me know when you’re ready if I’m not over there.” And I go back to helping this woman with the dress.
Well, while I’m kind of helping her, he says, “Hey, I just got this phone call. I need to take it outside. I’ll be back. I left something up at the register.” I’m like, “Okay. So no problem at all.” I wrap up the situation with the lady with the dress. We walk over to the register. She’s ready to check out, so I take her over to the main register. There was something on the counter, so I said, “Oh, let me bring you over here.” I take her to the other register and I’m kind of thinking like, “What is that?” I’m the only person that’s been here today. I didn’t notice it. It was some kind of substance that was on the countertop.
I finished checking her out. She leaves. I’m back by myself, so I decide to investigate whatever the heck this is. That’s by register one. I go over to the register, I see it’s all on the counter and it kind of looks like, maybe cup sweat or something like the condensation from the cup. It’s really very spread out and I’m kind of investigating and I see that it’s kind of on the side of the, like, receipt printer and I notice it’s up on the computer a little bit and I’m like, “What is this?” I have no idea what this could be. I’m like, racking my brains and the phone rings. So I picked up the phone. I do my little greet. No one’s on the other end.
While I’m going through the greet, “Hi, thank you for calling, blah, blah, blah. How can I help you?” I noticed that whatever was on the counter and the register was also on the phone, and I had pressed it up against my face, obviously, because I’m answering the phone and I kind of pull the phone away when nobody’s answering. I’m like, “Hello?” And that’s when I smell it. Scott, it was semen. It was ejaculation on the phone. Scott, I cannot make this up. No one was on the other end.
To this day, I am convinced that this man was the one that made the phone call and he knew what he did to me. And all of a sudden, like, 5,000 people are coming into the store. I’m trying to navigate the fact that there’s, like, a very serious sanitary issue going on. I’m trying to call my loss prevention manager, my district leaders, out of the business. I have to call the police. I’ve been sexually assaulted. The police come, they’re like, “Oh, yep, you need to go to the hospital. You need to get tested.” This is not the first sexual thing that’s happened to me at work, but definitely one of the most memorable, and I feel like people just don’t ever consider the dark side of working retail. People do the most diabolical things. You just would never believe it. I just found it very disgusting.
I don’t know any other way to put it, and I laugh, not because it’s funny. It’s like a nervous laughter. It’s like, what the heck else are you supposed to do? And you know that they never even caught the guy. Scott, they never even caught the guy. This guy is still possibly running around ejaculating on registers on poor, innocent victims. Like, please– I don’t know. I’m going to manifest that I will never run into something like that again.