Illustration by Guyco [link href='https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/' link_updater_label='internal_full']

Men have roles — at work, as a father, as a husband, as a friend — and those roles have rules. But then there's the other stuff — when suddenly there are no rules and everything is out of control.

[link href='https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/' link_updater_label='internal_full']The Oh Sh!t Guide to Being a Man >>

Published in the June/July 2013 issue

At the end of 1986, my girlfriend Karen and I were living in Brooklyn, in the no-man's-land between Brooklyn Heights (safe) and Park Slope (fairly safe). Where we were was not so safe, as we learned one evening in front of our house. I was heading up our front stoop, Karen was just behind me in the little area between the stoop and the front gate, closed behind her. Just then, a guy who had been walking behind us stopped at the gate.

"Yo, man, gimme your wallet."

Now, I was twenty-five and Karen twenty-three. We had just moved to New York from L. A. a couple months back. Karen was a waitress and I was between temp paralegal jobs, and we were broke. Right then, I had a single dollar bill in my wallet; Karen didn't have much more. So as I turned to face the guy — black, maybe late thirties, skinny, Army jacket, hood, holding something down by his side — I blurted out, exasperated, "You've got to be kidding me."

Karen stood frozen by the gate. He looked at me kinda funny and moved his hand into the light. Gun: small, silver, revolver. "Give. Me. Your. Wallet. Or I'll shoot you." Like explaining something to a five-year-old.

Instead, I looked him in the eye and, without thinking even for a moment, yelled, "It doesn't have any fucking money in it."

Pause.

"All right, go on," he said.

At this point, it dawned on me what an idiot I was. Whether he broke things off because he agreed with me and took pity on the young and extremely stupid or because his gun was a fake or empty of bullets, I'll never know.

"Go on," he repeated, this time gesturing with the pistol. We ran up the stoop and went inside. He slid away down the street.

PLUS: Read More of the Author's Escapades in Brooklyn >>

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io