I want to start this blog entry with something incredibly mundane. I finished reading the second volume of Scott Pilgrim Cary loaned me on the train this morning. About the same time I realized I hadn’t brushed my hair this morning. I would like to say these two things are mutually exclusive, despite being hallmarks of my semi-slacker lifestyle. I would also like to say that I don't very often forget to brush my hair. But that would be a slight untruth.
The last four weeks have been crazy. A good, rollicking, warm crunchy crushes, Ra Ra Rioty goodness sort of crazy. Mixed with my obsession of the last two days: KiD CuDi. I think I might be too old for crushes, as abstract as mine seem to be. But I have a serious crush on the way someone's (who will remain nameless in perpetuity) eyes pleat in the corner when they smile. This seems like flimsy grounds for a crush, I think, particularly as I barely know the individual in question. But I think I am going to write a story about it. I've been mulling over this idea about a train in France - two people travelling in the 1950s (or early 1960s), too poor for individual train compartments so they share some padded benches and ... other things (I can't help the fact that all my stories end up the same way, eventually). I've just about got the quality of the light in my minds eye, so I will probably work on it this week.
Now that I have that out of the way, here is my crazy (but absolutely, completely true) story of last week (it happened on Thursday PM) from the APB I threw out to Cary/Karen and Queenmob:
I was walking back from the bank and listening to my iPod. I turned to walk down my street and could see the shadow of someone walking behind me. Peripheral glance - it's a guy - but I'm close to home, so I disregarded it. Under the streetlights, the shadow shortens - he's catching up. And then he's almost alongside me, saying, "Hello!" (This is not uncommon in my neighborhood - soon to be ex-neighborhood - where people are so friendly they invite themselves into your house). I turn and offer him a brief hello, thinking that is it.
But no!
He starts talking to me - I have my headphones on, so out of kindness (self preservation?) I remove them to hear what he is saying to me (probably hoping it's not "I am going to kill you"). But lo! I actually recognize this guy. Why? ...
We go back in time about two weeks. I was catching the N train and in sort of a hurry - as always. I walk past this guy on the street and dismiss him as your average Bensonhurst Italian guy in his late twenties or thereabouts. He turns to look at me, looks away and then almost comically snaps his head back to look at me again. He does not stop looking at me. I disappear into the Station, thinking never to see him again. He gets on my train car. And proceeds to stare at me so blatantly (it wasn't creepy so much as I could actually feel it) that even the other women on the train kept looking back and forth between he and I. He gets off a couple of stops later - me thinking I must have ripped my nylons or something - and I never saw him again.
Until the moment he is walking down my street (essentially the same place I originally saw him).
So he tells me that he's recently moved to Bensonhurst from Morocco! (Bolivian Drug Czars, Russian Assassins, Emrati Financiers, Taiwanese Watermen - WTF!) And he has wanted to talk to me since the first time he saw me, but since I always walk so fast and listen to my iPod, he didn't feel like he could bother me. Because I was raised by wolves and have mostly guy friends, my first thought was: "This guy has some real balls to be doing this. I can totally respect this." But at the same time, this is kindof scary.
I'm standing on my front porch steps! He knows where I live. He has no compunction against staring at me unblinkingly or walking up behind me at 10pm on my street. I have a good sense of humor, but suddenly a line from Gavin DeBecker's Gift of Fear comes to me: men at their core are scared that a woman will laugh at him, but women are scared that a man will kill her. As I know KaiBot3000 would sell me down the river for a handful of tuna treats, I was caught between a rock and a hard place.
So I took his phone number to make him go away. Something that has progressively weighed on my mind since that moment. I am essentially a very honest person (I can't even cross the street until I get a walk signal, for goodness sake!) - so I didn't even think to tell him I was married or living with a boyfriend or something!
I called my Mom (her quote: "He's going to kill you!") and my Sister ("You could have at least gone out for coffee with him"). But my Rational Mind (aka Cary and Karen) thought it was more than a little scary. I mean, Hollywood would lead most to think this was high romantics: a man (he wasn't a bad looking guy, actually) seeing a woman on a train and wanting to meet her. And since these sorts of things NEVER happen to me, I'm not sure if I handled it right.
I suppose only time will tell. And hopefully moving out by Spring.
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