A long time ago I wrote a post about my worst nightmare as a Black man…a White woman walking alone at night. Well, here it is again. We've come full circle. If you haven't figured out by now, I write these posts the night before, so it's actually 10PM. I had to run to the computer and jot this down while the situation is still fresh in my mind.
About twenty minutes ago I decided to run to CVS before they closed. I left my apartment and threw on my jacket. I like my little Weatherproof coat. It has what I call the Batman compartment. It's a little hidden zipper in the front of the jacket. That's where I keep my phone. I walked out the front door and headed toward the store, just then I remembered that I had a CVS Extrabuck ($1 coupon) in my car. I'm parked around the corner on a poorly lit, dark, "rob me" street.
CVS was about ten minutes away from closing, so I was trying to hurry. I was walking fast and I turned the corner onto the dark street where I saw a White lady coming my way. She immediately clutched her purse (which I'm used to and have learned to ignore) and she did that thing that some women do when they walk alone at night where they speed toward the curb as if they're a rocket ship trying to avoid being sucked into an approaching planet's orbit. It's hard to explain, but imagine that you're walking down the street and notice someone walking toward you. For the majority of their time on that block they've been walking in a straight line, then they see you and all of a sudden they are compelled to not only speed up, but walk in an arc as they go near you. It's a survival thing, so whatever. I don't blame them, but being an extra foot away from someone isn't gonna do jack-shit if they really wanna get to you.
So anyway, she does her dark side of the moon thing and I purposely pull out my keys and hold them in a really awkward and completely nonfunctional way so that she can see them and I even unlock my car so that the cabin lights will cut on and she can see that I'm going to the car. I reach in the glove compartment and grab the coupon and then scurry along to get to CVS. What's the first thing I see? Xena, warrior chick, is meandering about like a lost gazelle and looking over her shoulder back at me.
I think to myself, "Please turn and go into that apartment building. The last thing I need is for you to be going the same direction as me." What does she do? Keep walking straight. FUCK! Now I have to figure out a way to get to CVS on time without scaring the hell out of her. I can't speed up or start running because she's now clutching her little keychain of mace and I will beat the hell out of her if she sprays me for no reason. I can't walk slow because then it looks like I'm following her and I am NOT gonna miss this store.
I decide to just hang back far enough to make her feel like she could outrun me if she needed to (she probably couldn't). She gets caught at a light, so I end up catching up to her. She spends about ten seconds looking at me out of the corner of her eye while switching her purse to the opposite shoulder and trying to act like she's not afraid. I went ahead and jaywalked to get away from her. I went to CVS, bought my stuff and, just as the guy is handing me my receipt, who do I see?
My new friend is walking out the front door with a bag from the pharmacy. She turns around and sees me walking out and now she's freaked. I didn't feel like playing her game anymore, so I walked my normal pace and after two blocks I realized where she was going. Apparently she lives in my building.
I feel for this woman. I really do. I found it annoying initially, but when I saw how relieved she looked when she made it to "her building" without being attacked and then saw the sheer terror on her face when she saw me walking right behind her toward the building…I know she lost some years off her life. It didn't help that the guy working the front desk buzzed her in without her having to use her key fob and then did the same to me. Without seeing me actually pull out keys to get in she couldn't tell if I lived here or the guy downstairs had just condemned her to death.
She pretended to look for something in her purse and I got on the elevator. She's probably still downstairs wondering if I'm lurking on her floor.
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