CREEPY!!!

 

I recognize the beat-up pickup, its back bed filled with junk: plastic tubs, a rake, bags of fertilizer, dead branches from trees gone by. It’s my neighbor, from up my street. The truck has rumbled to a stop in the middle of the intersection, 35^th and Solano. He hangs out the driver’s window, his too tanned gnarly face mostly hidden by a grimy blue mask.

            “Hey! How you doing?” he calls out to me.

            “Fine,” I answer, wanting to continue with my walk. The day is quickly losing its light, dusk heavy and grey now.

            “Vanessa and I had a fight,” he hollers at me. I wonder why he’s telling me this? Vanessa must be his wife or partner. I always hear her yelling at the dogs when I walk by his house, “STOP IT BABY!!! That nice lady walks by here every day!!” But I’ve never met her. From the sound of her voice, I wouldn’t want to get in a fight with her.

            “That’s too bad,” I say now, not really knowing how to respond.

            “Do you have room….” He pauses for a moment. I stare at him for a moment. What the hell is he talking about? “I need somewhere to spend the night. Do you have an extra room I could stay in?”

            What the hell? I don’t know this man. Why would he be asking a single woman who lives alone if he could stay with her? It’s creepy! He’s creepy!

            I lie fast: “My partner is staying with me…… I don’t think he’d like it.”

            “Oh….oh…okay….I understand……”  

            Yet I can tell he doesn’t. He really thought he could stay with me? How weird is that? I mean, I don’t know him. Sure, he came down to my house a few weeks ago to cart away some recycling for me. I’d noticed the truck’s plastic booty and had asked him if he could help. “Sure, for $10 I can haul it away for you.”  But then he didn’t. He came over one morning with some big scissor choppers. “Is your can empty?” Can? What can? I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Your recycling ? Is there room?” he asks.  “Uh, yeah…sure,” I show him where the bin is. Then he’d proceeded to chop up the screen door and stuff it in the big blue bin. Hell, I coulda done that, right? Though I didn’t have the big cutters. Still it was weird. I thought he was gonna haul away the door in his truck and instead he’s out on my front lawn swearing at the door as he stomps and chops it into pieces.

            It was strange. But I had just shrugged it off. Not a big deal, right?

            Yet, today, when he stops me and asks me to stay at my place, I’m creeped out. I mean, besides the recycling situation, I had talked to him on occasion like neighbors walking by do. But I often can’t understand him behind his grimy mask. And he gives off a hyper twitchy vibe, like Kramer on Seinfeld. In fact, he kinda looks like Kramer.

            Now, as he drives off, I shiver. Is it the cold or the interaction? I climb up 36^th street quickly. At the top of Clinton Hill, I wonder if I should pause. I usually sit on the curb and take in the view, Mt. Tam, the clouds, birds on telephone wires. But tonight, I just wonder if he will come after me. More following? What is up with these weird men on my walks lately? My weirdo magnet must be working overtime.

            I keep thinking that as I get older, this weirdo magnet will go away, or at least be less attracting. But this isn’t the case. If anything, it’s worse. Are old ladies targets for weird men? Again, it goes back to what I wrote about earlier. How single women are targets. We have to be constantly vigilant. It’s exhausting and nerve-wracking. And unfair! Why should I always have to be looking over my shoulder when I just want to go on a walk in my neighborhood!

             I decide not to pause at the top of Clinton Hill, but hurry back down 36^th and cut up Roosevelt---I want to get home before dark, but also, I want to get away from any potential weirdos.

            I see the truck rumbling toward me. Shit. He’s back!

            He doesn’t stop this time, but leans out the window and hollers something at me. Sounds like, “I found a place”? Or is this just wishful thinking on my part?

            The truck disappears down Roosevelt. I take a deep breath. March on. The sky is grey pinks now, gentle and ethereal.

            I turn down 33^rd street instead of my own 32^nd street. I don’t want to pass by his house even though he was headed in the opposite direction. I’m creeped out.

            Aren’t you?