Wanna Ride?

I went to college in Baltimore. Our campus is absolutely beautiful, fit for a postcard on even the grayest and dingiest of Baltimore days, with old brick buildings, cherry blossom lined walkways, and marble steps every bonehead in a pair of flip-flops tumbles down on rainy days like they’re a Slip ‘N Slide commercial. The neighborhood our school is in, however, could be aptly classified as Ghetto Fabulous. Everyone I know, including myself, got robbed or held at gunpoint at some point during our academic career. Boarded up rowhouses circle our campus and one night my friends and I went out into their back alley at two in the morning and shot at rats with a BB gun. I have another friend who still, six years later, reads our Campus Crime Reports on a regular basis just for giggles (http://www.jhu.edu/security/campus_crime.html).

One night Senior year my friend and I had ventured downtown for girly cocktails. Our school wasn’t near any other establishments besides a few townie bars which were always either overrun by our cretinous lacrosse players or by local, dirty degenerates, but to get to a "real" bar was sort of a hike, so our adventure in martinis was a rare one and required a cab ride. We stayed out till late and when we grabbed a taxi back to campus, my friend wanted to get out about six blocks from my apartment. Some barefooted hippies were supposedly playing music and eating pancakes on the quads all night for some unknown, but very critical, cause. She was currently hopelessly lusting after one of the bass players, so when the cab dumped us off, she immediately scrambled away toward school, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. What else is new? Someone’s love interest bursts onto the scene and I am instantly forgotten, curbside, like an abandoned box of fractured records, Bill Cosby sweaters, and mangled flatware for Goodwill. If I had a dollar for every time this has happened, I most certainly would not be an unemployed writer living with her parents right now.

My friend skipped across the street, as if following the music of the Pied Piper, and I huffed towards my building. Just as I could see my morphing screen saver through the window, an extra wide, extra rusted, bird-poop encrusted 1973 Cadillac Eldorado pulled up next to me. Only the driver was in the car, and he had one hand draped over the wheel and the other hanging out the window. What a gangster. He mumbled something to me, but I was entirely uninterested in whatever it was he had to say and kept on clicking down the street in my silver heels, only nodding at him in acknowledgement.

The car continued to inch along next to me while the driver’s muttering and blabbering persisted at so low a volume I genuinely couldn’t hear what he was saying. He kept on talking even when I took out my cell phone to call my friend, who, of course, didn’t pick up. I left some high-pitched, stupidly girly message on her voicemail, then dropped my phone bag in my bag. The Cadillac was still right next to me.

Evidently this guy couldn't take a hint. Absolutely nothing about my demeanor said, “OK! Let me jump in your car! I’d, like, totally love to hang out. Let’s go to your place and bake sugar cookies together and then watch Mean Girls!” I glanced over at him and gave him my best exaggerated eye roll, but he still wasn’t giving up. Couldn’t he just chuck up the sponge and cruise on back home to what I’m sure was a fantastically appointed crack den? 

Finally, and very distinctly, he roared, “Aren’t you even going to say hi to me, baby?” 

Sometimes I think I am much tougher than I actually am: I’m not sure why this is because, let’s be honest here, my typical ensemble of a frilly dress and headband isn’t scaring anyone. Feeling excessively bold, as if perhaps I was a guest on Maury Povich confronting the overweight Lothario who was responsible for the birth of my bastard child, I stared straight into his bloodshot, sagging eyes and shouted “I SAID hello,” my voice laced with city-smarted attitude (which we all know I’ve never actually possessed).

For half a second the man stared back at me, and then the hand on the wheel lowered to the mid-seat console. I was more than sure that he was going to take out a 9mm and shoot me without a second thought. I'd be found dead on the Baltimore sidewalk, wearing a sparkly top I didn’t even really like, with a writing assignment not yet completed, a rotting crate of clementines on my kitchen counter, and absolutely all alone.

But after our brief stare down, the man just rolled away down the street, leaving me there, my arms folded tightly across my chest. I watched him disappear around the corner and walked the rest of the block to my apartment, passing a girl who was sitting flat on the sidewalk, wailing into her knees, practically hyperventilating, and saying some guy’s name over and over again. And just as I was thinking, “Girls are such idiots!” I remembered I had potentially almost just gotten myself killed because I briefly believed myself to be seriously heavy stuff. So now who’s the biggest idiot of them all?

Several years later, while not being harassed by a stranger, in front of my beloved Marylander (AKA Ghettolander) Apartments.

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