Ahhh, yes, everyone loves hearing about my walks home, eh?
So, a couple of nights ago, I was tearing down the street from the BART station, rushing home to wash off the ninety-something degrees of blazing Concord sweat from my day and hoping to be ready within a half an hour for my ride to yet another friend's going away party. I had just passed the mini mart, and was crossing the street as a middle-aged drunkard was crossing towards the mini mart. He was slightly taller than me, full head of black hair, Hispanic, and wearing a shirt that appeared to be yellow; but underneath those sulfur street lights and covered in filth and stains as it was, we'll take the Martha Stewart approach (TM) and call it 'putrescent tobacco'.
He stuck his right hand out in front of him, as if to shake mine, and said, "Hola, senorita, como estas?" There just isn't any language barrier to the international singsong intonations of "I want to put my dick in you," so I continued looking straight forward and passed him on my right. Turns out he wasn't trying to shake my hand, because at the last minute he raised his arm so that he could grope my breast as we passed. I whipped around and screamed, "Fuck you!!" at the top of my lungs, but he just continued to stumble towards the curb without looking back or even twitching at the sound of my voice. I turned around and crossed the street, seeing a cop car just ahead of me. Really, though, are these guys completely senseless? Why would you do something like follow a girl onto her property or grope her breast with the cops not ten yards away?
The cops were watching to make sure that a car was moved; a youngish Asian officer was leaning against the hood of his car. The car which had to be moved had been there all week; every seat except for the driver's was filled to the ceiling with junk, and they had even been piling various broken appliances on the roof for the past three days. I approached the officer and told him what had happened. "The guy with the yellow shirt?" He asked me, "yeah, we just kicked those guys out of here. He's a neighborhood drunk. I can go over there and talk to him."
"Do you need me to go with you, or...?"
"Well, even if we do go over there, he's not going to pay, or do time or anything."
"And if we do, he'll just get more pissed off at the world and just keep on drinking," I said...
"Look, really, if someone does that to you, you should just punch them."
Yup, that was the cop's advice. Just punch them. I told him that I had been getting harassed about once a month on the way home, and that I was glad that they were there, and he apologized to me, and offered again to go talk to the guy, but warned that nothing would come of it. Really, I wish I had a cousin who was a lawyer, so that we could pin him on not just assault, but on a hate crime against women. I mean, if there were a crackdown on sexual harassment, might'n it help change the way society just lets nothing happen about it? Apparently, I am supposed to take the law into my own hands and just punch them. That's what I'll say in court, too; "the cop told me to do it."
On a related note, my housemate told me that a couple of days ago, he saw an attractive young woman crossing the street there while he was walking home. She made eye contact with him, and then leaned up against the windows across the street from him, continuing to hold his eye contact. She was about my size, long curly blonde hair. My housemate decided to walk on, since leaning against the window seemed to much to mean "you could fuck me right here, against this window (for a price)." When I asked him whether she looked like me, he admitted that, were she dressed like me, we could be easily mistaken for one another. Perhaps that explains why I have been suffering so much harassment recently. Just what I need; a hooker doppelganger who works my street, because we all know that men don't already have enough ideas in their heads about me while I'm walking home. I should have my friend make me a giant neon sign that says "NOT a hooker," so I can carry it on a big whooping stick while I walk home. With my luck, they'd probably think it was sarcastic.
