Finding My Fix: Chronicles of a Travel Junkie

So walking down a street, it’s sunny day, a guy walking by says, “hey, beautiful,” with a genuine smile and keeps on walking. That’s alright, possibly annoying, but also possibly flattering. But that is a far cry from what I’m talking about.

I was walking home on and decided for the hell of it I’d run the last few blocks home. That’s when 4 guys in a blue Civic pulled up alongside me, one hanging his head out the window and started making comments that seemed to turn me into a form of entertainment. What they said, I don’t even remember, I blocked it out. Maybe what they were saying was harmless enough, but their approach was threatening.

I didn’t stop running while I pulled both hands from my pocket and flipped them off. That fed their sick game.

“Don’t run away!”

I ran behind a dumpster on the curb and paused, wondering if I should hide there and wait for them to pass, but they were caught by the traffic light, so I continued across the intersection. I was almost home when they pulled up alongside me and continued shouting things at me.

A boy and girl, probably high school age, were walking toward me. As soon as the car pulled up, the high school boy froze in place and listened. When they left, he said, “What an asshole!” The girl didn’t seem to notice.

I waited a bit before I went inside. Hopefully they did not see where I live.

So what does this mean to me… well, I’m sure you can tell it made me angry. It’s threatening, disrespectful, degrading, dehumanizing. To me it’s an attempt to make me inferior, a toy, property, to scare me, make me feel uneasy at home, a place where I should feel comfortable. Say it had progressed to rape, these actions would even have threatened my right to as a woman and a human being to choose who I sleep with, my right to personal safety. It makes me hate being a woman, because I become the target of abuse and don’t have the physical strength to do something about it. But I shouldn’t have to hate being a woman.

Four guys behind 2 tons of steel versus 5’2″ me on the sidewalk… how could that not be threatening? How could that not make me aggressive and angry?

And afterwards, I felt helpless. How can I protect myself against that? If they got out of the car or tried to pull me in, or run me down? How could people understand that, men? Am I blowing something out of proportion? Or do I have a right to feel the way I do?

I called my grandparents. My grandma could sympathize. My granddad said, “welcome to New York City.” But he told me ways to defend myself, he understood. My grandma told me to call the police. I asked her what good would it do? The guys were gone. It’s probably not considered a crime. But as I thought about it, I realized, if I didn’t, if women just let it go, let it happen, kept allowing themselves to be endangered like that, that can’t do any good either. if I didn’t at the very least say something, then those guys would win.

So I did call the police, and the police didn’t say I was crazy or why would I bother them about something so mundane. They said they’d send a patrol car to cruise around the area. I’m sure those guys are long gone; I’m sure there’s nothing the cops can do about it, so what good did that do? Well, at least it gave me a voice, and now I don’t feel helpless.

Tags: 7. USA, 7A. New York City, Slovenia, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 1:45 am and is filed under 7. USA, 7A. New York City, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.