Okay, so this is what happened the other day when I went to take a piss.
I was standing about 20 feet down an impromptu trail, inside a paved rest area well within the Blue Line of the Adirondack Park. I was heading home. Kinda tired. I'd been driving with the top down in a mix of sun and cloud on a road that was a mix of curves and hills. The wind teased at my “Cape Vincent” baseball cap. I played a game with it. Backwards when the wind wanted to knock it off. Forward when the sun came out. My Hawaiian shirt whipped itself around like some kind of island flag.
Coffee and music are my only absolute needs while driving. Both are flowing continuously. Today’s coffee was a dark and almost bitter roast from a small coffee house. The music would be The Stones. A nearly three hour playlist of My favorite Rolling Stones, from 12 x 5 to Bridges to Bremen.
At a point about halfway home, the wind calmed. I hit a long, straight and flat stretch that comes off the curved road of a hill. My car had descended and landed, rolling in a forest of pine trees. The smell of pine drifted into my lap and all around me.
This would be a god place to slow down. Park the car. Take a look around. Breathe in the pine. And take a piss. The “rest areas” inside the Blue Line are strategically placed for just that and a sign presented itself. “Rest Area 1/4mi”.
I pulled in with “Brown Sugar” blasting. Loudly. “Drums beatin' cold, English blood runs hot. Lady of the house wonderin' when it's gonna stop”. I was singing. Loudly. I passed by the only other car in the lot. Facing my way as I drove in, it was parked at this end. The very end. I noticed only that a guy was at the driver’s seat. He caught me singing at the top of my lungs. I didn’t care.
I parked about 150 steps behind his car. We were at opposite ends of the rest area, our cars facing away from each other. This is what happened when I went to take a piss.
I rolled to a stop. I let “Brown Sugar” end. I shut the car and the music off. Six feet from me was a huge sign, telling of the historic significance to the area. Bonaparte’s brother took residence here. Behind the sign was a well worn trail into the surrounding pine. I headed into the woods to find an appropriate place to pee. About twenty feet in I turned off the trail. As I started to pee I heard a door slam shut. The man had gotten out of his car. The woods were dense and I didn’t have a straight-line sight of his car.
But I did see the man, in and out of sight as he headed in the direction of my car. I had the keys in my pocket. My phone was in my car, sitting conveniently slanted in a cup holder. He stopped at the sign. He had walked over one hundred steps from closing his car door to the sign and I was just at the start of what would be a lengthy piss. Get it in your head now how fast he did this. No stretching. No looking around. No breathing in the pines. One second he closes his door. One second he’s walking. One second he’s at the sign. Near the trail. Kind of near you. That’s what I was thinking.
He was standing in the sun, facing the sign, but he was looking at me. Except he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking into the dark woods between us. He was not reading the sign he had walked up to. He was scanning the woods that I was standing in. I was still pissing.
The wind picked up. Braches whipped around. The sun caught my face. I was looking at him when he saw me. With no hesitation, he started toward the trail I had come down.
I had sized him up as he stood in the sun. He was bigger than me, but softer, a little overweight. Younger than me, but he was also clumsier of foot. He was wearing nurse’s scrubs, top and bottom. He had the thin headpiece of earphones around his neck, the wire leading to a chest high pocket. His pants had one set of side pockets. He kept his right hand in one of them.
I was still pissing, nearing the end, as this man was walking towards me, purposefully, with his damn right hand still in its pocket.
We’ve made eye contact now. He actually picks up his pace. I need to turn and lean back around a tree to see him. He sees only my right shoulder and my face. I see all of him. Whatever is going to happen next, I already have the advantage. I finish up, snapping and zipping and tucking and adjusting everything in exaggerated gestures. “Everything’s closed, dude”. All the while I don’t take my eyes off him.
We are now walking toward each other. I’m trying to will him to take that fucking right hand out of that fucking pocket. He stops walking. there on a path no more than two feet wide. At this moment, and I have no doubt about this, he had brought himself to exactly where he intended to be. He followed me.
As I approach him, I keep my eyes on his. I smile only a smile that you might make at a funeral. As I pass him I drop my center of gravity slightly. I pass on the right with no hesitation, raising my left hand just enough to wave a hello. My right hand reaches up as if to scratch my chest. I step wide to the right before him, but then, for just one step, adjust course enough to head nearly straight at him. He takes a step back and his right hand comes up and out of the pocket like I hoped it would. His hand is empty. But something also drops in the pocket. His hand goes back down to the pocket. This time as a thumb rest, his fingers on the outside. I don’t know what was in his pocket, but it wasn’t his phone (the wire to the chest pocket) and it wasn’t keys. I step right again and I’m by him. He said something at this point. It was something innocent and conversational. I gave him an appropriate response. Got in my car, heard “Paint it Black” playing. Took off.
There was something in that man’s intentions. I don’t know what, but it wasn’t innocent. Now, I said above that some words were exchanged, a short, two sentence conversation. Thing is, I don’t remember what was said. That happens when the fight or flight mechanism kicks in. It causes you to forget the things unrelated to the flight or fight. It was, by definition, harrowing.
I have never had my flight or fight shit kick in because of someone’s unknown, quite possibly sexual intentions. Maybe I’m wrong but I believe that, while few men have, most women have experienced it to some degree. When a woman is harassed, in any way, at all, ever, in all cases, she has experienced something almost no man around her has ever experienced himself. I wish I could literally share this experience with every man I know. He would understand why unwanted sexual advances by a man can be so, at best, unnerving.
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