I really don’t mean to turn this blog into T’s Guide To Unproductive But Certainly Well-Integrated Service, but! Something happened. A small something, but it’s significance? Major.
It’s Tuesday, and a hot one at that. I was walking the mile up hill from Claremont to Coultart, PMS-y and sort of feeling a way because a friend in the community and I are on the outs and we aren’t really speaking to each other. So, not a talking mood, then.
Maybe a third of the way up the road, I noticed someone following me. This is fine, people walk behind me, in front of me, next to me, all the time. Sometimes there’s chatting, othertimes just a nod and everyone carries on. This was different. I just…knew. By the time I reached the halfway point, my tail had pulled up next to me and was trying to start a conversation. In this situation, I try and answer minimally, but politely, until we can part ways, and with strangers (as this man was, I’d never seen him before) this usually happens at the turn off to the medical center.
Nope. Not only did he not head in another direction, continuing up the road with me and began the inevitable series of boyfriend questions. When I tersely told him that those questions were none of his business, he took the only logical step and started propositioning me for oral sex.
Ladies, when this happens to you, ditch politeness at the door, and get firm in a hurry. Literally, a hurry: I sped up my pace and told him clearly to take himself away. I turned off onto my lane and he was still behind me, and all systems were on alert. I really didn’t want him having any idea where I lived, but unfortunately it’s a straight shot up the lane to my house.
Devoted followers of this here blog will remember that on my lane is an abattoir, or slaughter house, whose employees are vocal and devoted admirers of the local ‘brownin’. I like them all, now that boundaries have been set and raports established, and it was a busy hog day for them this afternoon. I made a bee-line for it.
Picking my way around puddles of blood and trying not to stand directly in the way of the smoking fire where pork strips were sizzling away, I asked if I could camp out for minute to get away from someone who seemed to be following me.
Instantly, everyone was outraged. “Who a trouble yuh, Miss Taylor?!” I gave a description, and one of the men peered up the road. “You mean, that bumbah-clott rastaman who’s been pretending to take a piss for the past five minutes?”
Grabbing knives and theatrically sharpening them as they approached, my champions apparently gave the stranger the interrogation of a life-time. When the questioning had been concluded to their satisfaction, they returned, continuing to loudly and indignantly protest my harassment. “Yuh cannuh just come round hereso and harass people!” “Fi yuh a come uppa Coultart yuh must explain yuhself and yuh business or yuh a ask fi trouble!” “Yuh know seh mi a tell Miss Taylor everyday mi love her an she still naa share her pum-pum wit mi, so mi just leff it! Yuh kyaan force it!”
I walked home home both a little shaken and compeletely humbled that my neighbors take my safety and piece of mind so seriously.
As my friend Sebastian would say,
Lesson The First: Pay attention to your surroundings, and most of all, your gut instincts. They will never steer you wrong. Always have a back-up plan. Always.
Lesson The Second: Build those relationships with your community, and work to make that mental ‘switch’. I used to dread walking past those men and hearing the “Baby”‘s and “Yuh look sexy”‘s. It’s just a part of my day now, and because I can take it in stride, I have built a rapport. That rapport is what allowed me to seek a safe place amongst them, and the respect for me that the rapport has given them is what made them grab their knives and see what was up.
Lesson The Third: Big men in blood-soaked clothes casually sharpening large knives is absolutely persuasive.
So, that’s that. All is well that ends very well, even when maybe it possibly might not have. I’m a very lucky, very grateful, very intact and unviolated and very safe girl.
