12.02.2004 - 1:40 p.m.

I was in charge of procuring the beer and pizza last night, which is how I ended up outside the liquor store at the bottom end of my gas gauge, balancing a case of Yuengling on my bumper with one thigh while fumbling for the proper button on my keychain to pop the trunk. Amazing how keyless entry remains just as awkward, in some situations, as just using the stupid key.

Anyway, I stow my booze, close the trunk, and become aware that there are two men walking up the dark street towards the store�black men, dressed in oversized coats and workboots. One of them nods his head at me. ��Sup, babydoll?�

�Not much,� I answer, turning to get into the car. He is saying something else, but I don�t know what. His English is just different enough from mine that I can�t decipher it over the traffic of the road, and I don�t really want to know anyway. I am not freaked out at this point; I am just being a little cautious, as a lone female needs to be when approached by strange males in the dark. So I ignore him and get into my nearly gasless car, suddenly missing the protection of my old hardtop, and lock the doors before starting it. Apparently�and I did not previously know this, not having done it before�my car beeps and flashes when I lock it from the inside. I wish it wouldn�t. The locking makes me feel safe, but the beeping just broadcasts that hi, I am scared of you, and probably racist, and aren�t I just asking for it, locking a car whose tan half is made of canvas.
I know the men are approaching as I fit the key into the ignition, but I still jump when one knocks on my passenger window, and I probably look at him like a frozen bunnyrabbit.

�Hey,� he says, with the kind of voice I use on panicked animals, �I�m just talking, babygirl.�

At this point, I wish I had said something articulate about being sure he really was a nice guy and that I was acting paranoid because of a bad experience at a gas station several years ago, something to reestablish the relationship as human-to-human, as I�m sure it could have been, rather than perceived-predator-to-prey. Instead, I just mumbled �I know,� at a volume I�m sure he couldn�t hear, started my car, and as he stood back and held out his arm in that chivalric, you-go-ahead way, I pulled out and over to the parking lot entrance, almost too flustered to remember to turn my lights on before merging into the traffic on the way to the pizza place a few doors down.

The pizza needed a few more minutes, so I sat on the bench and leaned back against the window, still thinking about those men, wondering whether I�d been right to be cautious or wrong to be so rude, thinking of what they thought of me, terrified that they�d follow me to the pizza place, feeling my face slip into that expressionless autopilot it uses whenever I�m emotional in public.

I did that for several minutes, until I realized that the guy who had been twirling dough was waggling his fingers at me. It made me smile, so I raised an eyebrow back. He shrugged. �You�re bored, I�m bored, gotta do something,� he offered by way of explanation, then twirled the dough one more time before going into the back for something. He wasn�t so different from the two outside the liquor store. He was black too, with longish hair in a ponytail, and walked with a kind of swagger that made it easy for me to picture him in a big coat and workboots, too. So why was I charmed now instead of terrified?

The pizza guy came back to the front to say my pizza was ready, and as I paid, we talked about the party I must be having (I�d ordered two whole pizzas), and he explained his favorite drinking game to me. I left for the gas station feeling that the world was a much friendlier place than it had been just ten minutes before.

So I finally decided I was not racist or alarmist or even (with the possible exception of the beeping) wrong to act the way I did in that parking lot. There is a big difference between talking up a stranger in a lighted place where you are both bored, and talking up a stranger while approaching from behind, in the dark, wielding the word �babydoll.� And I can�t imagine that the guy who was �just talking� wasn�t, on some level, aware of that.

There are times I grow quite tired of being a girl, of having to deal with these things.

-stonebridge

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