Why I don't let my parents/grandparents read my blog

Let's be honest, it is best not to tell your parents everything. Example: "Hey Mom! I almost killed a pedestrian while I was driving down Main Street today. Guess that'll teach me to go 80 in a 45-mph zone." "I'll be home late tonight, Mom; I'm going out to spend some time with lots of men. Big ones. Full of sperm." Probably not things your Mom wants to hear. Or needs to hear.

And today I wanted to be completely honest with you about how much it sucks to be a woman in the inner city. (Don't worry, I plan to include some fun stories and pictures as well.) But if my Mom read this she'd just worry about me even more than she already does. (And Uncle Randy, if you don't leave her alone about my blog, you're not going to be allowed to read it, either. So there. ;-) So, down to it:

Sometimes it doesn't even seem worth it to leave the house; it's hard to walk down the street without hearing whistling or catcalling or having cars slow down to stare or yell at you. This is not flattering, it is nasty. It is a reminder that you are nothing more than a sexual object, and a vulnerable sexual object at that. As a woman in the inner city, you always have to be aware of your environment, especially the people around you. You have to remember not to walk alone in stairwells or too close to buildings or by yourself after dark. Various admonitions may run through your head: "Watch where you're going. Never get into a car; once you're in a car, you're dead. Always look like you know where you're headed."

I have realized lately that I wear a scowl on my face when I walk down the street; I think this is to discourage men from talking to me. I'm always sure to make at least a little eye contact so the passing man will know that I can identify him in a lineup if I have to. Sometimes I wish I had eyes in the back of my head so men who walk by and "Hey Baby" me or look me up and down can see me roll my eyes. Although if I had too many eyes they might stop "Hey, Babying" me at all. And that would be nice!

We are told that the proper response to a "pick-up line" (if you can call it that) is "Nah, I'm cool." Apparently it works like a charm. I wouldn't know, because I never say anything. I know that if I open my mouth, something a lot closer to four letters and a lot more negative would come out. I have been known to have to physically restrain myself from flipping off the guys who really tick me off.

In fact, one time I passed two guys who started yelling at me, and I just walked right on by. Then they began yelling, "What? You deaf?" and decided to start cussing me out in a pretty interesting manner. I wondered if they were trying to figure out if I was deaf or not, but whatever. Punks.

The scariest thing, though, is having a man walk up behind you and stay too close for too long. When that happens, the realization that you are weaker and therefore incredibly vulnerable hits like a ton of bricks. "This man could do something to me, and I would be able to do nothing about it," you think.

So here's my interesting story. And the pictures.

Last Tuesday my team and I went out to the lake to take some pictures. (They're pretty good, when Noel gives me the go-ahead I might email out a few.) One of the guys from another Oakland team came to take them, and as we were discussing what to do first, a drunk, shirtless guy came up to our group, looked at me and asked if I would stick an earring through a hole in his ear that had closed up. I said okay (can you tell that I'm terribly impulsive?) and took the earring from him. His ear had scabbed over, so being careful to not get anywhere near it, I shoved the earring as hard into the middle of the scab as I could. And then green puss-like stuff and blood started coming out. So I tried for a second or two more–-once again being sure not to touch anything but the earring--but I couldn't get it through.

But he continued to follow us and talk to us about how he is married to an eighteen-year-old ("Well, maybe not quite eighteen") and his great car and how this crazy lady hit it and how he got a new one and how his family is really big in this city, etc. When we told him we had to go to take some pictures he said, "Aw, I could go to the corner store and get a disposable camera and take better pictures than THIS guy. I could take you to the best spots in the city!" (Warning bells: never get into a car. . .)

We told him no, but thank you, but he kept following us until we started ignoring him hard-core, and when he finally yelled that he was going off to a barbeque I felt instantly safer.

Until a few days later. Ruth and I left the clinic after work on Thursday and as we got out onto the street I noticed my shirtless friend on the opposite corner. (He did have a wife beater on this time, though, but he was still drunk.) As I was explaining the situation to Ruth, Charlie, a guy who used to be in the rehab program came up and started talking with us. We decided to start walking in the direction of drunk guy since Charlie was with us, and I tried to blend in.

Of course that was pretty much impossible (one of the few times I hated my red hair). Drunk guy started yelling at Charlie.

"Hey! I know that girl! I saw her at the lake yesterday!"

And he kept yelling at us. And we kept walking. Charlie finally said, "Hey, nice chest hair," I guess to get him to leave us alone.

"If you think that's impressive, you should see my NUT hair," he yelled back, and kept following us.

"Aw, why don't you go braid your nut hair?!" Charlie yelled.

Thankfully, he pretty much stopped following us after that.

While I was attempting to mentally wipe out the last few moments of my life, Charlie asked how I knew that interesting character, so I explained how we'd met him and that he was half-naked at the time.

"Which half?" he asked.

"Um, the top half. If it was the bottom half, I think I would've been scared away by his impressive nut hair," I said.

But I felt violated, somehow. This scary, nasty, persistent guy had come to MY space, had found his way into MY life, and that was frightening. Still weirds me out a bit.

And so you can get the full picture (and be properly weirded out as well), I'm going to post some photos. I think this will make some more sense out of the story I just told you, because it's completely different when you can actually SEE the guy.