Demons and Mildred

It can be very dull living with oneself. I have trouble imagining a condition more tedious than always knowing the exact plan for each and every day is centered around an inescapable form and character—your own---around God's chaining us forever only, inconsolably to ourselves. It cannot be easy being anybody, surely. For instance, you always know just what you are going to say, even if it's only in terms of fractional seconds, and there is a very good chance that you will behave as pretentiously as possible at all times, fearful that others may recognize and dislike the horrible honesties always brewing inside of you, which you can only try to disguise. I refer simply to the eternal pretense of the mind's sleepless view of itself: its reflexivity, its judgments and its many fears relative to other people and our own need to be loved, acknowledged, respected. "I don't care what other people think" is a mantra for the self-delusional, as well as the truly free.

The mind, it's said, is the enemy of existence. A quite disturbed but brilliant man once told me while we rode mass transit that "the Truth exists but it is independent of the mind." Thankfully we have each other to help temper some of this dreadful existential tedium, to needle and gather good stories from. Friends are often cynically compared to sounding boards, but they are just as useful as black holes into which we can totally disappear. That beings as crude and self-obsessed as we are can forget ourselves is a necessary blessing.

I've found that cab drivers are vaults of especially insightful, even esoteric knowledge. You just need to prod them a bit and show how you're a nice person and they will probably give you a good shot for the brief time you know them. Several times they've reminded me of the blind lunacy in being anything less than pleased about living, that life is not necessarily captivating, but interesting at least; and we must deal with the fact that we are captured by it.

And I'm gonna tell you

....

It was before the time when we all had cell phones and the Africans had generously agreed to supply us with cheap Coltan so that we could run around burbling all day into the little tumor factories, before the inexhaustions of the Global War on Terror. I asked the waitress at Lucille's to call me a cab and needed to get to work in twenty minutes or so. She was a nice-looking lady of an indistinct age and it was sad leaving her. She wore black and little, but there's nothing special about this, in that line of work. It seemed that she was thirty or more but she was also a girl with spry hot blood and a young cannibal spirit, as suggested by her style of dress, her smirk, and prominent ankle tattoo. The smirk was a queer workplace enchantment: it couldn't be suppressed or guessed at, and probably deterred thirty drunken suitors every night, even as it attracted them. The cab arrived and I was watching the Knicks game. I hurried out and saw a sleepy heavy black man in the driver's seat. I got in next to him. He was very heavy indeed. There was an exchange of coordinates and he drove a ways while I thought of how to approach talking to him, in some meaningful or at least satisfying way. I relied on a dependable venture.

....

"How have your fares been tonight, man?" I nearly resisted the use of the strained soulful familiarity. That ease which white folks like myself have in relaxing their normal speech patterns around black people has always aggravated me, and to address a man this way when he is your elder by far is disrespectful. I felt slightly off on the wrong foot, but as usual, this self-doubt owed more to neurosis than reality. Southern black folks, after all, are used to centuries of white foolishness.

"A Roadmaster," he said with some flourish in a sarcastic but appreciative way. Apparently he spoke of his automobile. He had misheard me.

"…How have your fares been?"

Without looking at me he said, "Oh. I've had a couple of doozies tonight. Had a lady who wanted to smoke in here. She asked if she could smoke and I told her 'No, ma'am this is a no-smoking cab,' and she said she was gonna smoke anyway."

"So what did you do, let her smoke?"

"Well, no. I called up my boss. My boss is a woman. So I told her there's a woman in here who says she's gonna have a cigarette and I let them talk. Figured it was a woman thing."

This guy wasn't looking at me too much. He was about fifty with a massive belly and expressive, slightly popping eyes and big lovely nostrils. He wore a sparkling garish ring and a matching blinding watch. He was extremely likeable.

"You know how women are," he insisted.

"So was she able to convince her not to smoke?"

"Nope. She told her not to but the lady lit it up anyway. She was very intoxicated. I picked her up from Lucille's. She was with two guys. They were all pretty drunk."

"Yeah, I was at that bar. Of course. I saw her and their party. They spoke at a…very loud level."

"Yeah, she was pretty loud." He seemed reticent, as if he was withholding judgment or just didn't want to recount the other coarse behaviors they had brought into his coach.

"But you said you had a couple of doozies? Who else did you have in here?" I knew this ma­n might agree to tell me something interesting. I hoped he'd treat me to a good story.

"No. Not really, I was talking about those people-"

Car 5, what's your 20? Got one for central.

I looked at the radio and waited to see if that was for him. He turned it down low and said he hated talking over that thing. At this point there was a small dead spot in the conversation so I hastened to ply him with my prized ghost story.

"Well I've got the crazy cab fare story to trump your story. This guy picked me up on ....Gay Street.... once. We talked a bit and he told me about picking up a guy on ....Cumberland.... at Rocky Top, who told him to take him out west, to Sequoiyah or something. So he starts driving and he starts to hear noises coming from behind him,-"

…and I gestured behind us with some jerky flapping motions…

"-like snarling and slobbering and whipping around shit like he was a wild animal. Now this man, this cabdriver seemed like a rational science-grounded guy, we had talked and he seemed well-read and smart. He told me that he was a skeptic and a rationalist and if he didn't know better he would have to say it was demonic possession. He said he wouldn't believe it himself if someone had told him. And the guy was scared he might die and he looks in the rearview mirror to see cause he was scared to turn around, and he sees the dude, like… transforming into some beast with a muzzle protruding out and tongue all flapping around and his head's whipping around- (here I added some more theatrical wagging.) -So he keeps driving straight on until he gets there, petrified, and then when he gets there the guy is normal and gets out and gives him his money." As I usually did, I was getting excited about telling the story.

"Do you believe in ghosts and all that?" And this was what I really enjoyed asking strangers who might have had a lot of experience with other strangers. It's what I like asking cabbies and often they have something wild to say on the matter.

"Hoo," the driver said. "Yes. I've seen demonic possession. I've seen some crazy things, man. I'll tell you about one thing. My brother, he's a little guy, like you, and extremely good-lookin. Small guy, really good-lookin. But he always gets my girlfriend scraps, mean, he always just gets my girlfriends after, you know, I'm done seein them. So I had this friend Arnell Davidson and he was tryin to hook me up with this girl, Kathy Roberts, he said she was very pretty. So he set us up and she was gonna cook me dinner over at her house. So I went over there, you know. And she's really fine now, really pretty with a really fine build and all. This is the first time I've ever seen her, met her, anything. And we're in the kitchen and she's goin around cookin and we're talkin and I hear this noise. Like comin from the back room back there-"

The driver was looking at me more now: ask and ye shall receive. He was clearly an apt spinner of tales, and I took him to be absolutely serious. There was never a question of my belief, anyway. He was lively and I was embraced by this story that seemed to be swelling towards something fine and grim and outrageous. Periodically I would offer the small blasphemous words that indicate interest and attention paid.

"-and I ask her what was the noise and she tells me "Oh, it's just Mildred." I just assume that Mildred is her roommate, just livin back there. But now, I thought the noises were like people fightin-"

We had come to where I work and I was not interested in working yet, so I told him to keep going. "And a while later I hear the noise again. I ask her again and ask… you know when she met Mildred and stuff. She said when she moved in, she was movin stuff into her back bedroom and Mildred just walked out of the wall. So that was it with me and her. Got the hell outta there. I didn't see her again."

Holy shit, I said.

"Well my brother ends up telling me…"(and in a tough little raspy voice that immediately set me grinning and that he would use again to imitate his brother…)

"…Man, I got a good piece last night. Her name is Kathy Roberts….

"And I said, oh man! So he starts going out with her and he's with her for a while. They go out one night and they get drunk and he gets angry and he hits her. Knocks her around some. They're back in bed at her house and they're still fightin. He said he reached over to backhand her and hit her and soon's he does something grabs holda his balls with Two hands and won't let go. Squeezes the shit out of them, hard. So hard he is like cryin and screamin. And it just keeps squeezin. He said it was squeezin so hard he bled out his nose."

Oh my God, I testified. My body had stiffened a bit when he told me this business about phantom retribution. Here and there skin tightened and individual hairs asserted themselves. Things like this unnerve and delight me.

"So it was light, the lights were on?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"So he could see it wasn't her, Kathy?"

"He was looking at her. She had to beg the thing to let go a him. She said, please stop, Mildred, please let him go he won't do it again."

"Damn. I can't believe that. But I do, I bel…"

"Oh, I'm not done. And I'm gonna tell you. He stays with her and moves in with her. Musta really liked that scary sex. But one night he comes to my house and says man, I think she got a spell on me or somethin. He would be out playin pool with some friends or about to get with a girl, cause you know they weren't married he was just livin with her, and he would just…stop; he wouldn't do it. He'd just stop and go home-"

Holy shit, I said. The implication was that his body would rebel and he was compelled by something inside of him to leave.

"So he asked me he said brother I need you to help me. I need to stay here tonight and I want you to make sure I stay here no matter what I say or what I do. So I said, yeah, man. Alright. You're staying here. So we were all hangin out, my girlfriend was livin with me. We watched a movie, you know, smoked a couple joints, and it gets late, around ..midnight.., and he starts getting fidgety. You know he just starts moving around, getting fidgety. So he says--

'lemme go to the bathroom.'

–and I said alright. The bathroom was toward the back of the house, through a door, by the back door. As soon as I heard that door close I knew he was makin a run for it. He was headed for the door and my girlfriend's able to tackle him. Now I couldn't move as fast as they were movin, I weighed 450 pounds at the time (I've lost a lotta weight) but she got him down and that gave me enough time to get over there and try and hold him. Like I said he's a little guy, like you, and I was tryin to hold him and couldn't. He had superhuman strength. And he was all talkin out of his head. I could not hold him and you know I was pretty big. He was gonna get away so I had to just kinda bring him down and get on him with my full weight. And he was still cussin and fightin, sayin crazy shit and his eyes were bright red-"

bright red? I said. Fangoria, this shit was incredible. ­

"-That's right. Bright red. He had no pupils. No pupils at all. Just inflamed red, like, have you ever seen a drunk that's been on a bender for a week, with their eyes completely red?"

yeah, yeah, I said, though I wasn't sure—Bush hadn't been elected president yet, but I felt I knew what this would look like from horror movies.

"But what got me, man,"- the driver reached over and touched my hand briefly. - "Was...I'm real close to my brother and always have been since we was little. I'm his big brother and I help take care of him, you know. We always been very close. But I'm right on him and he turned his face to me…"

And the driver turned his fist to point directly in his eyes an inch from his face,

"…and he growled. He said,

'errrrrrr. I hate you, motherfucker.'

…And I looked right back and I said 'I hate you too, motherfucker,' just like that. Something was inside of him, truly. And that was when, I don't know where I brought this up from out of my psyche, but I told my girlfriend, I said 'get a Bible.' And she went and got one and opened it up and we put it flat on his chest…and he screamed and cried like a baby. And I still had him in this bear-hug and he was still fightin and so for about twenty minutes, she read from the Bible. I don't know which part of it we read but after a while he was calmer. He was just crying like, just like when he was a little kid. I said man, Tony, you don't know how you was actin. You were crazy. I know man, he told me, 'I told you she's got some power over me.'"

This was simply one of the best stories I had ever heard and I told him to drive up on the hill by the science buildings and just park there for a while, even though I was twenty minutes late. He hinted that shit, there was much more. Up on the hill he continued.

"That same night we all decided he was gonna get his things from her house. He was gonna move out-"

I was incredulous. "That same night?" I said.

"-Yeah, and my sister came with us. My sister is a fighter now. Man, she will throw down, she will fight the red-eyed devil-"

It's a good thing, I mumbled.

"-And my brother said that Kathy wasn't gonna let him just leave her like that. My sister said shit, that bitch better not do shit or she was gonna really have to get rough. So we got there and they had words and they got into it. And my sister really dogged her out. Whipped her ass around the yard a bit. So my brother started movin his stuff. We were in the driveway and he was gettin the last of his things and Kathy came to the door, all calm and collected. She stood there in the door and said right to him,

'You'll be back. You'll be back. I got you,' like that.

And my sister was mad as hell and said,

'No he won't be back, bitch,' and all that. But no, man. He went back to her, after a while he just left work one day and went back to her and didn't say anything to any of us."

"Damn, that's crazy," I confirmed.

"Well that ain't all. He was with her for a while again and he found a jar while she was gone, that she had kept hidden. A little jar that had a picture of him…some of his hair…and some personal belongings of his. Like some voodoo spell." He was very matter-of-fact.

"oh man-" I think I said, and again felt a kind of constriction in my chest and a tingling along my tender scalp.

"Around that time, we had all, my girlfriend and some other friends of mine had been saved. And I guess Kathy wanted to be part of that, cause she was with my brother or something. So she volunteered to go meet Reverend Burnham and be saved, quit all that voodoo shit and the shit with Mildred. Have the spirit cast out and all. But I wondered, you know, I thought it might be a scam-"

And then there was a good long sidetrack and I heard about a mighty seer, the sooty-skinned middle-Tennessee oracle of God, the Reverend Burnham.

"Now Reverend Burnham, this man. This man was an Apostle. Everybody thinks Apostles, they just lived back in the old times, but some of them are around today. Reverend Burnham could just pick you apart. He could look you in the eyes for the first time and tell you who you lost your virginity with, who your first girlfriend was. Who was your third grade teacher. Man, CBS came down and wanted to do a thing on him and he wouldn't take money for what he did-"

"Really? Damn." Incredulous again.

"He was black, black. I mean coal-black, as far as the color of his skin, you know?-" He wanted to clarify and paused.

"Yeah, I know."

"And when this man got to feelin God in him (and everybody knew he could feel God in him cause everybody had seen it) his eyes would turn clear crystal blue. Just his whole pupils turned beautiful crystal blue. It was just beautiful to see. The man was amazing…Well Reverend Burnham agreed to see her and try and cast this spirit out. And we all went over to his house together and from the minute this woman went in the door to when she got in there, she hit the floor and wriggled like a snake all the way-"

And he moved his hand in the universal slippery motion of the snake. This gesture and those words were as unsettling as any he had laid on me until then. I could only murmur something inane, asked if the Reverend had been used to that sort of thing. My friend said that he was, and described the man's renowned ability to remove demons and such from people. Now the subject of the Reverend was deep in my mystical courier and he wanted to tell me something else about the holy man.

"Man, let me tell you somethin else about Reverend Burnham. There was this lady that lived over by me with her husband in this old house. And she was upstairs makin a bed one night and she was lifted up as if by four men or somethin and put on the bed. She could feel…like two sets of hands holdin her arms down, and some other hands movin down her body here…she could see her skin being touched, it was like, being rippled like someone was touchin her. Fondlin her breasts. But she was able to get away. Well she asked the Reverend to come and pray at the house. Well you know, he had done that sort of thing, cast out all kind of spirits before. So I drove him over there and as soon as we pulled in the driveway…he took a look at the house and he stopped. Didn't even want to get out of the car. His eyes got all blue and he turned to me and said,

'If you could see, if you could see into the spirit world like I do, you would be scared out of your mind right now. The things I am seeing are horrible. Tell them if they don't leave this house soon their marriage will not last.'

"…What had happened there was, you know the Trail of Tears? Well that went right through there and the house was a stop for the Indians to stay and rest. One night when they were all camped out there some white soldiers and some other men came and raped a bunch of women and killed some people. Those spirits were still there. And about a few months later, those two divorced and moved. But the next woman who lived there got it worse. She said she actually felt penetration."

"Oh, man," I said. "Do you think those spirits were just the vengeful spirits of the Indians, or were some of the soldiers killed, too, and they're still around?"

"I think that was probably it."

"And even this Reverend was a little scared?"

"Mm-hm. And Reverend was used to this kind of thing. He seen the devil. He saw the devil around all the time, hangin around here and there. He would see him in church and stuff. Most people think the devil would look all horrible, but he said he's just a little guy-"

And he indicated with his hands that the devil was a small fellow, less than two feet tall.

"Yeah, he's a little guy, but he acts big."

It took me a minute to come to grips with this news about the actual and metaphysical size of Satan, and it remains some of the most important information I ever heard, but I was getting pretty late and wanted the man to finish.

"But what about Kathy and the exorcism and all that?"

"Yeah. Well one of the things he does durin these exorcisms is have you repeat scripture. I guess he thinks if you say certain things over and over that's a way you can cast out these demons. So what was one of the things he kept sayin to her and she was sayin over and over? 'Jesus is Lord,' that was it. And 'He is my God and protector,' and things like that. So I was in the other room just sittin, just waitin there. And they went on like this for a long time and they finally thought she was saved. She was goin to the bathroom and she had to walk by me there. So she turned to me while she walked by and looked at me with this mean smile in her eyes and said-

'Fuck Jesus.'

He whispered this just as a person thoroughly or even irretrievably corrupted by evil might.

"So she went in and I went back to them all and they said she was saved. And I said she is not saved, ya'll. I told them what she had said and they went through it all some more. They finished again and they felt like she was finally saved, but you know I just can't really believe it. My brother isn't with her anymore."

"Where does she live now?" I asked, hoping that she had not moved to ....Knoxville...., along with Mildred.

"I think she lives in ....Knoxville.... now."

"Alright. man, That's some crazy shit. And you have…an amazing skill at telling stories-"

"Oh man, that's not even anything. That's not half of it. I'm from the country. There is some wild spirit shit going on from way back out there. I could tell you plenty more."

"Well I'd like to hear some more. Can I get your number? I 'd like to give you a call."



"Car 10. I got a fare for Shannondale, you copy?" interrupted the woman's clipped rugged voice, the voice of a dispatcher dedicated to smoking.

"Yes, I copy."

"It's out West, you know where Shannondale is?"....

"No, I don't, but if you could tell me I'm sure I could find it."

"You're gonna have to get you a map by Friday or Saturday. You gotta have a map in there."....

"I bought a map but it was too small. I couldn't read it. My eyes are funny and I couldn't make that small stuff out."

"They sell big maps you can read. It gets real busy on the weekends and we can't be looking up everything all the time for you."

"Alright. I guess I'll get a big map."

"Yeyp. They sell 'em at the Rocky Top store there. Bigger maps. You head out towards Farmborough, get off there." ....

"10-4"

"Well, sir, it's good to meet you, I'm Nat Prosser. I'll call you and we can talk some more if you don't mind. I'd like to write about this…it's kind of what I like to do. Thank you very much." I gave him a good tip.

"It's good to meet you, I'm Rick Gillespie. Call me. I know more stories like that. Call me."

We shook hands after I got his number, and I headed off to work at something more than a jog. I had a strange energy in my stride, as if suddenly I knew how to run comfortably without being chased or trying to score. I always prefer walking and think joggers are masochistic. Of all the queer and original stories I have been lucky to hear in my life, I thought, how highly this one about voodoo-Kathy ranked. And it was occurring to me that sometimes life manages to be compelling, when it allows you a glimpse of the arcane, of the mysteries that shroud death and love; it gives one reasons to wonder and not just go through our days muttering about television and shuffling through the other ephemera we must secretly or loudly regard as unimportant. Knowing I had a unique tale to tell my coworker, I got to the computer galley and came in 35 minutes late, thinking about the otherworld, about demons shifting between there and here, and how near these things are…depending on where you happen to be sleeping, how deep your certainties go, and when and where you catch a cab. Some people regard maps more importantly than others.

Rain, rain.

it rains so hard the water

leaks through these old windows,

so hard no other sound

but the wet

against everything.

a crack of what used

to scare the cavemen witless

comes

and this screen cracks and flashes,

outside something valuable and electric breaks with a burst

the rain falls so hard

it reminds me

of God and his drunken retinue beating down flimsy doors

he is angry, or excited,

and has an infinite

number of fists

the rain touches everything deeply

me,  the ground, the mind of every person alive

lingering in their offices;

trapped in their pain,

or released by their love of beauty.

this furious pouring

comes against the hard pavement, these torrents beat and tear

at the pavement to

get at Her,

to free and succor the Earth,

to quench her hot thirst beneath us.

these deluges

weigh upon the tree limbs

and the antennas

and the signboards,

and they become heavy with life,

life drips from the lips of the living

in a rainstorm,

and the living smile,

and drink Her in

there is no choice but to think of you

in storms like these,
you woman whose name i will forget eventually,

because in the way you wash over my thoughts,

in the way I am made heavy and kind of ragged

with the weight of my feelings for you, and for what I see in your heart,

in the liveliness that lifts into my soul

like the renewed and vibrant green…

in these things I feel your effect,

your touch like endless soothing rain,

and

I am reminded of the fury and beauty of the storm,

of its kisses all along my body,

in a dream of being alone with you.

Things to do and Not to do

Things to do:

1.       Get shit together.

2.       Get shitfaced, together with friends.

3.       Find kind, meaningful, non-narcissist friends.

4.       Pet non-dangerous animals.

5.       Flirt with non-psychotic pretty women on the street.

6.       Work on your left hand.

7.       Avoid the left-hand path.

8.       Hang out with elderly people and avoid calling them “old.”

 .       Question any and every mass shooting, and all jihadi attacks, infestations, etc. 

10.   Eat your vegetables.

 .        Kiss my grits.

12.   Regularly compliment people so as to inveigle your way into their good graces.

13.   Drive safely.

14.   Get plenty of rest.

15.   Wash your ass behind your ears.

16.   Listen politely

17.   Interrupt the speech-jabbering of Republicans, atheists, Marxists, and any self-identifying artist younger than 30.

18.   Stoically suffer the demented noise-making of children. They will soon be adults talking insufferably about nonsense and lies, and themselves and their pets and spouses and illnesses.

19.   Postpone the inevitable. It is Inevitable, after all. See if you can’t just beat it to the grave.

Things Not to do:

1. These have not yet been determined.

    

A Plea of Sanity

To be titled:  Basket-Case, or the Intrepid Fool, or the Overconfident Man, or, I can’t Get Started.



I was driving across the Gay street bridge on June 16, according to the documents; I was coming home from work. Generally I work the night shift. As Henley Street Bridge is the main bridge and has been under reconstruction for many years now, this route is my preferred and efficient one home. Halfway across the bridge, a girl is coming towards me on a bicycle, in the very close and narrow partitioned sidewalk to my right. Even in a blur she is stunning, and indeed my head snaps involuntarily in her direction to survey her beauty. I then loudly and reflexively call upon God and the sacraments in a couple of different ways. This woman on a kind of silly bike with a white basket looked like Maribel Verdu, the foreign actress, and sort of like my old Venezuelan girlfriend! And has long well muscled legs and some memorable posture! In short I was exceedingly happy and not dumbstruck. That sort of beauty really makes me smile.

I told myself I would try to meet her, if possible and I had the nerve and I saw her again. This is the kind of thing I’ve done about a dozen times in my life, and not anything I regretted until recently. If I am rebuffed in any way, then I make sure the attempt is over, and the result is I’ve been slightly humiliated and only feel abashed, a bit. I’ve in fact been lucky enough to have fulfilling and joyful relationships with stranger-women I approached in a public place.

The next day, according to both the documents and my memory, she’s again riding along the bridge and I’m driving along towards her. And my departure from work is somewhat random. I’m permitted to leave whenever I am relieved by the morning shift, and they arrive between 7-7:45am. So, against significant odds because I of course have often chickened out in such cases, I drive a ways until I can turn around, and make my way back towards downtown, not knowing where she may be. I park near the post office because it is the only place in my ignorance I even know where I may: the spot is next to the library and post office and I‘ve owned a car for only one year of my life. I head towards the beautiful post office building and there she is, having just deposited mail in the mailbox. By the time I am across the street and stepping to the sidewalk, she is riding nearly by me. I say something generally like this to her.
“Miss, I’m sorry to bother you …”  .(and here, I confess, I don’t even know what I said to her, it was either …).  “…but can I talk to you for a minute,” or “but I just think you’re really beautiful, etc.”

I have no firm recollection because I was nervous and it was a more or less unprepared overture and she was in transit and not stopping. But she turned and smiled very nicely and said “I’m sorry I’m going somewhere..” or “….I’m sorry I have to be somewhere.”  Something politely dismissive. I wish she’d been even a little mean, freaked out, or more dismissive. Because never in my life have I twice asked out or tried talking up a stranger who had told me, “no thanks,” or “Leave Me Alone,” or been freaked out or quiet or just walked away. This was my very first time trying to meet a cyclist.

So I made the admitted and indecorous mistake of trying to meet her one more time. According to her report, this was the next day and it very well could’ve been. It would have been sometime within 7-8 days, but I seriously do not know for certain at this point. There were several other much more important things occupying my mind around then, and they were stressful enough. Along Chapman Highway on my regular route home again, she is riding on the left this time, same heat and humidity, same miniature outfit of athletic shorts and whatever passes for a young woman’s t-shirt these days, same basketed bike. To my lasting regret I turned the automobile around and drove back and parked in front of the Professional Building, across the street from the defunct hospital on the river. Logically she would be taking this route. I left music playing, probably in an attempt to be casual, and held my basketball in my hands and sat on some steps, messing with the ball a bit, definitely because I was a bit nervous. When she finally made it to that point I stood up and smiled and at least as respectfully as I would approach any stranger in the street here in the friendly south, said something like,

“I hope I didn’t bother you when I approached you (yesterday.) I’m not crazy I just wanted to talk to you.”  (For all I know I may have got to comment on her beauty, but for certain I did assure her I was not crazy. In hindsight, possibly not a word one should use in this situation. To this day I have no idea what she heard, but I do know what she claims she heard at some point during our “encounters.” We will get to this demented and outlandish and career-ruining claim soon enough, and it’s the dirty evil crux of the story, as far as I’m concerned.)

But whatever impression these words made I can’t really say, aside from the fact that she looked at me and then continued speeding along. There was an obvious look of alarm and concentration on her face, but not a word. I was basically dumbstruck, this time, myself. ‘Well, I never,’ I thought. The rudeness. Couldn’t even say Go Away. Well, it’s just as well, I did think, she’s doubly obvious in not wanting anything to do with me. But how terrible that she would behave with such fright and horror, how sorry and surprised I was. What a small and perhaps necessary murder of the ego it had been. Onward and home we go, and off I went, ridding her from my mind, and preoccupied with thoughts of aging and how I needed to get out more and stop being such a hermit and maybe I might meet somebody in an easier and more normal way. It had been at least two months since I broke up with my girlfriend.

Then one month and approximately ten days later, I’m going into work on a Tuesday afternoon for an overtime shift. The summers are fat with overtime for those in my office who want it. Vacation time at university, all around. Would that it had been, for me. Because this is where Fate began to get even more squiggly, venomous and unaccountably grim. At my office before our shifts, we are to arrive fifteen minutes early for the exchange of information. So between 3:30-3:45pm I am crossing Volunteer Blvd and I am peering ahead of me and lo and behold here seems to be the Spanish actresses’ doppleganger, walking away from my destination. No bike this time, same outfit more or less, this time with sunglasses. I’m unsure it’s even her, and somehow, almost miraculously,  if miracles can be physical convulsions, instances of poor judgment, and extremely bad things at once, while fifteen-30 feet away from her I say,

“ Aren’t you the girl I asked out twice in the street?”

I said this as I walked in the direction she had come from, towards my office. I believe I was able to say the entire almost automatic sentence, but regardless, she took one look sidelong-back at me and then looked immediately forward. With a doubtlessly dumb and sheepish smile on my face and shaking my head, I continued in my undeviated oblique path away from her and towards my office, which was no more than 100 feet away. I still couldn’t quite understand how I could have frightened or unnerved anyone into absolute disdain and mute coldness, because it had never happened before then. I’m a fairly friendly and outgoing person, for a hermit. But it should be emphasized that I was shocked to see this girl on campus and directly in front of my office, and I spoke spontaneously. I had no reason even to think she was a student until that day and she looked to be about 25 (she’s 27). If I had thought it over, I wouldn’t have said anything to her from mid-street, as logically she was attired as a student, and an employee of the university does not want to be mistaken for someone who is messing with any of these confident and even-tempered co-eds. And calling to a woman from the street isn’t polite, in my honest opinion. It was, to my present mind, kind of like a muscular reaction.

Now the very next day, foolhardy Nathaniel has another overtime shift. It’s 6pm and I go out to get coffee and dinner, to take the same route I have thousands of times for this or that reason while at work. I head down the very same sidewalk, headed towards the crosswalk. I’m about 50 feet away when I see that she is walking towards me. I fidget a bit with my wallet in my pocket and briefly consider saying only one thing to her. “I’m very sorry that I frightened you or made you uncomfortable,” etc. It’s a very big deal to me that I’d clearly bothered a woman because of my forthrightness in public, and it still seems wildly unnatural, so to speak. But it didn’t matter that all I would have said to her If I’d even decided to was an apology, because when I looked up from the sidewalk she was on her cellular phone. She was kind of in a holding pattern right around the crosswalk, not looking at me, talking and idling. I interpreted this as an obvious show of disinterest and immediately forgot about saying anything to her.

I took a left at the crosswalk and went and got coffee and dinner. Unfortunately she is standing around the crosswalk. This dinner trip took me no more than 25 minutes. I was coming back with my boxed noodle dinner and my coffee along the very same route, a super-efficient shortcut, underneath the Henson complex by a dormitory and the Social Work building, and I see her still on her phone, basically as if she’d followed my route, and she points at me and announces, “There he is, that’s him.”

As the University policeman approaches me from the front and I become aware of some of his colleagues behind me, I say to him, “This girl thinks I’m stalking her, doesn’t she? I work right across the street, I asked her out over a month ago and I don’t know her. I don’t know her name.” About situations like these one remembers their words a bit better, you see. And in them they can only hope they’re innocent and collected enough, as I was. At the start I was appropriately outraged but not huffy or insolent. I understood I had behaved in a way that was customary for me but not by any means for everybody. I myself knew the girl was unfavorably surprised and displeased by my second attempt on the sidewalk to talk with her. Initially the normal reaction is “how absurd and outrageous” and there’s a show of what might be called fiery indignation. But within minutes I was totally cool and calm and by the end of this twenty minute tarring, this forced period of sitting down and showing and having my credentials checked on by radio, all the police who listened to me were very obviously in my camp. However this happened, I can’t really say, aside from the mistaken falsity and hastiness of the allegation, the mutually admitted facts favoring my innocence, and my self-exonerating place and time on the campus as an employee. My collected demeanor and considered words ended up helping me, also. They let me go after informing me that the girl had filed a charge against me with the actual city police sometime over the last month. He said there was an allegation of kidnapping, or of an attempt, and my jaw did it’s thing by dropping. Being a charge against Mr. X, a mysterious stranger with a basketball, I was not aware of the allegations or a constabulary interest in me. The very kind and objective university police then told me I could expect an investigator from the city police to call me the next day. I went back to work and caught my breath, and expressed my outrage, shock and dismay to my co-worker/supervisor. I told him the whole dirty business, stinting on no detail. We shook our heads and marveled at what the world was coming to, and I failed to understand that as an Iranian Persian, he probably thought I was crazy to pursue a stranger in the street, let alone after she had rode past me on a bicycle explaining that she had someplace to be, with a smile.

In an hour or so, the university police returned. It was the middle-aged male officer who took the lead in my initial questioning, and the young female officer who had hovered to my left the whole time and fixed me with an emotionless but slightly contemptuous look as I sat and fumed. By the end of this second questioning session directly outside of my secure IT warehouse-like office, both of these officers were entirely sympathetic and reluctant to manacle me and take me to the hoosegow, but they are entrusted to follow procedure as duly constituted, don't you know. A woman had been freaked out and approached (made contact with) by a stranger at least three times within a ninety day period, (I assume they had been checking statutes, etc.) and therefore a man had to be summarily removed from work by his own work police and taken to jail. It is not at all a good or easily digested situation but it has the ring of authority and stable societies ruled by law, doesn’t it?

From this point on in my ordeal with the boots on the ground authorities is all academic. I was digitally registered after spending the requisite purgatory in the holding pen with other rascals, who ranged from the completely unconscious to high-strung pantherishness, stalking in circles until the holding pen became too full. Men of every stripe, tee hee. My registered recognition of the Misdemeanor A crime of stalking recorded, as well as my tri-part photograph and inkless fingerprints, I paid my bond with the help of a friend at about 2am or a bit earlier. Inside a huge hive of identical locked cells, I spent the night in my own little cell with my own inflatable mattress and steel toilet and steel locked door, rather than have anyone stick around to take me home/back to work my double shift, because the full process of being “booked” is so endlessly lengthy and complicated, you see, even if the low-paid officials responsible were not having a leisurely ball celebrating the assumption of guilt, right before your eyes. Later my kindly and elderly bondsman suggested that “no one works up there.” And so as not to cause anyone further trouble, I slept in jail: not a big deal. Also, I just don’t know that many people I’m comfortable asking to pick me up at jail at 3am. They mostly have jobs and children, and good opinions of me.


About 7:30 I am retrieved from the klink by one of the best friends I have had in my life, my coworker Walter Sutton. He takes me to work so I can get my belongings and make matters plain with my boss and coworkers. Worried expressions and candid talk all around as I relate my tale to coworkers. They understand both the gravity and the insanity of the situation. The world is falling apart, the total case itself is ridiculously thin and insubstantial, etc. We all know the state university we work at is inclined to avoid any sort of black eye or appearance of liability; queue the bass notes and deep insecurity. Then I go in to see my boss, and tell the whole misadventure again. He is almost entirely sympathetic, and he himself may have been similarly strung up for a cynical and false allegation dealing with spousal relations during divorce, who can say, as that is not directly my business? He tells me that in his opinion I did not commit the disgusting crime of stalking and that it is apparently a gross misunderstanding. He has known me for years, after all, and is aware of the fact that I am a poor candidate for the weird personality type who feverishly wishes to ruin his own life by stalking a client of his own doctrinally bureaucratic and historically face-saving employer. My boss who I have always admired and respected tells me that I can continue to come to work as normal. But he has to tell me about 20 minutes later that Human Resources has decided to put me on Paid Administrative Vacation after all, pending their own investigation. We agree that this is a relative silver lining, and I’m informed that I cannot be on campus until the department of human resources decides if I am guilty of these serious charges, which may result in termination, quite naturally, or unnaturally, depending on one‘s opinion of both statute and honest testimony, as you will see next.

This miserable tale and importunement is nearly at an end, and I can’t thank you enough for reading it and bearing with me. But here comes the drastic and super-gnarly part of it all.

Two days after this all happens with the tarring and feathering in the street, with the overdue comeuppance of the devious street predator that I have become, a kind and thoroughly old-school Sheriff’s deputy  wakes me up with a lot of insistent banging and knocking at my door. He serves me with a restraining order after telling me “it doesn’t mean you did it.” He then is required to read the brief statement my accuser had entered. It’s at this point that I am as stunned, baffled, flabbergasted, smote down as I have ever been. This is when I realize that the situation, this hideous farce, has passed from an issue of a woman who misunderstood and over-reacted, who I legitimately made uncomfortable but somehow still pursued a case against me when the very mitigating facts should have been made clear to her, to an issue of much worse and more evil magnitude. Because she just lied through her teeth in order to make an “hysterical” charge stick. This can be the only explanation for how she could have come up with the words I‘m about to relate. In my opinion, the two alternate possibilities for these astonishing and bold-faced untruths are that she has a form of mental derangement and believes what she says, or the sort of comprehensive hearing problem that simply causes untold trouble for other citizens. She says that at some point in the street or on the sidewalk, in broad daylight, I said to her,

“I’ve been watching you for days. You don't have to deal with me now but you'll have to deal with me when I kidnap you.”

Of course, nobody talks like that, and kidnappers, I would guess, don’t often make their intentions so obvious. Then there is the question of how very rarely this occurs between strangers in the street, as opposed to within established relationships between two people. So in short, I may be helped by the fact that this woman is so unimaginative and hasty as to have failed in coming up with better perjury and more believable dialogue. One has to wonder if a lawyer or friends coached her to say these evil things, for whatever standard and degenerate reasons such people traffic in.

That’s basically where it stands at the moment. My accuser has shown a bloody, rare interest in crucifying me with lies;  my employer has me on an ominous paid leave without having requested to interview me or get my side of the story beyond whatever is written in some campus police report; and my lawyer very candidly speaks of massive gray areas ahead. She is no great friend of the head district attorney. She confesses that the case is paper-thin and essentially lunatic, but that politics and gender personality insofar as which DA and judge get my case will come into play. The best we can currently hope for is to call in some wily favors of the back-room variety, one could say, and also, naturally, that my accuser will display some kind of unmistakable evil-faced madness at the preliminary trial in about a week. We arrive at the point in life where we see that mountains of the foulest, unforeseeable, flaming excrement are being delivered to one‘s doorstep, and that one will have to pay for the cost of delivery. My accuser insists I cover her legal expenses, of course. And I have no idea what sort of judicial-mindedness prevails in this shadowy process of internal investigation by the department called Human Resources. They will be in touch with this resource at some point, not necessarily even pending the actual court’s findings.


What I’ve done here is take up too much of your time with the explanation of what sort of weird and colossal mess I’ve gotten myself into. I’m unspeakably sorry to have gotten into this shit-storm, and to feel that I need to tell you about it and to ask that you consider helping me. All of it is rotten and I’ve always been extremely independent and self-sustaining. But if the universe arrays itself against you, I think it’s wise to ask the same universe for help.

The trouble with this is that some of my friends will feel bad because they either can’t help me or have misgivings about helping me because they could possibly feel I don’t deserve it in this case. For those in these positions I’m telling you it’s ok and I understand. I can’t comment on any of your questions as to my innocence because that’s your right and your judgment, and there’s a very good chance we haven’t seen each other for years and years anyway. And, very importantly, times are ruthlessly hard right now. Even people without children and other serious mid-life responsibilities are having trouble making ends meet. Don’t feel bad if you’re not in a position to help me with some coin for the barristers and the maintenance of the crushing, murderous wheels of state. I’ll be alright and some good will come out of all this high anarchy and low malarkey. But any donation will be repaid and goes directly to the fund marked “Legal.” These funds will not be considered fungible in any way and I am currently looking for an interim job; I can’t say when any contribution will be repaid. I wish I had been the saving type but I’m not: I have a secure retirement plan and spend my money as it comes for the most part, and like anybody else, did not ever conceive of such an event as this, which might quickly remove my job and income from me.

Now I’m done with this dreadful business of entreating you from this public library in the country. I’ll just say in closing that I’ve never stalked anybody and my parents raised me much better than that. This accusation diminishes the gravity of the crime; the accuser appears to have perjured herself not in defense of herself, but probably only of her ego. I can’t imagine what karmic horrors await the person who perjures him or herself in a malicious attempt to ruin a stranger, however they may have regarded the actions of their “persecutor.”

I may be a somewhat slick talker, but I’m not a con artist. I may be bold and even possessed of a saucy gumption, but I’m not aggressive or even impolite, as a general rule. I definitely gave a focused effort to meet a stranger, (who, contrary to her statement, never told me to leave her alone and indeed only spoke that first politely dismissive sentence to me in transit) but I’m not a stalker. Stalking disgusts me and is an act of psychological terrorism, an invasion of emotional security I could never commit. And it’s hard for me to see other than that right now I’m being stalked by all The Furies, myself.