Earlier this week, I decided to walk to the store at about 830 at night because I needed an onion and cat food – most importantly the cat food because Torres was not letting me live. After pulling on some old sneakers, I noticed they were a bit slippery, clearly having given up their soles to shame me for their disuse.
Too lazy to change them, I went, promising myself to walk gingerly down the hill. It was dark, but still relatively early – in my neighborhood I could see TVs on, smell dinners cooking – so I was aware, but not afraid of this 5 minute walk.
Not even halfway down the hill, I hear a bike behind me so step to the side. I realize it has no lights on. Then it’s silent. Then it’s beside me. A friendly-sounding guy starts trying to engage me in conversation. "Evening. What, you just been working out? I like your hair. Where you work to?" At first I speak pleasantly, but the more he’s beside me, shrouded in darkness, the more I try to ignore him. He keeps talking, slowly meandering his engine-less bike. I start to become not just aware, but slightly concerned and irritated.
I think about being a girl who would say, "Do you know that no matter how ‘nice’ you are, how well intentioned, that what you are doing right now, approaching a woman you don’t know in the darkness, is our least favorite thing?"
My right foot slips from under me.
I catch myself immediately and he yells out, "Whoa sweetie, you ok… you want a ride down the rest of the way? Here get on the back." I force lightness and humor into my voice, begin joking about my old shoes, start taking exaggeratedly tiny steps. He laughs and invites me onto his bike again. I decline again and then, when he continues talking, advise him that I need to just concentrate on where I’m going. Of course I say it like, "Bie, let me just focus before I fall again."
He bids me farewell and coasts off. I breathe a deep sigh, take off my slippery shoe, and walk the rest of the way with a bare foot.
In the story below from Madame Noire, a man says to the writer meanly, that she looks "like the type who like cheap sh*t.” On the surface, it seems like her encounter and mine were different.
But yet, they are the same. All the same. Black men’s callous disregard, lack of concern or awareness for how they treat Black women. They say they are just being nice. They tell us to smile. They tell us it’s not ‘harassment’. They roll up on us in the dark. They call us names when we rebuff their unwanted advances. They love to call us names. "Oh yeah… I’m seen you on TV. What’s ya name again? Oh you think ya too famous to speak? Or are you just a (you know what’s coming) Bitch?!"
So we force politeness when we want to say, stop. We tell them our names even though we don’t give a fuck if you don’t know our names and actually, we prefer it that way. We keep hoping that, even though the greatest threat to Black women is Black men, even though they make us sad and afraid, that as the author writes, ‘they’ll start start doing and being as good to us as we are to them."
Woosah. In the meantime, I’ll put my best running shoes on. ps. Read more on the subject HERE and HERE. And, if you wish, share your own experience in the comments.
