Picking up from yesterday –
For me, one of the hardest parts was that I’ve completely avoided his neighborhood (and for the most part, his whole borough, even).
I avoided school and the area the school was in until he was gone from there.
I even try to avoid walking by his office building when that’s possible (even though it’s in sort of a busy and convenient area of town, I try to go around it if I can; sometimes that’s not plausible, but I’m still cognizant of it).
So, for the most part, I try to avoid areas I think I even might see him. (There’s one main one I can’t totally avoid, being that I live in Times Square and he loves theater and goes to a bunch of shows. So, I can’t avoid my own neighborhood completely. But even that one I used to sort of avoid as much as I could, uberring nearly everywhere… So, basically just going from my building door to a car door and back over and over.)
But anyway.
Even though I know people can go anywhere, for some reason, I never expected to see him on the walk home from my new office (when I was passing by very close to where my old office [for a TruTv show] was!).
If I’d seen someone from that job, that wouldn’t have been surprising. But to see sexual assault guy there? What on earth? Why?
I know he can go wherever he wants. And I assume he has no idea where I work. But nonetheless, it just sort of felt like, “this specific area is my space! What are you doing here?”
[I know a whole space of New York does not belong to me. But you get what I’m righteously, indignantly saying, right?]
Part of me wanted to go up to the girl he was with and very, oh so very calmly say, “Please be careful. This man’s a dangerous serial sexual assaulter.” Another (albeit much tinier, but also much (crazier? pettier?) part kinda wanted to make a scene. Buuuut obviously I didn’t reeeeeally want to do that. Part of me wanted to be like, “Oh hi. Crazy running into you here” – just a cordial thing you might do if you saw an acquaintance on the street, to try to be like, [subtext] “You don’t scare me! I’m out living!”
But I don’t want to talk to him. He’s the master of making you feel terrible about yourself with one little comment. He is perfect at twisting word knives. I don’t want some kind of weird negging backhanded non-compliment that hurts. I don’t want to interact with him. I don’t wanna look in his eyes or have any more nightmares.
Ultimately, he turned to go more downtown and I was walking up. So, after we each got to the end of the small street we were walking on, we went in opposite directions.
As I walked, I thought I saw a random pedestrian look at me weird (as though they saw on my face that I’d seen a ghost or something), but I kinda had. And I’m pretty certain all the blood had drained from my face.
Maybe I just felt insecure and thought a random pedestrian person was looking at me who maybe wasn’t. Who knows.
All I know, is I was SHOOK about seeing sexual assault guy out and about.
The end.
[This is a post from the sexual assault series.]