Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 27        a rape trap at the intersection of High and Third Streets
Previous chapter

Something happened to me over the next couple years and I moved back home with my mother. I can’t remember why I stopped working and let things go that way; maybe my later bouts with depression were the undiagnosed answer.

My truck stopped working. My friends finished their studies and were moving away; one had a position in Wisconsin and three others moved to California, and one got a job in Chicago. Everybody had some place to go and skills to sell, but I was unable to mount a plan. My latest girlfriend left too and I was terribly alone.

Living with my mother and sister and brother in the nut house was distressing. It was always so emotional you could practically bite the air. I stayed in the basement and slept late to avoid everybody, and usually left for a bike ride into town when I got up. No matter if it was raining. I couldn’t stay cooped up all day.

Later I discovered my sister was an alcoholic when she ‘lost it’ after mom died. Let me tell you, I never once saw alcohol being consumed at our house. I never saw any bottles or heard slurred speech or smelled liquor. Not once, and I’m fairly observant. Nor was alcohol kept anywhere inside the house that I knew about. Yet my sister said she drove home completely blacked-out practically every night. It’s a total mystery, and compounded incredibly because my sister had evidence that mom was also drinking heavily. Holy shit on a pancake, how could I not even have a hint that was going on? I never saw anybody drunk or drinking ever, but in retrospect, it does explain a lot.

Those couple years turned into a period of profound artwork for me, as my pencils began capturing the twisted situations I saw in life. I would draw pictures for a couple hours each night and then go for a 7 mile walk into town and back, always following the same route, just to burn off energy. Looking back, I must have had a powerful body.
 
Nobody follows the same routine impeccably, but I had to exercise long miles every day, and felt sick without it. I remember walking 7 miles in four degrees below zero one afternoon just to get out. A friend honked and waved that day. He was a good carpenter and a respectable man and I wonder what he’s doing today? I bet he’s got grandkids and a nice set of bookcases.

Out walking late one night on my usual route, I ran into a rape trap at the intersection of High and Third Streets. I saw this girl silhouetted and walking across the church parking lot off to my right … and immediately knew what it was. It was instinct. She wasn’t walking normal, there was something different about her gesture and manner … and peculiar that she was aware of me even though she hadn't looked at me and I was coming from a different direction on a very dark street.

Was that in my head? Hell no.
 
… but it had nothing to do with me, so I forgot about it and a half-block later rounded the corner and turned left on Third. I was mired in the mud of my life, and looking straight down when suddenly a woman’s shoes and cream trench coat popped into the viewfinder.

Startled, I lurched up to see the same blond woman I’d seen two years earlier when she and another police-fellow were at the record-store to examine me. Although I can’t tell you how I knew they were police, except to say they were out-of-place in that store, but I knew exactly what she was doing there that night; she was tailing behind the decoy. But like a donkey pushing a cart, I had no idea the target was stuck on my hatless head.

It was just a random thing the police do at two in the morning, wasn’t it? But in retrospect, it shows they had been following me enough to know my habits, and had worked to devise a plan with those exact angles. Pretty clever actually. Still I ignored the situation because the ferris-wheel was roiling my mind, so I side-stepped the yellow-coiffed lady and continued walking down the street minding my business.

It’s obvious why I would come under police suspicion, not just for my history of anti-social behavior, but because I wandered all hours of the day or night arguing aloud to myself, carrying out some crazy war between my shoes and a moonliner, and I was grossly prone to ill-tempered outbursts toward people.

I never counted my moments of vomitous public rage, instead I saw myself as warm-hearted and absolutely square … except a man is actually the sum of all his behavior, and not just his pleasant best. Unfortunately I had unfairly blocked my hours of mania while demanding that others see me as I saw myself.

Truth was, I never saw myself. My high school teachers were afraid of me, and now I was larger and dirtier and appeared less suited than ever for fitting into society.

For sure I was a public relations disaster, but where, when, how, why? …. I honest to god want to know … why was I targeted for a sex offense? Who was the complainant? Or was it simply every-woman feeling my red raw nerves scraping the wall … or maybe this action is part and parcel to law enforcement when they desperately want, but can’t find a substantive crime.
 
The near-complete list of my crimes has been tallied … with but two or three similar offenses unmentioned … an embarrassment of petty theft and vandalism that most would never dare inventory … yet nowhere appears a sexual deviate … unless of course the appetite for public non-conformity is of itself proof of such malfeasance.

I was reading Penthouse and jacking off. Dan the informer did the same, yet we both had conjugal relations with women, and I always had steady girlfriends … and not the bust-out brawling, twist-your-arm, revenge-fuck type relationships … they were close and caring bonds between two people.

Today we know a steady relationship with women guarantees nothing … because the same man who cuddles his life-love can also be a predator sated by attacking women. But this was not true of me by the largest stretch, and I had only experienced sexual predators in the newspaper, naively thinking sex deviates were not in my community. I guess this explodes on me the obvious fact that I didn’t understand people, but the police had yet more plans in store for me.

Chapter 28) Hit from behind by a drunk driver
Index of chapters