I should have realized it when I first saw the man peeing on the corner between my house and the park. I had bought a pretty upscale apartment in New York. Guys didn’t just go around peeing on the wall surrounding central park. I mean, so not cool. And his thing was out in the open for everyone to see. I just closed my window curtain and sighed. Things were gonna be awkward for me that day, but I didn’t think it would be a terrible day.
I was stepping around the morning rush of businessmen and women trying to get to their jobs on time in the subway car that morning when I heard an announcement over the speakers. The police were looking for a man with alleged illegal firearms on his person. The description sounded just like the odd man standing next to me holding onto the pole near the door. He was in a tan trench coat with a rather bumpy looking spot on his chest. I thought to myself: that could be a firearm. So I decided to start screaming my head off because I for one didn’t want to die on a subway car miles below the city. We were still moving though the dark of the tunnels, but I tried to claw my way past people to get to the other side of the car, away from the criminal in the tan trench coat. I tripped over a woman in high heels in such a way that we both fell over, me lying on top of her. Everyone glared down at me, and one man said, “If you were listening closely, you would have heard that the description was for a man in a black trench coat and a mole on his chin.” Angrily huffing, he turned away, and so did the other passengers.
Terribly embarrassed, I apologized profusely to the woman after managing to get up. The man I had screamed about was glaring out the window, his cheeks tinted red with a little furrow between his brows. I must have embarrassed him a great deal. To be accused of a crime one had not committed! And I hadn’t even done that! I’d just screamed. I was so embarrassed that I got off the subway when it wasn’t my stop and waited for another one.
When I finally stepped into the light of day, I was almost late to work, so I was rushing toward my office building in a tight gray pencil skirt that I knew I shouldn’t have worn, especially after the fiasco on the subway train.
Of course, as soon as I slipped into the revolving doors which were the only way in the building through the front at this time of day, so everyone was squeezing in as fast as they can, I got my skirt stuck on something. Being squished between two people in our little glass compartment, I wasn’t able to turn and see how to fix it, but with a tug I was able to start the doors turning again without making two commotions in one morning. That tug was a bad idea, however, as I learned later. I walked through the entire first floor to the elevators, and sat down at my desk on the 5th floor, no one telling me in the elevator, in the hallway, or anywhere that they could see everything with the huge new slit in the back of my skirt. I’m hoping no one noticed, but it seems implausible that the men who never noticed me were just finally noticing me today. I think there was a reason I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.
