August 2007 archives

The other night, as I made my way from the el stop at Grand to the W Lakeshore to meet up with Shauna, I was followed by a very tall, very scary looking man.

I noticed him as I passed by him. He was burly, skin ravaged by sun and blonde hair scraggly and long. His clothes - a bright orange sweatshirt and white, denim shorts - looked as though they'd seen better days, probably 15 years ago. He looked me up and down and gave me a smarmy smile, then sucked in a bit of air, but it wasn't to me. He never made eye contact with me. He did not register that I noticed him. He didn't bother with my face. To men like that, eye contact would make me more than a body he's encountering. It would make me a person.

"This guy is about to follow me," I thought. One quick turn of my head later, I saw him move toward me. It was light out, the streets were crowded, but out my iPod buds came and I quickened my step to join a group of tourists - a mom, a dad, a daughter, a son or two - and stayed close by them in the hopes he'd give up his pursuit.

He didn't. He was aggressive, crossing streets with me until finally my short legs were able to out pace his long ones and I think he just gave up. In truth, there wasn't much time that passed, but the blocks are long and you have to really want to get to a person and go to the trouble.

I am not a paranoid. I've lived here almost a decade now; I know the difference between someone who wants to approach you for money or food and someone who is looking to do you bodily harm. I try to not take the time to ascertain about either as my personal well-being always trumps the feelings of some stranger on the street. I've been attacked before. In 2003, as I walked across my own street, with my ex-husband at my side. I would like to say that situations such as this one frighten me and scare me out of the city, but I can't. It doesn't. This is the price you pay for living in a place like Chicago. And the benefits for me outweigh these rare moments where some fucked up guy with a disturbed sense of entitlement thinks it's OK to follow me in the hopes of ... I don't know. Something.

It isn't that I don't get scared. I do. I clutch my purse and steel myself. If it's the case, I force myself to forget that my feet hurt, or my head, or whatever, and push on through until I am some place safe. I make note of where I am. I try and ignore the streams of adrenaline making their way to my stomach, causing it to lift and churn and spin. I get scared - I just don't let it rule my life here and do what I can to protect myself.

But nothing is foolproof. Four women have been attacked in Chicago, just a stone's throw from where I live, and the attacks seem to be related. There are, of course, the tired cries of those who bemoan the attention these attacks receive considering how many women are sexually assaulted all over the city. It's not that I don't agree with such statements but I don't live in those neighborhoods. I live here, as do the the majority of my friends, and when we have some sexual predator going after women in our neighborhood, it's news as far as I'm concerned.

But that's not the most fundamental reason I think it's incredibly newsworthy. Not at all.

There is a horrible, dangerous, naive assumption that my neighborhood - with it's $1 million homes and fancy restaurants and designer boutiques - is somehow safer. That somehow by virtue of all of the designer bikes and handbags, the couture, the pretty people, that we are somehow safer and protected from the dangers that go hand-in-hand with living in this city. And while I'm certainly not suggesting that any person ever asks to be a victim of a crime, there are enough people who move here, straight outta college, and think it's simply a place for the frat party to continue, but with better furniture and nicer cars.

We see it all of the time. Once the The Boy and I were having dinner with some friends of ours, at a sidewalk cafe, when we noticed a very young, intoxicated girl sitting, literally, on the curb, at the corner of Roscoe and Damen. ALONE. Her legs were dangling into the gutter and she could barely sit up straight. I ran from our table to her, worried mostly that any car coming around the corner would nail her. She slurred her words and immediately told me a tale of a party she'd just left, where she'd been drinking all day, because she couldn't handle seeing her roommate's brother's girlfriend because he really loved her and it was too much and ... you get the idea.

She'd left the party a half-hour before, and no one came after her. So I stayed with her until she got a hold of someone to come pick her up. She hugged me a lot. Her friends arrived and thanked me profusely.

Let me be clear: no woman or man ever "asks" for "it." But I see too many people putting themselves in danger because they assume there is no danger to be had. A quick glance of the very awesome Adrian Holovaty's chicagocrime.org will show you otherwise. It's my hope they'll stop thinking this way before something happens to them.

Posted by Erin at 11:04 AM | | filed under: Chicago