Two Can Play at This Game But Only One, Of Course, Shall Win.

Last night, at quarter after midnight, a large, tattooed man began pounding on my door with such violent punctuation that the entire frame shook.

I should say that I do not know this man.

I've never met him.

But I know that he owns the kind of truck one would need a stepladder to get into.  It is black with tinted windows and is the kind of truck that is always spotless and shining.  The first time I saw it, I criticized myself for thinking "That looks like a  douchebag's truck" - although I admit it was more in critique of the mixed feelings I've always had about the term 'douchebag', and less about the stereotyping of this particular type of truck's owners.

The door frame was moving in and out and in again in rhythm with every pound of the door.  I'm not stupid, I remember thinking,  I'm not going to unlock the fucking door.

The thing about these moments, when you are caught at such a late hour in a t-shirt and panties lit only by the flickering of the image of the program you are watching, is that the abruptness of the first pound on the door is that much more unnerving.  Much more vulnerable than if you were clothed, on the street, in broad daylight and saw it coming.  In moments like these,  you get a taste of iron in your mouth in anticipation of the blood that will fill it after you are punched in the face by an angry stranger.  Your heart drops straight to your asshole and burns there while you formulate a plan to get away.

I should say that what he was about to yell at me about, or rather, the problem that he had with me, was valid. 

It is valid. 

I'm still not going to unlock the door.

Quick thinking in moments like these, while your body refuses to move is a bit difficult, but you manage.  Until one day, you don't.  Fortunate for me, yesterday wasn't the day that I didn't manage.

The person who opened the door to stop the pounding was not me.

The person who opened the door was smart enough to hold the door at an angle that would give the impression of open-but-guarded-because-it-is, afterall-after-midnight, but also cut his field of vision off from seeing me, there, planning.

Even with my heart pounding, I felt fleetingly victorious that I, physically, did not have to hide:  I lay there on the couch.  And while I pressed back into the couch with my spine, I also lifted my chin into the air to prove, to myself, that I was not hiding.

He may find me soon, but by then he will be too late.


k.