So last night I’m coming out to my car at 2:20am. I’m parked on a main street, half a block down the sidewalk from the door to the jam space.
A few feet away from my car I see a guy leaned up in the doorway of another studio, doesn’t seem to be smoking but maybe nodded off? Back to me, head against the door jamb.
Something about him doesn’t sit well, for some reason it jumps out at me that he’s not wearing a jacket, just a black t-shirt, dark or black jeans, and black sneakers. It’s warming up but still. All the hipsters in this hood are still wearing toques and jackets, and he’s clearly not merely one of my fellow noisemakers out for a smoke break.
Also, short dark hair, goatee or other slight facial hair (but not one of those over-manicured beards the hipsters wear), beady eyes.
Anyway, he seems to not be paying attention and possibly out of it, but my gut says don’t wrestle my guitar into the back seat as usual, dump it in the trunk instead, because I don’t want to turn my back to this guy.
And I do, trying to be quiet but of course the trunk makes noise as it shuts. He seems to startle a bit, and I quickly hop in the driver’s seat.
Suddenly I notice he’s beside my car, on the driver’s side and trying to get into the backseat via the rear driver’s side door.
I yell “Fuck off, I ain’t a cab!” But he’s still trying to open that door.
Never have I been gladder for that feature of modern electric door locks whereby I hit the unlock button once to unlock only the driver’s door and the rest stay locked unless I hit it twice in rapid succession. Because that means he can’t get in.
Still hollering “fuck off!” I slam it into gear and pull off, douchebag still trying to open the door, and I whip around the block as I get my seatbelt on.
As I round the block, I look over and and he’s standing on the sidewalk still.
And it bothers me as I drive home and debate if I should call the cops, in fact I can’t sleep til well after 7am, but I don’t call in to report it.
I do post about it on Facebook, asking whether people think this is just a drunk-ass retard thinking I must be a cabbie or whether it’s something more sinister.
The cabbie thing, well, my car is a red 4 door sedan which is a common cab around here, and it’s pretty common as I drive home late at night that drunk idiots will wave at me from the sidewalk trying to hail me, then flip me off as I speed by.
But the other nags at me. And all night I tell myself this is because my father was telling me there’s some serial rapist who just got paroled on the loose in Vancouver, and I hate that sort of shit because I make a point of not living in fear of shadows (despite the womens’ studies types’ screeching, I have a far better chance of being propositioned by a rock star—although thus far none of the ones I’d say yes to have presented themselves—than falling victim to an honest-to-goodness serial rapist). And last evening as we had dinner there was some story on Global TV News about that guy, and so at 6am curiosity gets the better of me and I look it up.
Fucking Hell, he does look kinda like the guy who tried to get into my car, but then don’t we all think all creeps have beady eyes like that?
And looking at it again just now to post the link, they look vaguely similar but I don’t think it’s the same guy. And anyway, if this one’s in a halfway house, then at 2:20am he’d be in under curfew, so it’s presumably a different creep.
Anyway, my friends tell me I should report the sonofabitch to the cops. One mentions a guy carjacked a woman not too long ago somewhere here in Vancouver. So, eventually around 6pm, I do as I grudgingly accept that my gut is right and this ain’t just a drunk ‘tard trying to get a cab ride home. And I call the Vancouver Police non-emergency line to report it.
I give my story, a few times till I think the clerk has my info right. She tells me if I see him again to call 911, and she asks why I didn’t report it right away.
I don’t have an answer for that, or at least not one I’m willing to say to the cops. Which is to say, lots of ne’erdowells, thugs, and criminals in one side of my family, and as much as my parents tried to insulate us against them, methinks I still have a good dose of the ol’ “don’t call the fucking cops for nothin’… you deal with shit on your own” attitude.
I think outside of getting pulled over for speeding a couple times, I’ve basically spoken to the cops twice before today: a couple months back to report an abandoned stolen vehicle left in our parking lot, and once in 1998 when we had a home invasion burglary. Oh, and there was the time in 2002 I got pickpocketed leaving the Orpheum after a Tea Party show where the retards decide to hand out something or other at the end so it took forever to escape the aisles and everyone was packed in like sardines making the thieves’ job very easy, and I had to have a police report number for ID replacement or some such reason. But that’s still only 3 times in my 35 years.
I have nothing against cops, I just don’t really think of involving them when things turn to shit unless it’s absolutely necessary.
But anyway, I told the clerk I wasn’t sure what to make of the incident except the consensus among my friends was that I should call and report the incident. Which is also true.
Anyway, as I think about it, there’s a few other things that I guess set off my spidey senses:
1. The jam space building has exterior gates that clang like a motherfucker and can be heard a good block away. If it’s dead quiet, they will startle the shit out of you. So, the fact that one of those gates slammed behind me as I exited puts the lie to the “sleeping upright in a doorway” posture. No fucking way asshat could have dozed through that clamour and yet been startled awake by the much quieter thunk of my trunk closing. He was faking.
2. If he wanted a cab, this is at a fairly major intersection and you can’t go 2 minutes, even at that time of night, without at least a couple of Yellow Cabs whizzing by. So… wouldn’t he have waved one of them down if that was his goal? No need to hang around a few feet away from the car that isn’t a cab (and if it was, wouldn’t it have a light on the roof and a meter on the dash? Über hasn’t really taken off here in Vancouver like it has in LA and NYC, so cabs are still noticeably cabs.)
3. The driver’s side door thing. Everyone I’ve ever seen hopping into a cab gets in on the passenger side because it’s closer to the sidewalk. Maybe if you have 3 people hopping in the cab one walks around to the driver’s side to get in the rear, but even then I think I usually see everyone get in the passenger side and slide over.
4a. If it was some idiot junkie or homeless guy thinking he’d guilt a girl into giving him a ride or anything else, fat chance. I’d think that would be far too risky as most girls would shriek and call the cops immediately. And there’s lots of crackheads around here but they mostly collect cans and bottles and they tend to bolt if you come near them, not approach your car. Which is to say that crackheads tend to understand that one doesn’t approach lone females unless you want a world of hassle. Or you ask her for spare change and get the fuck out.
4b. Dude didn’t look homeless. And he didn’t look like a junkie either. And yeah, I’ve been approached by crackheads and junkies looking for change, they don’t telegraph like this guy did. Gut feeling, and it reminded me of something Rave once said when telling the guys from Raggedy Angry about “Zombietown” at Main and Hastings when he sensed I was spooked by them. “Aw, zombies won’t hurt ya. They’ll just steal anything that’s not bolted down and then they run away, but they won’t hurt ya.” This guy didn’t come across like a zombie.
At the same time, I don’t think it was a targeted thing even though I have a few obsessed orbiters and at least two who were for a while trying to turn stalker (think my brother must have gone and grabbed one guy by the throat and laid out the law as he’s stayed the fuck away for the last year or so, and the other is chasing a ghost because who he thinks I am and what he thinks I do and where he thinks I hang out has no connection to reality). First of all, one would think in that case douchebag would have tried to say something, if only a “hey, maQLu!” Or “hey, Pyra!”
And while I had been out for a run earlier in the night, that doesn’t make sense as no one was following me, and he’d be banking on that happening to be the car the jogging girl has and that I wouldn’t have left out the back earlier (or come out with some ‘roided up thug boyfriend who might beat him to a bloody pulp).
So douchebag must have been hanging around for whoever had that car. If all he wanted was the car, wouldn’t he have just busted into it and taken it? Not sure if he knew the car was owned by a female, though… Except I think I have some sparkly scarf on the backseat which might give it away, shit… though one supposes a ‘roided up thug might still have that on his backseat if his girlfriend left it there after their last romp. Still, guess I should clean the crap out of my car to leave no clues. Maybe leave an empty ammo box on the rear seat and copies of Muscle & Fitness and a couple hunting magazines?
Anyway, just another day in so-called paradise. Wish I lived in Texas and had a .45, someone would be singing soprano from this day forth.
