Do I Flatter Myself?

Folks are still trying to get their kicks on Route 66...or something like it.

I'm pretty sure a guy tried to pick me up (wait, is that the right phrase when traveling by car?) at a gas station just outside of  Flagstaff, AZ. He pulled up to the pump right beside me, although I didn't notice him until he said, "Hey, you come from Kentucky?"

I was fueling the car and since the gas pump didn't have one of those little stopper things on the handle I had to stand there in the wind and the cold while the tank filled. So I was already a little unhappy but I smiled and said, "Yep, sure am." (For those of you not from The Bluegrass State, allow me to translate: "Yes.") Then he asked where I was going, which immediately sent up my Freak Radar.

"California," I said.

He said he had just come from Kentucky, too, which surprised me since he didn't seem, well, Kentuckian. But I said, "Really?" He said he had driven all the way (um, major red flag there because he's either lying or hopped up on meth) and he was headed to Phoenix.

Then he started groaning about how tired he was and how much farther he had to go. And how much farther I had to go to get to California. As if we might commiserate on our mutual fatigue -- and, what, decide to take a room together at a friendly inn?

Now when I lived in New York City, some guy in a business suit on the 1/9 caught my eye by smiling at me and I smiled back (give me a break, I was new to the city). Then he ever so slightly glanced from me to the doors of the train and then back at me. I didn't quite get what he was doing (give me a break, I was new to the city), so he motioned again with his eyes. THEN I caught on (give me a little credit, I wasn't THAT new).  I must have looked like a deer in headlights and since he was just apparently a guy seeking to fulfill a fetish and not Ted Bundy, he got off the train at the next stop. I later read in a women's magazine that there are people who ride the NYC trains with the sole objective of picking someone up for a tryst. Eeeyuuuu! But who am I to judge?

My gut tells me, however, that this guy was looking for an easy mark. I wasn't it. Not only am I naturally cautious, I took one of those self-defense classes where you beat the living daylights out of a guy in an ultra-padded suit. I also used to be a crime reporter. And I wrote a dating colum for a while. If you think on it, you'll see the connection.

Anyway I handled it very well, if I do say so myself, with just the right mix of friendly attention and firm disinterest. I let him ramble on, repeating himself about how tired he was, and after about a minute I said evenly, "Good luck with that."

Allow me to translate this message for various groups of readers:

Kentucky: Back the f*** up, motherf****r!!

California: Wow. Really.

New York: HEY! Move it along, a**hole!

My loved ones in the yoga community: "Don't be so sweet that people want to eat you up or so bitter that they want to spit you out." (words of wisdom from Yogi Bhajan, Kundalini yoga master)

Anyone working 12 steps: You know, everyone is doing the best they can. Peace out.

Before I could even put the gas cap back on, he jumped in his car and sped off. He might have been a serial killer, he might have hoped for a little Interstate Nookie, or maybe he was just a very stupid man (because it's just a bad idea to approach a single woman traveling that way). Whatever he wanted, he was wasting his time with me. Now just in case he was some poor dude who was tired: good luck and Godspeed.

(P.S. If you are female and you have never read "The Gift of Fear," by Gavin DeBecker, do that soon.)