Maggie Kay
09-13-2007, 04:52 PM
Here is another adventure of your average transoman. My SO and I are taking a plotter to Santa Cruz CA for a depot repair. I use plotters in my business. After we dropped the plotter off at the repair shop, we stroll down the street to a nice coffee shop with an outdoor sitting area. Curiously, it was across the street from a Starbucks. Just as we came upon the entrance, I saw one of the other members of the Transexual support group that I went to last summer. You might remember that my SO asked me not to go back.
We had made eye contact but at a distance. We go into the shop and Jessie and friend come in also. She (Jessie was her name and is in her twenties) was dressed in a charcoal black tee shirt and dark navy jeans and is with a GG so I can see that she is in boy mode. I am in my usual long pony tail, earrings, big women's shirt, navy ladies slacks and a black leather ladies shoulder bag. We get our coffees and they are right behind us. I could hear her talking behind me as I ordered and I knew that it was really Jessie.
OK, this could get weird. What if Jessie wants to chat? If that happened my SO is going to be very uncomfortable. However, I was just dying to talk to Jessie. But if I did, she might be just as upset if she is not out to her friend. We go out to the outdoor sitting area and chose a table at the end of the section. It was a partitioned area so passers by couldn't walk through. The partition was a metal railing.
After a few minutes, Jessie and the GG come out with their coffees. Jessie looks at me knowingly and I look at her with as much of a smile as I could without causing a stir. She returns a pseudo smile and walks away. Oddly, I kept wishing that she would come back. I really wanted to chat but I knew that was not possible. The odds of meeting were astronomical. We live 40 miles away and I go to Santa Cruz about once every two years. It was nice to see Jessie all the same.
However, the adventure was about to take a dark turn. I popped in my Ipod earbuds and started listening to an audiobook. I was listening to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It was getting to the final dramatic confrontation between Harry and Valdemort when I noticed that there was a man in his twenties glaring at me. He was dressed in sports clothes with a Chicago Cubs hat and team jersey. He had a cup of coffee but instead of going in the sitting area, he sat on the curb out on the street.
Every few minutes he would walk back and forth past our table but on the sidewalk and then sit down again and glare at me. He became more an more agitated until finally he said something to me. I could not hear what he said because of the IPod and didn't look at him directly. He was only a few feet away and now walking faster and faster like a big cat in a cage ready to devour a victim. My SO and I looked at each other and I said, "We are in trouble".
She had been knitting, had her back turned to him and didn't realize what was going on. I said that there was this man acting strangely and that he said something to me. She said she heard him mutter some unintelligible words but one was crystal clear. "KILL".
We sat there as if nothing was wrong as he paced and paced past us. There were others on the street but we were the only people in the sitting area. We whispered "lets go into the coffee shop and wait there when he passes us again". She packed up her knitting and I put away my Ipod. Amazingly, he didn't return, instead of sitting down he just kept walking. We dashed into the coffee shop and prepared to leave by the rear entrance. At this, we found out why our stalker left. There in the coffee shop was a policeman getting a coffee. He had come in by the back entrance. The stalker would have seen him at the counter.
This story is rather odd in that Santa Cruz is a very diverse city. It is a local center of LBGT and there were gay men walking arm in arm on the street. Why this nut case threatened me is a total mystery. I did nothing to him and was not even trying to get his attention.
We had made eye contact but at a distance. We go into the shop and Jessie and friend come in also. She (Jessie was her name and is in her twenties) was dressed in a charcoal black tee shirt and dark navy jeans and is with a GG so I can see that she is in boy mode. I am in my usual long pony tail, earrings, big women's shirt, navy ladies slacks and a black leather ladies shoulder bag. We get our coffees and they are right behind us. I could hear her talking behind me as I ordered and I knew that it was really Jessie.
OK, this could get weird. What if Jessie wants to chat? If that happened my SO is going to be very uncomfortable. However, I was just dying to talk to Jessie. But if I did, she might be just as upset if she is not out to her friend. We go out to the outdoor sitting area and chose a table at the end of the section. It was a partitioned area so passers by couldn't walk through. The partition was a metal railing.
After a few minutes, Jessie and the GG come out with their coffees. Jessie looks at me knowingly and I look at her with as much of a smile as I could without causing a stir. She returns a pseudo smile and walks away. Oddly, I kept wishing that she would come back. I really wanted to chat but I knew that was not possible. The odds of meeting were astronomical. We live 40 miles away and I go to Santa Cruz about once every two years. It was nice to see Jessie all the same.
However, the adventure was about to take a dark turn. I popped in my Ipod earbuds and started listening to an audiobook. I was listening to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It was getting to the final dramatic confrontation between Harry and Valdemort when I noticed that there was a man in his twenties glaring at me. He was dressed in sports clothes with a Chicago Cubs hat and team jersey. He had a cup of coffee but instead of going in the sitting area, he sat on the curb out on the street.
Every few minutes he would walk back and forth past our table but on the sidewalk and then sit down again and glare at me. He became more an more agitated until finally he said something to me. I could not hear what he said because of the IPod and didn't look at him directly. He was only a few feet away and now walking faster and faster like a big cat in a cage ready to devour a victim. My SO and I looked at each other and I said, "We are in trouble".
She had been knitting, had her back turned to him and didn't realize what was going on. I said that there was this man acting strangely and that he said something to me. She said she heard him mutter some unintelligible words but one was crystal clear. "KILL".
We sat there as if nothing was wrong as he paced and paced past us. There were others on the street but we were the only people in the sitting area. We whispered "lets go into the coffee shop and wait there when he passes us again". She packed up her knitting and I put away my Ipod. Amazingly, he didn't return, instead of sitting down he just kept walking. We dashed into the coffee shop and prepared to leave by the rear entrance. At this, we found out why our stalker left. There in the coffee shop was a policeman getting a coffee. He had come in by the back entrance. The stalker would have seen him at the counter.
This story is rather odd in that Santa Cruz is a very diverse city. It is a local center of LBGT and there were gay men walking arm in arm on the street. Why this nut case threatened me is a total mystery. I did nothing to him and was not even trying to get his attention.