I was kidnapped once. Well, truth be told, it was really more of an abduction than an actual kidnapping. But what the hell, kidnapping, abduction...it's all scary when somebody's got a gun to your head, right? I would assume it would be, because when I was abducted, I never actually saw a gun and I was still scared to death. I was scared because the presence of the gun was strongly implied shortly after my assailant grabbed me by the arm and told me that the coffee shop was closed...
Maybe I should start at the beginning. It was midnight, mid-September, 1994. I was sitting at my computer when I heard a loud car crash down the street. I decided I would step out of my apartment to go check things out. It was a very busy intersection near a college, so even though it was midnight, it wasn't like I was in any position to be a first responder. I was gonna get my gawk on, maybe scope the gathering mob for some college girls, that kind of thing. Plus, the mean season was coming; there wouldn't be many more balmy nights like this to go out for a leisurely walk.
I should also mention I was really stoned, but I say that only for context, and with no fear of self-incrimination; I'm pretty sure it was second-hand smoke from the upstairs apartment.
So anyway, there I was, walkin' reeaalll slowwww. As I got closer to the scene of the accident, I saw a really large car that appeared to be waiting inside the roadside bus stop, which was all busted up. There were a few people walking around, but there didn’t seem to be any real urgency or activity up ahead. I began to wonder if there had been anyone in the bus stop, when suddenly I was confronted with a thick, shortish man who smelled BAD, and seemed to be talking to me.
"Excuse me?" I said. He had said something to me that I didn't catch; the guy pointed his finger at me, got real pissed off and said, "I asked you where you were going." Right away, I started to perk up, because I could tell something very bad and weird was about to happen.
I didn't know what to say. Instinctually, I knew it would be a mistake to say that I was going down to look at this crash. I was starting to get paranoid that this guy saw me come out of my apartment, and he knew that I was just going down there to gawk. So instead of telling him that I was (slowly) going down there to see if anybody needed help, I instead gestured over to the coffee shop on the corner.
"I'm going to the coffee shop", I said, hopefully.
"Oh yeah?" he said, not missing a beat, "Coffee shop's closed". And as I squinted at the shop, I realized that he was right. As the situational dominos starting tumbling in my brain, he grabbed my arm hard, got close to my face, and said:
"I think you were going down there to tell them about my accident. Well I'm not going back to prison for you or anybody. See this gun?" And with that, he hiked up his shirt with his free hand to show me something wrapped in a red bandana, tucked in his waistband. He tightened his grip on my arm and said, "You and me are going for a walk."
Ten seconds with a stranger can change your night so dramatically. There we were, turning an about face as my assailant forcefully walked back down the street, towards my apartment. The evening had taken a dramatic turn for the worst; I was scared to death, and it was clear that my assailant was even more impaired than I am. He was staggering badly, and his alcohol breath gave me my second contact-high of the night. My assailant was forceful, but seemed vulnerable, too. He confirmed as much when he told me "You’re going to help me get home."
We slowly walked past my apartment, and I remember looking at it, wondering if I would make it back inside. We had walked perhaps 30 steps at that point. He still had the iron grip on my arm. I was thinking pretty much exclusively about what he had in that red bandanna. Was it a gun? Was he a Blood? Was it an ice cream sandwich? God, do I wish he had an ice cream sandwich. All I knew was he had a red bandanna with something in it that he said was a gun, and he seemed to have just been involved in a serious traffic accident that he apparently can just walk away from without anybody even so much as bothering to notice, and he seems to really not want to go back to prison. I remember thinking, "What else can go wrong?"
Well, for starters, my assailant could have told me his name, so that I could positively ID him, and thus give him a motive for really hurting me. "My name is Tony", he slurred. Thank you for telling me your name, Tony. I think that's really going to add a new dimension to our relationship. Why don't you just go ahead and tell me about an alias or defining physical characteristic, so I can give the police the best description possible? "But my friends call me T", and with that, he pointed to the back of his shaved head, where he had a two-inch tall letter "T" tattooed. Perfect.
T's ("Can I call you T?") revelations about his name were startling to me, because his manner had changed instantly. T was no longer holding my arm; his tone had softened considerably. "I got four kids, and I can't get a job", he wailed. T began a stream of consciousness inventory of lifetime wrongs that he had either suffered or perpetrated. He began to lean on me; his leg, it seemed, got knocked around in his hit and run crash. T was reeling. I noticed he was pulling up lame, which was jarring to me in a Darwinian way. Deep inside, in the very far reaches of my primal being, I knew that I could capitalize on his physical weakness if it came to that.
But then my intellectual being joined the conversation, and told my instinctual side that kicking this guy in his bad knee in order to create a window for a getaway would be just the kind of thing that would make him want to shoot me. I mean, it's one thing to shoot a guy in the back as he's running away from you. But you take a pissed-off drunk guy with a gun, and you try to break his very injured knee, and suddenly shooting somebody seems like a great idea to him.
I immediately played through endless scenarios in my brain. Run. Kick him in the knee and run. Kick him in the knee, grab the gun, and run. Kick him in the knee, kick him in the nuts, and run. The plans quickly turned to the desperate, in search of an option where there wasn't a chance I would be shot. Distract him. Point at the sky, step on his foot when he looks up, and head-butt him when he looks down, and stick my fingers in his eyes. Every plan was foiled by the presence of the gun. The gun was trump. I took stock of the situation. Collectively, our faculties were declining. T probably outweighed me by 30 pounds despite an approximate height of 4'2". The gun. Sizing it up, I opted to employ a strategy I call Waiting For Something To Happen, while promising myself that I would look into the Run option if the opportunity presented itself. The Kick options were all still on the table, but only as the very last resort. I had a plan. Not a very good plan, but a plan nonetheless.
Does the Kick plan ever come to fruition? What does T really have inside the bandana? Click HERE for Part 2 of "T" to find out...
