Gus 1, DC Thugs 0

After spending a horrid first night in Washington DC sleeping on only a mattress like a homeless tramp, I awoke with great vigor locate and purchase bedding. I talked to some of the people in the Washington Center and determined that I would take the Metro to a mall that was apparently a short distance from the stop “Pentagon City,” which was a mere four stops on the blue line away from the Center.

And so, without incident, I made it to the mall, bought my super cool Tommy Hilfiger sale rack sheets, and began to make my way back, retracing my steps, fully aware of which side of the street to walk on so as to avoid the more vocal homeless people. Yuck.

The only problem was, this trip back found me laden with my purchases, and looking every bit the tourist/idiot/potential rape victim. I had sheets, a comforter, and egg crate and protein from GNC (because I’m gonna be huge). I was lugging all this stuff around and on the Metro and I must have looked pretty ridiculous.
I knew from my experience loading myself up with as many groceries as possible out of my mom’s minivan to bring into the house, that my ability to carry all of my stuff was tenuous. Nevertheless, I made my way to the correct Metro, found a seat, brought out Eggers' “How We Are Hungry,” and made ready for the ride back to the Center.

It wasn’t long before I felt eyes on me and I looked up and around, hoping to lock eye contact with a beautiful woman in a cool hat (or maybe a scarf), staring at me over the top of a magazine that was in some other language (maybe French), and desperately wanted to coo sweet nothings to me with her fantastic accent.
But such was not the case. My beautiful French woman was actually a portly Mexican man, unshaven with salt and pepper stubble and greasy, feathered (seriously) hair. His shameless leer was a bit shocking to me and I immediately looked away, but I could tell out of my peripheral vision that he was still sitting there, sharing like college kid on mushrooms.

I tried to shake off the threatened feeling that came over me, but all of a sudden my secret admirer and some buddy of his stood up (keep in mind that the train is moving and that a stop is not immediately coming up) and walked across the train to sit in the empty seat behind me. So there I am, with all my big bags of sheets and dietary supplements, and there is some guy behind me, breathing all hard and gross, at best wanting to have a bit of a fancy fling and at worst wanting to stab me to death and the work out a lot and sleep in discount designer sheets.

I freaked out and put my book away, and gathered up all my stuff and moved to a seat maybe fifteen feet away, where that guy and his buddy were not behind me but well within my field of vision. I gave myself one little second to look back at them and my slime-ball friend was again staring at me, but this time he looked really angry: his eyes were all big and crazy, like Al Pacino in the parts of his movies when he gets totally nuts (“Garbage bags!”), and he was resting his chin in his hands, his elbows on his knees, with his fingers covering his mouth (which was obscuring, I’m sure, his mouthing “It puts the lotion on it’s skin…”).

I decided it would be best for me to just look straight ahead (which happened to mean looking at a Metro map, to it wasn’t that weird) and hope that he wasn’t going to follow me off the train when I made it to my stop. I though about striking up a conversation with the old Jewish lady who was sitting near me, as a way to protect myself, you know, “safety in numbers,” but then I realized that an old Jewish lady wouldn’t really do me any good if I had to fight off these two guys, because these were probably the type of guys who wouldn’t care if they knocked her over in an effort to rob me. So I sat there patiently, clenching my teeth, and wishing, oh, wishing, that I had some kind of very intimidating weapon that I could pull out off a scabbard behind my back, or a utility belt around my waist, and just lay across my lap, or maybe fidget with it, toss it from hand to hand. A medieval mace would have been good, I could have pricked a finger on one of the four inch spikes coming out of it and turned to look at my chubby friend and mouthed “Ouch, that’s sharp.”

Thankfully, my stop came and I bolted off the train and just stared walking (in the wrong direction, as it turns out) while the train pulled away with my tormentors on board. As the train left, I caught sight of them still looking at me as they vanished from view. It was a very weird experience, but an experience I recount pretty often, every time someone asks me why I always carry a rusty, thirty-pound mace with four inch spikes wherever I go.