Raw Drip

Are you special?  Are you a toothless, guy in your late 70’s?  Do you speak with a unidentifiable thick foreign accent and say things to passing women such as, “Lemme muk loove to you een my ‘ammock, pretty leedy!”  Are you a guy with stomach-churning B.O. and open sores on your arms?  Well, then – I am the woman for you!

It could be my 6ft tall Amazon-woman build or my laid-back nature that makes me bait for the strange, but all my life, the odd-ball guys (oh, and one girl) in school, on the job and everywhere in between have found me utterly irresistible.  I’d be flattered if I weren’t so repulsed by my fan base.  An old acquaintance of mine and Dick’s – a 5ft tall Chinese-Polynesian man with a fondness for computers, ballroom dancing and butch women - once described my impressive abilities to appeal to weirdos as a mathematical term – he said I was a strange attractor.  Dick loved this description and has used it to describe me ever since. 

How does one know if they’re strange attractor?  Look around you.  In my case, there are so many strange people around me that I’m forced to assume that I’m just strange, myself.  And, as one of the strange, maybe I give off a freak-vibe, undetectable to normal people, like those high-pitched sounds only a dog can hear?  Maybe my silent signal says, “Hey, I’m weird like you. Let’s get together”? 

I’m strange – we all are to a certain extent - but not so strange that I can’t spot other people’s weirdness and recognize that it’s way out of normal tolerances.  So rather than it being a case of sending out silent signals to my freaky peeps, it’s probably my friendliness that gets me into trouble; my willingness to talk to people accounts for most of my strange encounters. 

Like the time I was out shopping in NYC for my wedding with a visiting girlfriend.  Standing at the corner of 34th & 6th Avenue, a glassy-eyed man walked up and asked me if I knew where there was a Burger King.  Before I go on with this story, I have to acknowledge that most people know better – they know when you’re in New York City that you don’t chat with strangers on the street.  Heck, you don’t even look people in the eye.  But no, these facts never phased me and certainly didn’t curtail my desire to help the poor guy find a Burger King.  Back to my story… 

As I was giving him directions, he began to scream obscenities at me, “F’ing bitch, whore of a woman – all I want is a god-damned Diet Coke? Jesus Christ, why won’t you get me a Diet Coke? 

I replied back (Yes. I know, I know – I’m stupid…), “I’m trying to help you find a Burger King, sir. You never mentioned wanting a Diet Coke until…” 

“Are you nuts?  Stop talking to him!”, my girlfriend said as she wisely grabbed my arm and drug me across 6th Avenue traffic to get away from the raving lunatic still standing on the corner (still standing there DESPITE my very clear directions to the closest Burger King, I might add…). 

Thankfully for me, I have good friends around to save me from myself. 

My strange attractor gift may also have something to do with me being a good listener.  Often, the strange will offer up their bizarre opinions about random crap without any prompting from me, converting an otherwise ordinary situation, into a strange encounter of the worst kind.  

For instance, there was the time I was taking a cab to my OB/GYN and the overly friendly cabbie complimented me on my appearance saying that I was a “nice woman” and “very beautiful”.  Then, as we were stopped in traffic, he turned around to face me.  I instinctively sunk back into my seat and reached for the door handle.  With a frighteningly lecherous gaze he launched into a rant against Hillary Clinton, defending Bill’s affair with Monica Lewinsky as necessary to keep him from going insane from too much baby-batter on the brain. 

“Hillary, she don’t keep her husband satisfied, so poor Bill has to turn to a nice woman to take care of him.  If he don’t do that, then the entire country will be risky, cuz’ we men we can go crazy, you know?  Monica, now that’s a good American girl – round, pretty face and wanting to please the man.  She doing her patriot duty!  Hillary, you know, she like ice cube.  No man wants ice cube sitting on his lap, you know?”

Just as quickly as the diatribe began, it ended up with a bizarre pick-up line, “Hey baby, you a nice girl.  Would you like to meet me for dinner in Queens sometime?  I love the pretty American girl like you – nice girl like Monica.” 

Gee, let me think – uh, no thanks!  At least I didn’t need a friend to save me from this situation.

I could go on, but what’s the point – you get the idea.   The frizzy-haired guy who molested me on the downtown 6 train on a Friday evening, the homeless guy who chased me through Madison Square Park (with what I thought was a brick…), the toothless geezer in Vegas who watched me throw up in the trash can and then asked me out for dinner - they’re all strange and they’re all attracted to me.  I suppose there’s not much I can do about it.  I can’t stop being me and I think my family probably wouldn’t have me any other way – after all, I’m very entertaining.