When a flasher exposed himself to Thao Nguyen last summer, she snapped a picture with her camera phone to help the NYPD find the perverted perpetrator. The night I met Tatts in the subway, I wish I’d thought to put my phone’s voice memo function to use.
In pre-dawn hours on a balmy Friday that was rapidly becoming Saturday. I was still wearing the tank top and baggy cutoffs I’d thrown on Friday afternoon. Looking back, I was blatantly ignoring my father’s repeated warnings against walking around the city alone and was probably showing a little too much skin for his taste. Still, I felt more like a hipster camp counselor than a sex goddess, so I figured I was safe.
Sweat was gathering on my back as I descended into the Columbus circle station to wait for the D downtown, and my long brown hair clung to my sun burnt shoulders. I cursed my Irish heritage and picked at my peeling skin to pass the time.
“Who you lookin’ sexy for tonight?” I looked up and met the dark eyes of a young black man, then met the pair of black tears tattooed underneath his right eye. Ever since I turned fourteen and added some tits and ass to my skinny white girl frame, I have attracted a disproportionate number of thugs.Tatts was no exception. In his oversized t-shirt and unbent Yankees hat—still sporting its retailer’s sticker—Tatts promised a repetition of every awkward interracial encounter I’d had since puberty. But I decided to be amiable and, more importantly, I opted to not be racist.
“Boyfriend,” I giggled, and looked away. I was alone, I was single, and my iPod was dead so I didn’t mind suffering through a compliment or two while I waited.
While the boyfriend line was a lie, I was not looking to go home with a stranger who was sporting prison tattoos. While five years with boobs and two years at Yale had taught me that nothing wards off would-be suitors like wit and eloquence, Tatts made me nervous and I was off my game. Instead, I reverted back to an air-headed, hair-twirling persona that invented boyfriends at the slightest provocation.
“He treat you right? He appreciates you, this boyfriend?” Tatts intruded again. Couldn’t he tell that I was pretending to not be sure where I was going so that I would have an excuse not to stand next to him anymore? I suspected he was on to my web of lies, but I told myself that Tatts was just a good Samaritan who thought I was sexy and was, therefore, genuinely concerned for my well being.
“Because if he don’t, there’s plenty of guys around here who would appreciate that,” he looked me up and down, his tattooed eyes stopping strategically to illustrate his appreciation. As a little voice inside—which sounded distinctly like my father’s—bellowed, “Don’t talk to strangers” I scanned the platform for all the other guys Tatts had claimed were eager to appreciate me, hoping to find one who was more eligible than my criminal companion.
I’ve learned that, in these situations, you can usually make eye contact with the thirty-to-fifty-year-old businessman who has been observing your plight and find a sense of security—and maybe a cocktail at the Mandarin Oriental. And rich men in suits who want to fuck me help quiet the voice inside my head—again, my father’s—that says I’ll never make any money as a writer.
Unfortunately, this time it seemed my knight in shining Armani had stayed late crunching numbers at the office or was at home with his wife and kids. Instead, my searching gaze only found the backs of heads and blank stares, so once again I was on my own.
Then, Tatts—perhaps because he had noticed my roaming eyes—laid down his trump card. He made clear exactly what he had to offer, what it was that set him apart from all the other potential me-appreciators. “That boyfriend of yours, he got the turkey drumstick? I bet he don’t got the turkey drumstick like I got.”
With that, I made one last glance at the tears huddled permanently below his eye and hustled down the platform, casting off any class guilt that said Tatts had come from a bad neighborhood and was just trying to be nice.
As I tried to walk without shaking my ass, I wondered what in God’s name Tatts was talking about. I thought we’d been having one of those nice, familiar, late night moments where he’d tell me I was beautiful and that I deserved better and then let me strut off feeling good while he took one last appreciative glance. Instead, he served up a “turkey drumstick.”
Did he mean that it was large and bulbous on one end and narrow and bony on the other? (And, furthermore, did that mean Tatts’ drumstick was diseased?)
Did he want me to bite it or just baste it?
Would it be boneless? Skinless?
Mostly I wondered what made Tatts think that I was the sort of girl who would thrill at the possibility of a stranger’s proffered drumstick. Did I emanate loneliness? Singleness? A middle class childhood chock full of repressed sexual desire? The long-awaited D finally arrived but after I sat down, I looked up to once again find Tatts’ decorated eyes locked once more on my sweaty cleavage.
As I rummaged idly through my bag and prepared my cell phone for a panick 911 call, I realized what had drawn Tatts to me in the first place, what made him think I was game for a taste of his drumstick. He could hear my father’s voice, the one that had, only moments ago, warned against strangers and impractical career paths. Tatts had sensed latent rebellion and knew there was nothing that would piss Daddy off more than bringing home an inner city black guy with facial tattoos and a criminal record. And he was right.
