A gold grinning grill, still smelling like grilled cheese was 12 inches from my face.

Day 11

Yesterday I worked on a promo for BET. I was the minority yesterday, a white woman. I was talking to my friend and she told me that the facilitator that I have been working with, who is an older black woman, lives in fear, “ a scared black woman.” I don’t think about this ever, and that is privilege. I haven’t lived in that kind of fear ever, since I’m tall and strong I feel safe in most situations. Stories of scared women never resonated with me, even if I was scared, I pushed it down and became the protector of the group. When I’m really scared I freeze up like the myopic goats, the strangest defense mechanism, but (knock on wood) it has worked. I was in an abusive relationship for a couple years, and I survived it was by shutting down, letting her words like ghosts pass through me. I’m also very, very lucky. Luck that is uncanny and mysterious.

Feeling a presence over me, I opened my eyes to gold. As they opened wider, gold, metal…a mouth? ..teeth? came into focus. A gold grinning grill still smelling like grilled cheese was 12 inches from my face. It sounds like a nursery rhyme now, but it wasn’t. I jolted up and back crabbed my way to the wall as he started to laugh.

“What the fuck are doing here?”

He moved away from me, the way someone does to not scare an animal, making himself smaller and creating more distance between us, slowly extending his hand.

“I thought this is what you wanted”

“For you to be in my room, watching me sleep? Get the fuck out!”

“Shiiiit” he sucked his teeth and backed out of the room.

As soon as he had cleared the doorframe, I jumped up slammed the door, pressed my ear, straining to hear him walk down the steps and out into the street. He didn’t leave right away. I heard him walking around, gathering his things, then finally down the stairs.

I want to tell you that he broke in, that he was a stranger, but the thing is my roommate and I met him on the street when we were looking to score cocaine. He wasn’t a dealer, but he knew a couple of people, so drunkenly, we followed him around the projects with no luck. Eventually we gave up, getting hungry as the booze wore off. I wanted a grilled cheese, and since looking for drugs together forms a quick bond, we invited the stranger back to our apartment to eat with us.

We got more drunk, ate grilled cheese sandwiches and I went to bed. I found out the next day that my roommate stayed up not much longer, then told him to leave. She thought he did, but instead had come back into the house while we were sleeping, stole her Nikon, then came into my room and watched me sleep. And that was that. This story could end way worse, but as I said, I’m very, very lucky.