This I Shamelessly Tell You

Scary Tales of the Relationship Kind, of the Otherworldly kind, and of the Political Kind

by Rajkhet Dirzhud-Rashid - October 2008
photo by Dr. Steve - Model: Krystal

The dark and rain has returned, and so along with everyone moping about the economy, I've been prone to moodiness of late. Still, not havng two quarters to rub together as I write this, my moping is more of the romantic kind, and my moodiness is more due to remininscing about my early days in Washington. Better days those were, actuallly.

So, in that vein, and because it's October - 'witchy time' I like to call it - I've also been thinking of a couple of 'otherworldly' incidents, as well as some of my more scary date encounters. Seems fitting to put them together, since this month has Halloween in it.

I remembered a particularly frightening 'date' as I was recounting the event to a current lover before 'getting busy' with him. I told him that one of the reasons I wasn't smoking pot (or drinking anymore) was because that in my heydey, I often made really bad choices. Like the time when I, having had more liquor than food (hey it kept me at a size seven for two years), decided to bring this also drunk guy back to my apartment. Within less than five minutes, he was on top of me, and had his hands around my throat (this was before my s/m days mind you, so it wasn't as fun as that might sound), and even through my drunken haze I realized I was about to be history.

So, with a lof Iof adrenaline - and self-preservation grit - I grabbed the guy by the seat of his pants and his collar and ran him from my bedroom through the apartment, and out the door. My poor roommates never knew a thing, and after the liquor and pot haze cleared the next day, I realized how close I'd come to being a statistic. Ah, but that didn't stop me from making similar bad choices later, and having another guy in my apartment after I moved to Seattle (the first story happened when I was a jaded nineteen year old in Houston, my hometown), who had sex with me, after wearing my resistance down. That was when I'd actually been sober for about two years. Bad choices, and bad patterns don't disappear with the absence of drinking and drugging my dear.

Ah, but I also promised to tell you stories about 'otherworldly' goings on.

One of my scariest memories happened shortly after I moved to Washington, and not having an apartment of my own, I had to stay with my ex and daughter. This wasn't as bad as that sounds, though working as a phone rep for a local theater and having to bus all the way from Seattle to Kent five nights a week, after nine, wasn't a dream come true either.

So, one night, on the way home, walking down the little bit of dirt that served as a sidewalk, I looked back to see this dark shape that covered the entire road behind me. Streetlights were flickering, and I was terrified of being in complete darkness with whatever it was. So I ran to my ex's apartment, hauling-ass like my life depended on it (and I thought that might be true at the time). I don't know what that mass was, and even though I've been on that road since, in a car driven by my brother, I've never had that experience again. Nor did I ever see the black goat with piercing, gold eyes that I saw walking down that same road one late Thanksgiving evening, on my way back from the 7-11 with the missing Cool Whip we needed for dinner. To this day though, I'm convinced there was something completely sinister on that road, and maybe it's still there, just waiting, who knows.

Ah, but to my mind, scarier than that, or seeing what my five year old mind was convinced was a werewolf, peeping around the corner of the bar in my childhood home (hey, there was a huge full moon that night) is the thought that Obama might actually slow his roll and bow to McCain's wussie call to 'put the voters before politics' and halt debates. Now that's scary, because we could end up with a broken down wreck, and his wackjob sidekick from Alaska (who shoots innocent animals from helicopters and brags about it!?) running the country deeper into the ground. That would be even scarier than hearing someone walk around in my living room when I know there wasn't anyone in the apartment but me and the cats.

This, I shamelessly tell you.