To the shady character on the bench fucking up my experience: I know you didn’t mean to. You’re simply there, doing what you do. Which is being inherently shady. It isn’t just that you look that way, it’s how you comport yourself. The aura you radiate. Some might tell me this is somehow discriminatory. But I’ve also been told nothing can be discriminatory when you prejudge white people. And you are perhaps the worst kind of white person: a man. So yes, I will judge you, and freely. For how many times has your kind judged me?—making the assumption that I can’t pay for things, etc. because of the arcane limitations brought on by a vagina. The ones that make a girl too “stupid,” apparently, to “do” capitalism. As if it’s a brain that “doing” it requires. But no, what it really requires is no soul. So maybe that’s why men are “better” at it. Those soulless fucks obsessed with boiling all value down to cold, hard cash.

Yet the shady character was clearly not “flush” with bills. Instead, he seemed to be hoping someone might slip some him his way. But if that were the case, this wasn’t the best location to achieve such a goal. Not exactly the most “prominent” position he could have put himself in. Though, to anyone who did pass by, he certainly stood out—perched atop the back of the bench with his feet splayed out on the part where a more dignified person would have placed their ass instead of their shoes. But he was not dignified. Maybe coming to a park at all signified some essential indignity. Hence, the clientele one often saw there. That is to say, perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh toward you, the shady character on the bench fucking up my experience. Perhaps I should instead take a long, appraising look at myself in the mirror and wonder what the fuck I’m doing idling about here as well.

I had told myself it was to “get some fresh air.” But, if I’m being honest with myself, it’s because I have nowhere else to go, really. Nothing else to do. I didn’t want to be in my cardboard box-sized apartment any longer, as it was starting to give me claustrophobia. Made it impossible to think. To breathe, even. The park was a respite from my reality. Until, that is, I encountered you, the shady character on the bench fucking up my experience. I know I might be taking all of my misplaced rage and directing it at you as a means to cope, but I really feel like you’re the source of all my life’s woes. That your mere presence on this Earth is somehow detracting from my own.

These feelings of contempt are affirmed when, as I try to find another quiet part of the park where I can sit down and seek ephemeral solace in an endlessly cruel world, you somehow materialize there, too. Why couldn’t you stay in your fucking place, you shady motherfucker? Do you get your kicks from delivering ominous vibes to women in the park on a daily basis or something? Is that your ultimate source of “free entertainment”? Isn’t having the internet on your phone enough for you? You have to fuck up my experience in addition? Is it to assert your dominance? To feel “like a man”? I’m tempted to ask you, but that would mean actually engaging your sinister ass. The last thing I would deign to do when all I wanted was to come here for some peace and quiet. But I guess the blame is on me for assuming that anything like that could ever be gleaned from a space “made for” the public. Side note: things are only ever “made for” the public to keep them complacent. Vaguely convinced that something is being done for them when, in fact, things like parks and piazzas are designed solely with the “pacifier effect” in mind. So long as plebes think that someone, anyone considered their needs and desires for even a moment, the illusion of being “cared about” is projected just enough to keep them from rioting.

Somebody was going to need to keep me from rioting pretty soon if the shady character formerly on the bench fucking up my experience didn’t get the hell away from my area. And, to prove my theory that he was following me and that my snap evaluation of him was correct, I tested out moving to a different spot in the park, starting to pick up my pace when I could feel his presence behind me. In hot pursuit. Maybe he was one of those fucking douchebags who wielded the “logic,” “Well you’re here alone and I’m here alone, so why don’t we…” I despised that type. The most grotesque kind of man, proving the species to be interested in nothing beyond any arbitrary hole.

As I continued to accelerate, practically moving along at a jog now, I could hear your footsteps pick up with mine, like a menacing shadow I didn’t consent to having. Advancing into a full-on run when it was confirmed you were determined to stalk me wherever I went in the park, I heard the thunderous thud of my phone fall out of my pocket behind me as a result of my high speed. I turned around in fear to see that you were picking it up with the utmost care. You then brushed the gravel off of it and smiled at me. A smile that could melt any heart, as it did mine. Your hood had also fallen off your head while you were running to keep up with me. Your sandy blonde hair was a striking contrast against your tan skin and piercing blue eyes. Frozen in my tracks by your beauty, your sheer lack of shadiness, I let you approach me, phone extended—as though you might actually give it back to me.

Maybe you’re only human. All humans are scary. Maybe I shouldn’t have misjudged you so harshly. Oh wait, you’re violently throwing my phone back on the ground now, shattering it completely. You’re attacking me now. You’re removing my clothes and you’re raping me. The “Good Samaritan” shtick was just a pretense to get closer. And I should have gone with my gut in clocking you immediately as a shady character fucking up my experience—and, presently, fucking me against my will. It was then I wondered what was so bad about claustrophobia, and how I should have just stayed in my apartment where nothing and no one could touch me except the walls themselves closing in.