Locks

In July of 2001, I bought the first new car I had ever owned.  It was a Saturn.  Blue. SC2.  Five speed. Moon roof.  Had that 3^rd door on the driver’s side.  6-disc changer.  Remember those?  Pretty bad ass back in 2001.  One thing it didn’t have, was those automatic door locking feature that cars have now.  The one that locks all the car doors when you go over 5 MPH.  That cute little Saturn coupe didn’t have that. 

Anyway, a couple of weeks after I bought that car, I was in Oakland getting a burrito for dinner.  My boyfriend at the time was driving and I was sitting in the passenger seat.  While stopped at a red light, I was day dreaming out the window, not paying much attention to anything except getting home to my carne asada deliciousness and new car smell.  It was in that minute that I was shaken from the simplicity of my childlike thoughts by the sunken face of a skinny woman at my window.  I saw her face just inches away from my own.  She was screaming at me, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.  All of a sudden, she wrenched the car door open.  I screamed at her “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!!!”  I grabbed the handle on the door with both hands and pulled the door with all the strength I had and I howled to my boyfriend “FUCKING GO!!!  GO!!!!!”

The two mile drive home, I could feel my heart beating in every part of my body.  I could tell he was shaken, too.  We sat in silence until we finally pulled in the driveway, I just looked at him and whispered “Did that just happen?  Did that really happen?”  In my mind, I had been violated.  I just couldn’t believe that at a stoplight on Webster, somebody came at me; into my space.  My safe place.  It was a Saturn, not a Benz. 

After that day, I remember getting in the car and locking the doors before I even put it in reverse.  Every time I made the trip through the Webster Tube from Alameda to Oakland, I became hyper vigilant. I paid attention to everything around me.   I used the shortest route to get out of Oakland.  I was afraid.  It was a very scary time.  It wasn’t the first time that my naïve ideas of safety had been disrupted. 

There was that time in Bellingham, when I took out the trash.  I was gone about two minutes.  When I came back in the house, I finished the dishes and went up to my bedroom only to find a man in my bedroom.  A man who cornered me and could see the terror in my eyes.  When he saw how scared I was, he laughed and told me “you should be more afraid of me.”  And he proved it. 

After that night, I didn’t ever want to leave the house.  More accurately, I didn’t ever want to be at the house.   I only took the trash out when I left for work.  I spent as much time at work as I could.  If I was at home, I tried to not be alone there.  I think it goes without saying that I locked all of the doors.  All of the time.  Because clearly, locking doors keeps you safe. 

But then I remember that time in High School, when I walked out to my Karmann Ghia in the driveway on a Sunday morning and noticed glass all over the ground and found the CD player stolen.  The doors of the car weren’t even locked.  There was no reason to break a window for a stereo in a car that wasn’t locked.  I cried.  I screamed in the street because I knew exactly who had done it.  My stepdad had to physically carry me inside while I kicked and screamed profanities at the assholes who had raped my innocence.  Not locking the doors didn’t do anything for me then. 

I’ll be honest, I haven’t locked the doors to my house or car in 12 years.  I have been considering it recently.  I am not comfortable with that, though.  Because I am not a victim.  It has happened before and I don’t ever want to feel that way again…So, locks sometimes sound like a good idea.  But locks don’t protect you from bad things happening.  I am NOT going let violations of my space or my property dictate how I live my life.  I will NOT be the girl who never feels safe.  I’m the girl who believes that if you have to lock your doors, you aren’t locking the bad guys out.  You are locking yourself in. 

P.S.  I’ll fuck you up if you try to come in my house uninvited.  Locks or no. But I'm not going to stop living my life.  

-Inner Peas