On the way to Norris City I decided to pull into a rest stop to take a break and get out of the sun. In general, I’m a shy, introverted person, but I do make eye contact with people. As I was waiting for a car coming from the opposite direction to pass so I could turn left into the rest stop, the driver and I met eyes.  That's not unusual because, of course, some people DO stare at me…. after all, I’m the guy with the gnats all over him. But, at the time, I remember it just seemed….  odd.

I pulled into the empty rest stop, a large area with restrooms and a lot of shaded picnic tables, then sat atop one of the tables to eat a candy bar and drink some water. I heard a car pulling into the park and intuitively knew it was the same man. When it came into view I saw that I was correct.

My mind started racing….  did he want to rob me?  was he just curious about my trip? He got out of his car and went to the restroom where, I suspected, he would tape a knife to his ankle.

I wrote down his license plate. Just in case I disappeared without a trace, maybe someone would find this small scrap of paper with a license plate number on it. If you read the first part of my journal you saw how large my printing was, you'll know how laughable that is.  (I still have the plate number)

Really, though, it was probably all my imagination. He’ll finish up in the restroom, get in his car, and drive away.

Coming out of the bathroom, he started walking purposefully straight towards me. He was a short, stocky, Middle Eastern man of about forty years wearing a pinstriped suit. His English was accented, but only slightly. 

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Riding my bike across the country.”

There was an awkward silence as I uncharacteristically DIDN’T make eye contact, staring instead at a piece of wood on the ground. I started to feel ridiculous, and half laughed at myself for having my tire pump handy as a potential weapon, then I asked,

“Where are you headed?”

“Oh. I was just going to the bathroom.”

Another long, awkward silence, this one around 10 seconds. Then he said,

“Would you like to sit….     in the car?”

Not much of a pause at that point.

“No thanks, I need to put in some more miles today.”

“It will only take a minute.”

Here, my thoughts REALLY  took off.

“No thanks, I really need to do some more riding. Thank you, though.”

I smiled, nodded, climbed on my bike, and pedaled off, wondering if the rejection would precipitate him running me over with his car. 

Of course it didn’t. 

Looking back forty years later I now have quite a different perspective. At that point, I’d never known a gay man. I’d HEARD of them, like an exotic animal in the zoo, or one of the Hemingway six-toed cats that inhabit the Florida Keys, but I’d never actually SEEN one. In the South, where I was raised, no one openly admitted they weren’t “100% straight,” and I heard the word “queer” used long before I learned the word “gay.” I remember my mom considering switching dentists simply based on a RUMOR that he was gay. She didn’t want her son being around anyone "like that." It probably took a certain amount of courage for this guy even to approach me. In the 1980s, a person could get beaten for even appearing gay (you know, as opposed to now). 

Ignorance truly breeds fear. Although I remain unwillingly ignorant about many things, my natural curiosity has always overcome my fear of the unknown, both people and places, and I’m really glad about that. There are a lot of wonderful, important people in my life I would’ve missed out on otherwise. Additionally, if I really stop to think about it, I probably wouldn’t have taken this trip if I didn’t have that curiosity.

As an aside, when I say my curiosity overcomes my fear, it’s not the idiotic kind of curiosity that asks, 

“I wonder how deep that water is. I’ll just dive in and find out!” and "How fast can this car go??" and “I wonder if I'm faster than a rattlesnake is when it’s striking.” (True story:  I treated someone in the ER who asked himself that)

It’s more the Abraham Lincoln kind of curiosity: “I do not like that man. I must get to know him better.”