I am either a) paranoid, b) guilty of watching too much crime TV, c) mentally processing the attempted boy-ho pickup I just saw, or d) all of the above.

It’s a quiet night out, and sound travels pretty well. I heard voices, so I looked out my window and saw a guy in a car in the middle of the street calling over a young guy to ask for directions. No big deal, right?

I stood and watched for a while, and in that time the guy in the car:

• asked if the guy knew where a certain address was
• had the guy look at the numbers of the buildings they were standing between
• asked if he was out partying tonight
• introduced himself as Jimbo
• said he lived downtown
• asked if the young man had a cell phone
• offered up his own cell phone number
• asked the young man to call him anytime, like on Friday, he’s free after 5pm
• shook his hand
• made some other intelligible comment that garnered an awkward laugh from the young man
• eventually drove away

The entire thing was really fucking creepy. Jimbo was a large round white man dressed in light colours, driving a beat-up older sports car. The young man in question was from the reserve, tall and lanky and probably around 20. Jimbo spoke in a silky, smarmy voice. I bet he had disturbingly soft hands.

Scary. Seriously, who drives around at 11:30 pm in neighbourhoods they are not familiar with, then strikes up a random conversation with some random guy and asks if he likes to party? CREEPY SEX OFFENDERS, THAT’S WHO. The whole “so, you out partying?” and the “give me a call sometime, we’ll party” and the repeated “I live downtown”, not to mention that he was looking for an address that did not exist (he didn’t want my building, or the building next door, which leaves the crackenhaus at the end of the block or Reserve Land – plus he drove away right after the convo, not stopping to see if the address he was “looking” for matched the last place on the block) – on any TV drama, that would equal BAD NEWS.

I’m going to go hide from the scary men looking to pick up slender young studs for partying in front of my apartment building now.