To begin, welcome to Chelsea (!) and her marvelous musings on Craigslist Missed Connections. I don’t spend much time reading them, but I too always assume they’re for me.

A recent encounter at the lake front running path reaffirmed my suspicion that some of those listings are for me, and that they were perhaps just a little more than a missed connection.

Here’s my story.

On Monday (my Sunday) I went for a little run by the lake. When I returned to my starting point, there was an African-American man standing nearby. He was dressed in (presumably) expensive designer clothes, an outfit no one would ever wear if they had indeed come to the running path to run.

I slowed to a stop, and he cautiously took a few steps toward me. While I was stretching my legs (to prevent the bad things that happen when I don’t stretch after running), he managed to make eye contact with me. We were still some distance apart, but it was not exactly shouting range.

“You pretty, you know that?” he said.

“Thank you,” I replied. I wasn’t really sure what to do, so I pulled the old stretch-while-walking-away-from-danger-but-make-it-look-like-you’re-not-walking-away-on-purpose walk (a classic escape maneuver).

When I felt I was a safe distance away, I started to stretch out my legs again (because I wasn’t done, you know?), but I could still see him out of the corner of my eye. He was obviously scrutinizing my body. To hell with this, I thought, I can stretch at home.

Unfortunately, this guy was directly in between myself and my car, so I had to walk right past him to get there. Not that I was physically afraid, but I was trepidatious about what he might say.

I decided to beat him to the punch. I walked by, and the instant we made eye contact, I said, “Take care now.” That, one would think, should sufficiently signal the end of any conversation.

Not so.

“Aw, but you straight, though, ain’t you?”

Honestly, this was not so bad. It could have been worse.

“Yes,” I said almost apologetically (though I’m not sure why). “Married, too.”

“Mmm!” he groaned. “And a lucky devil she is, too!”

“Thank you, I’ll tell her that.”

“Yeah, do that.”

By this time I was well beyond talking distance, and nearly to my car, so he gave up and walked toward the running path again.

I told all this to Devon, which she thinks is the funniest thing in the world. I won’t go into express details, but if you ever hear her singing “Blue Moon,” just know that it’s because she is politically incorrect in at least three ways.

This happened not five months from the last encounter where a black person expressed (verbally) an attraction to me. See this blog entry from June 27th of this year:

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Sexually Harassed on the North Side

I was walking home the other day from the Western Brown Line stop in Lincoln Square. As I crossed a crosswalk on Lawrence Avenue, a large black woman with a mini-van full of teenagers rolled up to the red light and stopped right in front of me. She stuck her head out the window and, without hesitating, shouted:

“Boy, I will lick you from head to toe! Mmm-hm!”

I flirtatiously feigned shock and horror, but we both knew I enjoyed it.

Two instances are not enough to warrant such a conclusion, but it seems evident enough to me and my dear wife that black people love me.

Which I guess is better than having black people hate me, like this guy:

These instances are a little too involved to be simply “missed connections,” but alas, there is no “close encounters” section on Craigslist. So maybe the next time something like this happens, I’ll cruise that section for a listing I know to be for me and me alone. I won’t respond (probably), but it’ll be fun to find it.

Filed by Bil at 1:29 pm under Pop Culture, Racism, Homophobia, Love