I was in a horrible mood. My sinuses ached and I wanted to go to a neurologist and find
out why I suffered from migraine headaches. I had a constant racket in my temporal lobes
like my head lived inside a racquet press. The pros at the tennis club would tell me I needed
to play more tennis to alleviate the pressure. ”Tennis is like sex,”  they would say.  ”Either you
do it or you fry your brain by doing nothing to excite the old razzmatazz.” So I embodied the
persona of a sexual loser because I had migraines, is what they tried to convince me of, in a
nutshell, to explain my real problem. And Gus, the head coach, even booked me for a free
tennis lesson, compliments of the club. I refused the offer and told Gus I planned on joining
a women’s doubles round robin on the weekends.

The head coach, a notorious ladies’ man, banged most of the women he played tennis
with, except for one Ethiopian woman, named Ava, who threatened him with her cane.
Ava was a recovering hip-replacement patient, looking to heal herself back into the groove of
playing tennis again. She loved doubles and considered herself a popular member of the
ladies USTA doubles circuit. And as a former astronaut in Ethiopia, she hobnobbed with the
local astronomy club, often bragging about having been part of a pilot program where she
trained to go up into space with the Russians, as a gesture of goodwill during the 1980’s.

I thought my veracity would improve if I escaped the confines of simple-minded
people who sized women up only for their capacity to endure psychological and physical
pain. Nothing at the present moment I wanted to challenge, in my middle age. But to the best
of my abilities, I visited a doctor later in the day, and happenstance being what it was, I met
Rashad, a patient in the waiting room. He stood tall, dark, and shy. I was not the
aggressor in the encounter, but perhaps he would not remember it that way. We went out
that afternoon for tea at an exotic tea shop on Madison Avenue, near the Maharishi
center. We spoke about Transcendental Meditation and the effects of mindfulness on the
human psyche. And halfway through my second cup of chai, he invited me over to his
apartment to show me his book collection. I harbored interests in European art and poetry
and some of his books dated back to the sixteenth century.
After we entered Rashad’s apartment, he said to me half jokingly, “I collect scorpions.”
I, who prided myself on being a Scorpio by astrological sun sign, shuddered in my boots for a
moment, and my suddenly neatly manicured hands transformed into claws that spread out
from inside my skin. I imagined I was a wild cat and Rashad a crazy man. I looked up
at him and he had these dark pupils and narrow eyes like slits. I imagined blood starting
to pool inside his tiny eyes. He tried, by speaking in a soft, gentle tone, to make
everything appear normal, like that collecting scorpions wouldn’t make him a monster. Or
that he hoped a typical fool might shudder at the thought of scorpions, and fall faint in his
apartment, so he would have to rescue them, but that didn’t manifest.
I stood fast and strong, peered at him as he told me how messy everything was, and
then abruptly he showed me his tiny hall closet jam-packed with a jumble of strange black
disheveled clothes thrown into a heap, along with old grocery bags, an assortment of umbrellas,
a pair of worn work boots, unpolished dress shoes, dingy underwear, and rumpled green sheets.
Everything fell out onto the floor with a plop after he urged me to take a closer look. It was a mess,
and organization appeared irrelevant, other than what hung stuffed onto the rack. Never had I seen
a closet with this many things before. I shrugged it off without showing alarm and hastened him
along. We did not want to be late going out to dinner.
We had planned to go eat at a Thai restaurant. He was of Sri Lankan descent, and I was
an American woman with a unique upbringing. I had been spoiled at private schools and I’d
hobnobbed with diplomats’ kids. He was another malaprop, from a strange unknown world
that fascinated me. He acted nervous and somewhat ashamed of his apartment but not
embarrassed about his little-boy-gruesome habit of collecting scorpions. And I don’t attest if
he meant to scare me, or to lure me inside his world of fright. I think If I fell so naively
inside his clasp and became his damsel in distress, it would have felt worthwhile to him to
harm me. But I being headstrong and alert, he didn’t achieve the scare he wanted out of me, so
it must have been disappointing for him, though he didn’t show it. And I think he liked me more
for it and so wanted to continue to go out with me.
My tomboy girlhood taught me how to handle the likes of all wild boys who liked to
torture little animals, like frogs and toads. And in childhood I witnessed two rascals chopping
two little frogs legs off while they jumped around alive. It was unsettling, seeing the boys’ 
devious faces and gapped teeth gritted to show their might and toughness. In those horrible
moments they degraded themselves by being the torturers instead of the tortured—because it
was a fact that they were boys whose father whipped them with his belt. One of them
confessed it to me one sad day, after showing me where in their basement their father
performed his horrors. His grisly leather belt hung on a nail in the wall swaying in the dead of
darkness.

I waited for my date to pull it together and give his consent to exiting his apartment
without succumbing to guilt because it lacked perfect order. I was not anxious, but I tried to
comfort him, not ruin the night. When we left, I was glad. I remember feeling a sense
of relief after he locked the door, and I vowed to never return once I departed his pad. But
thankfully my anxiety was all heightened fear, and nothing much came of it.
We went out and ate dinner at a little Indian restaurant on MacDougal Street. The
samosas were spicy, and so was the eggplant. It was quiet and private; we were the only
couple there. I don’t know how, but Rashad knew the owners and was able to secure a
reservation with ease. As I later found out from overhearing a server in the powder-room, they
were waiting for a huge party of twenty to come in about an hour. Someone had just gotten
married. After Rashad paid the bill, it was about 7:30 p.m. and we drove uptown toward the
Port Authority.
As we approached the Port Authority, he made a left turn into a rundown block
with garbage in the street and pulled his car over to the right side of the street, near Penn
Station, and acted like he wanted to make out with me. And so he suddenly turned ugly to
me, so full of nerve with his attempt to park in such a sleazy block. I got out of his car and
walked uptown two blocks to catch the bus. And I’m left to tell the story, and
thankfully he didn’t murder me.

A month later a strange thing happened while I was carrying two Broadway tickets,
which a colleague had given me to go enjoy The Lion King on Broadway. I bumped into
Rashad in the street, after exiting the subway. It was a strange, uncanny encounter, and
at first my mind wanted to think he was stalking me, but I dismissed the thought. It
was impossible. It was after all a joy to meet someone I had left on my free will. I had not
seen anybody all day except the strange faces of my co-workers. And he was after all a clutter
bug. I understood his distress and embarrassment on one level. I lived in a small room with
my cat and used a hotplate. He was alone, dressed in his usual black garb, and I appreciated
his dark unmistakeable good looks and asked him if he wanted to accompany me to the
Broadway play. He agreed and we went to the theater. We sat, while he kept asking me if the
tickets were in fact free. And then he got tired and wanted to leave; he had to go home
because he was exhausted. Then he thanked me and vanished out of my life forever.