When considering a trip, it is not uncommon for your mind to jump directly to the most horrible, awful, depraved possibilities that await you in the unknown. The pre-trip thought process often ventures into the realm of what can only be labeled, “catastrophizing.” The absolute worst of the worst, the statistically near impossible, and the horror movie plot trajectory suddenly become not only logical, but a near certainty.
You contemplate the bus careening off a bridge over a high river gorge, plummeting to your doom. You brood over the various ways you’ll be tortured once you are captured and held for ransom by a splinter cell of Basque separatists, who managed to nab you on the streets of Madrid while plotting their next terrorist act.
Is it a survival instinct? Is it Nature’s way of telling you “Uh uh, genius, don’t be an asshole and think you’ll survive that hornet’s nest.”?
It might be worth it….for salami.
Or maybe we are all just crazy. The possibility, the fact that it has happened to someone else, just because someone somewhere once was laid out in the desert, clothes off, with honey slathered on their member, screaming in agony while ants slowly made “eunuch” a likely career choice, means that all 6.2 billion humans on Earth are dedicated to perpetrating they same act towards you.
I am prone to this sort of crippling anxiety.
One dip of a turbulent airplane, and I’m imagining all of us submerged in sea water, trying to escape a veritable ice cube tray encased in a metal cylinder, in a full panic, knowing that even if I manage to claw my way past hundreds of individuals towards the exit, I’ll likely drown as I’m slowly paralyzed by hypothermia, and end up sinking to the sea floor, becoming a gourmet dinner for hundreds of crabs, hagfish and other bottom feeders as they slowly suck off every spare ounce of meat off my bones. I’m naturally skinny, so they probably won’t be satisfied. Sorry, that I’m inadequate as a scavenged carcass, hagfish 🙁 .
Graphic enough for you?
Nevertheless I somehow manage to get through the day, and it takes some serious Nadia Comaneci mental gymnastics (sorry for the outdated reference….I’m old) to do it. With effort, I take a chill pill the size of a horse suppository and realize that I am not in Fate’s crosshairs. And neither are the people I know. Which would be a perfectly workable calming strategy…..until, of course, it happens to someone you know.
In Italy, I met a guy who, by all modern standards, got fucked by Fate. Well, actually he didn’t even know the extent of it…..because he couldn’t remember. Roofies are a helluva drug.
What do you do when you find yourself laying face down in an abandoned parking lot outside of Rome….naked?
Naked and in the street….like this dog.
Let’s deal with the first part: “outside of Rome”. If you don’t know a country, there is absolutely no reason for you to be “outside” of anywhere. People from different countries stay in tourist centers or major cities. They don’t just end up in random little suburbs.
I think this is that random suburb…
Let’s now move on to the more important part: naked?! WTF?! If you have ever imbibed alcohol, you are familiar with losses of memory. Bright streaks of dawn hit your face, you roll over with a pounding headache, and open your eyes to see that you are somewhere you don’t recognize. Your hands instantly reach for your pockets to assure yourself that you have your phone and keys, and you slowly realize that you’re at your friend’s house.
First things first: you’re not hurt, there’s no visible puke anywhere, and based on the receipts in your pockets and stamps on your arms, you can trace a pretty good schedule of the events of the previous night. So far…winning.
Now change everything to you waking up naked. This is the threshold. Once you wake up naked, everything is out the window. Questions flood your mind: Who took my clothes off? Did I? Did I have sex? Could I have sex completely blacked out and not remember? Wouldn’t I at least have a shred of that memory? Should I go to the doctor?
Alter the scenario a bit to waking up in a parking lot in a foreign country. Basically we can safely assume this guy was shitting his pants that were not actually on his body or anywhere in sight.
So what did he do? Quite simply summed up, in fact. He tells me in a nonchalant and rather cavalier few sentences, so snappy they were worthy of top notch commercial copy: “Woke up in a parking lot, naked. Thought I had been raped. Went to the hospital. Robbed, not raped.” Well there you have it.
My Law & Order knowledge suggests the rapist, in fact, used one of these Retard brand condoms
Lesson learned: What every mom tells her daughter applies to guys too. Watch your freakin’ drink!
–Nate (33) Wisconsin, counseling assaulted individuals in Italy