I recently got a new job, which, for the most part, has been pretty darn Gucci. My bosses and coworkers are pretty cool, and appreciative of the fact that I’m both new and trying my best. The work can be physically demanding, but the nights go by quickly. There is one downside. I have managed to avoid getting a driver’s license or a car for twenty-two years, meaning that there are times when I’m required to walk home from work. Fortunately, some people have been generous enough to provide rides for me, but five a.m. is a pretty cruddy time to call someone for a lift. I like walking everywhere; that’s probably a larger portion of the reason that I don’t drive than I care to admit. However, at five in the morning, Pittsburgh is a scary place, especially when you already suffer from paranoid anxiety. In the last week of walking home, I’ve compiled the following thoughts:

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Listening to rap is a bad idea. I love rap, well, I love the narrow portion of rap I’ve been exposed to. I can’t listen to it all the time, though, because there are too many words and it screws with my OCD. It’s very difficult for me to write while listening to it for that reason (Although, coincidentally, I’m listening to Take Care by Drake right now.) Rap music presents a very different problem when you’re walking home in the dark. The background noises tend to be more ominous than they sound within the safety of your bedroom or the produce coolers. When listening to “Paper Planes” by M.I.A, the walk home feels like traversing a warzone. (That song was brought up by a friend when I recounted my story about a Notorious B.I.G. small marking my pants with skid, but you feel me.)

It’s kinda hard not to be racist. I know that everyone groans (at least internally) anytime a statement begins with “Not to be racist, but...” The thing is, it’s really, really hard not to be when you’re walking home. It’s created this anxiety I now have, where I almost feel obligated to walk right into danger, just so that I don’t offend them for being, well, street. I just feel safer when I pass a dude with a backpack and walking upright than I do when someone is pimpin’ down the middle of the street. It’s not a skin-color thing. It’s hard to even determine ethnicity when it’s so dark, and so I’ve now compounded my internal conflict of why I avoid seemingly black people walking around at night with why I assume that someone composed so informally must be black. Point in case: The white guilt is real.

You prepare to throw down. In the off-chance that someone does approach you, and it's about to go down, you need a course of action. I prefer to take mace, when the communal bottle is available in my apartment. I tend to forget it, though, even when it is free. Obviously, it's the best chance. They can shoot, like, twenty feet, and prevents real violence before it can begin. I've talked with a coworker who typically rides the bus. She's said that she pretends like she has mace by stuffing her hands into her pockets and that typically, someone won't want to call her on the bluff. A male I work with suggested using my boxcutter, which is pretty Norman Bates, but whatever gets you home at night. My girlfriend's told me about an app that you hold your thumb down on the surface of your phone, and the second you remove your thumb, the police are contacted. I've never used this application, so I can't get into the specifics of it too well, but I plan on using the bluff of that if I'm ever held up. Which will probably come out as "I've got...phone...don't make me..." Best case scenario, the threat will mistake me for a mentally-handicapped person and leave me alone.

Cardio becomes a part of your daily ritual. I don’t run. In the off-chance that I do, it’s a sore sight. Anyone that’s seen me irl can probably tell right off the bat that, hey, this guy probably doesn’t jog very often. Well, I can now say they’re wrong. Every time I get to the homestretch of my street (Where I was once accosted by an ominous thug who gave my pre-existing anxieties a shot of Redbull.), I duck and run. Yes, I literally duck my head down while racing to the door. More on this after the commercial break. (I hope to God an ad is actually placed between these paragraphs or else I’m gonna look like a total doofus.)

Heads up! Well, that’s not a lesson, but you learn to keep your head down...or something. As a perpetual pedestrian, I’ve had long-gestating fears of being the casualty of a hit and run, and not in the conventional sense of the word. I used to talk to my counselor(s) about this worry that someone in a car passing me by would pull out a baseball bat and take me out like all the cool kids in the movies do to mailboxes. Today, it’s blossomed into a fear of being the casualty of a drive-by. So, whenever a car is passing me by, if I have the prep-time, I find something (typically a tree or parked car) to hide myself behind. This probably makes me look suspicious, myself, or at the very least, fuckin’ crazy, but I’d rather look like I’ve lost my mind that to literally lose my mind—You know, because someone shot my brains out. If there’s nothing to block my ass, I’ll try to increase or decrease my pace right as the car passes me by, hoping that it’ll be enough to miss the shot. So far, I’ve found that throwing my arms into the air and screaming “Don’t shoot!” has been quite effective.

You learn the definition of “rubber necking.” When I get home, my throat’s sorer than a hooker working overtime. It is so essential to keep a 360 degree visual. You know that scene in The Exorcist where Linda Blair’s head twists the whole way around like an owl’s? That scene ain’t scary, and God should take it into serious consideration when he’s developing the next evolutionary step. If I could, I’d be spinning my head like the light on top of a cop car, but I make due with the flexibility I’ve got. So far, it’s kept my cap unpopped.

So, it’s still a work in progress, and I’m learning new survival tricks every morning, but hopefully these notes will keep some of you readers out of the gutter. Nobody likes to sleep alone, but I’d rather leave the fishes thirsty than join them. I’m in my own bed, now, after Solid Snaking my way home, so I’m gonna roll around restlessly so that I’ll have the energy to go to work and do it all over again tomorrow morning. Safe travels.