The Ballad of iPad Joe
I used to do most of my shopping at night. This wasn’t by design. Night just happened to be when I was awake. As you can imagine, options for midnight shopping are limited. Still, there’s Wal-Mart, and that’s where I was.
I don’t remember what I was getting; all I know is that when I got back to my car, I was approached by a large man. He asked if I would give him a ride. I thought this was a strange request, and told him that I needed to get home. As I got into my car, he also got into my car. I don’t remember the specifics, here. Either all my doors unlocked when the driver’s side was unlocked, or I’d never locked them in the first place. I do know that I did not invite the man into my vehicle. He insisted that I drive him home. Survival mode kicked in. Be polite. Be empathetic. Do what he asks, until you can’t anymore. That’s how I avoided getting beaten when I was raped in the military, whereas the assailant put his other known victim in the hospital. Since it worked before, it seemed like the best option. That’s all hindsight, though. Rationalization. At the time, I didn’t strategize. I just did what came naturally.
Aside from having forced his way into my car, the man wasn’t all that threatening — not yet. He came off as either unstable or intoxicated, rambling somewhat nonsensically with occasional reassurances that when we got to Best Buy, he would give me an iPad 2 in exchange for driving him where he needed to go. Not just an iPad, but specifically, an iPad 2. He worked at Best Buy, he said. He could sneak in and grab a device for me, he said. I did not think this was likely, but there was no point in contesting the claim. When in that situation, I find it’s unwise to contest something so meaningless. Just let them talk. He was pretty well engaged in talking, which might be why it never occurred to him to take my cell phone. Calling 911 would’ve been too obvious, and I didn’t text at the time — not anybody who was reliably available, anyway — so I made… a tumblr post. I don’t remember exactly what I said, though it included the directive, “call the police”. I got the post off just in time, because futzing with the phone did raise the large man’s hackles. “Are you calling the police?” He took the phone from me. “No, I’m letting my family know I got delayed,” I insisted. He seemed to accept that, but did not return the phone.
Things got increasingly uncomfortable from there. He told me where to drive. “The Best Buy is this way,” he’d insist, though I was familiar with the area and knew that the Best Buy wasn’t in any respect “this way”. He had me stop at a house in a residential neighborhood, and we waited. I thought about leaving the car, but wasn’t sure if the man was armed or not. I didn’t want to get out of the car, only to be shot in the back. A woman eventually emerged from the house with a paper bag, and inside that bag was a bit of metal foil he unfolded. He snorted its contents in my passenger seat.
As I drove away, he let me know that he had another stop to make: the sex shop. On the way there, his rambling turned increasingly to the subject of sex, which concerned me for obvious reasons. I responded both warmly and clinically, as a therapist might. By the time we made it to said shop, I felt the risk of him harming me was rising. I’d kept fear at bay up to this point- again, not really by design — but the inability to turn his interest toward a different subject was alarming. He had me park at the far edge of the sex shop’s lot, under the shadow of the store’s huge sign. Again, we waited.
And waited. And waited some more. Somebody was supposed to meet him there, he said. They were on their way. They were supposed to be here, by now. The longer we sat, the more isolated I felt. I wanted to leave the car. I felt the risk of staying did not yet outweigh the risk of leaving the car. Then, my phone rang.
The man looked at the phone, then at me, unsure of what to do. “If I don’t answer that, my family is going to get worried and call the police,” I lied, sort of. On the other end of the line, were the police. I hadn’t expected anything out of my call for help on tumblr, but a close friend of mine all the way up in Canada knew I wouldn’t joke about something like that and called all the way down to the Austin PD. He didn’t know my phone number, and the APD wasn’t able to find it — but they could find my husband’s, so attempted to call him. The long stretch of time between my post and the phone call from the police, was the police trying to contact my husband. When they got the number out of him, they contacted me right away. Sometimes, I think I was incredibly lucky because iPad Joe seemed not just to be high as balls, but frankly, pretty fucking stupid as well. Not only did he allow me to answer the phone, but he agreed to speak to both my husband and the cops, in turn. As I left the sex shop parking lot with his contact never having arrived, he got more and more nervous. Everything the cops said to him was in service of scaring him into getting out of my car. I’m not sure what my husband said to him, but from iPad Joe’s end of the conversation, I think the gist of it was, “please don’t kidnap my wife, that would be really uncool of you”. His instructions became erratic — get off the freeway, get back on, turn off into this nowhere neighborhood, go back to the freeway, and so on. The police kept him on the phone and talking. We drove further and further into the Austin suburbs, and into a trailer park as iPad Joe hovered on the edge of a panic attack.
He opened the passenger door, practically combat rolled into some bushes, and disappeared.
