I was walking Home along Clarkston Road. 11 p.m. - quiet time, last few drinkers are living the Pub. I walk along - hooded, stoned, useless. As I walk, I hear some people up ahead, on the otherside of the road, two people at a bus stop, they are angry with one another, one of them is more angry than the other, and shouts, without being wild: ‘You can just fuck off!’
I hear him. I walk along passed another bus stop not far up on my side and their are two men, one smoking standing up waiting while he smokes, another older man, is lying on a steel bench inside the bus stop, he is asleep, or passed out, or dead. I have no idea if the two men know each other…I woke on.
You can still hear the other person back down a little. I can’t make out what he is saying. I couldn’t are. There where more important things to get Angry about, I’m sure, but he didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to tell him. I pull my hood down.
I walk past ‘The Bank’ pub, women and men are woking out, it’s closing up time, their talk as they walk. All civilised, suburban people really, out for a few mundane drinks during the week. I keep walking along. I come up to a supermarket care park, I cross it, see an older man with a cream dog, I pass him from some distance.
But then, right behind me, I hear the immitation of a dog bark, a yelping queer kind of yap. And I look behind and their is a young teen balded headed guy walking behind me. I cross the road. He walks on the opposite side and then moves over to the side he walks on. I look at him: he is young, looking at me, I sense he is wanting to say or do something as I cross him, and he walks behind me again on the same side of the road.
I walk along toward the Park. I put my hood up again. I wonder why he is walking behind me, and why I get the odd feeling, he is not necessarily entirely alone. I’m just being paranoid perhaps. I’ve smoked a few quiet joints this night.
A car drives past us, and turns into the left, where I must turn, and I imagine that cars has nothing to do with anything. So I turn left into the park, and see two cars in the distance, in the Park car park, I hear a door shut. I decide I’ll take the path instead of walking through the park like I do on occassion. I’m slightly uneasd. I walk along the path, chew a piece of chewing gum, out of nervousness. It appers the young guy did not walk along the path.
I come to the end of the path and cross the car park of a fitness club. I hear voices coming from the park which is not but 500ft away. I walk passed the fitness club. Come to the bottom of my street - a fork. I hear people talking and walking down that street toward me. But I take my street which is the right fork in the road. I assume they have nothing to do with anything, but they could have come from the park, followed the path through the park that would have brought them out, onto the right street at the fork on the road.
I walk up my street. Not caring if strange people walk, wee neds walk, if wanders walk. I pull my hood down. Continue to walk along my familiar, quiet, harmless street. As I reach the top, getting nearer to my home, I hear someone spit not the far infront of me, on the opposite side of the road, I walk along, I see a young man, it turns out to be the young man who barked like a queer dog. Then, with an electric bolt, I realised, he took the route through the Park, and then turned up my street.
I looked at him again. I was nervous. He was younger than me and smaller. But, I was stoned, and reading things into this situation. He said:
‘You could have taken I short cut…’ Rather up front and without any need for initiation.
‘Yeah…’ I said passively ’ ‘The Park.’. Then, I wanted to say - what the fuck man! You just making sure I get home safe!? Think I need directions? You make a habit of following people home?
But I walked on, a little nervous that this little prick, had clearly sussed me out in his own way, and wanted to freak me out, for some small mind reason. He clearly knew I took the path to avoid going through the Park. He probably knew I wanted to avoid confrontation. He probably just want to seek if I had been concerned, or scared. I walked down my drive and turned the key in my door and shut it and looked out and thought, what the hell was that all about! Nothing, it was nothing…but how stupidly it had become a little something.
I wonder how he knew to take the root up my road. Lucky guess, perhaps: he knew where the path through the park led. He guessed I walked the path to avoid the Park. He quessed I would walk around to either one of the streets, that that path led to, or if not, then continue alone the straight road the fitness club was on. I wondered how he knew to wait not that far from my house. Luck again perhaps, he would have continued walking along my road until coming across me, he just so happened to be standing there. And, where the other group near the bottom of my road, his mates? Did he take the other road just to see if I had gone up it to avoid him, and to avoid the unknown? Was I smoking to much weed? Had I sussed him out from the start? Had he sussed me out too? What the fuck? With such connection maybe we should get together, haha…
Was he trying to intimidate? He was trying to make me uneasy. Following me virtually too my door step. What a strange guy! What The Fuck! My nervous energy was twitching. I wanted to ask him, why the way I walked home mattered to him, why he had followed me. Did he want to fight? I wasn’t a fight. But if he made a move. I would reciprocate with fucking rage. He didn’t make a move. He was alone. I was tall. I was passive. I could easily spring on Anger.
Strange mundane shit! Once again, it had been the mundane night of the walk home, the same walk home, the always walk home. But, this time with annoyed men and boys who follow you home and carparks, and the sinister possibility of others, and darkness and home.
Turns out he lived on my street. I had never seen him before.