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July 23rd. On this day 6 years ago I earned my very first black eye (and tooth!) after coming head to face with a metal trash can. Well, it didn't actually hit me. The ground did. But I blame the trash can. And the homeless guy who chucked it at me.
Believe it or not, I wasn't always the spot-on-site bisexual mess you may have the fortune of meeting at in the konbini at 3am (the only time cryptids emerge from their cocoons for snacks). For starters, I didn't always have my distinctive bi markings. Namely my cuffed jeans (to make it easier to run away from scary situations with my lil legs), compulsive need to peace sign in photos (makes me look non-threatening), and super cool notched eyebrow. Which isn't so much a fashion choice as it is a permanent scar- hair doesn't grow there anymore since The Incident. The more you know!
This is me in early July, 2014. Just a regular degular schmegular girl from the B̶r̶o̶n̶x̶ County.
What did I have going for me? Ample cleavage, very long hair, unfortunate eyebrows, and a crush on the guy sitting next to me (hi Mav! I know Charles told you back in 2013 but you didn't believe him and then you moved home and we haven't seen each other since! So just an FYI in case you read this, it was true! Also hyd bud, long time no see? OK well bye).
This is [a dramatization of] me on July 23rd. I was minding my own business, looking kinda cute in my brand new raw silk top and jorts, riding the high of an aced exam on my lil bike. ((to be clear, I'm an outfit repeater and this photo was taken on the day I found the uOttawa mystery swing and became a Real Man))
This outfit did not protecc me from the road, which unkindly decided to give me a rash.
So here's what happened. It was evening, the golden hour, and I was riding my bike home. I was super excited, and back then I was even more reliant on my parents for positive enforcement and validation than I currently am, so I called home to let them know how I'd done on the test (as always). I was starting to get the hang of riding a bike again. Whoever said you never forget, that bitch lied! Because while the whole peddling thing was still going fine, I was having trouble with switching gears and the whole front brake/ back break thing. But I'd mastered coasting around, holding my phone with one hand, and doing the cool dismount thing where you stand up and swing your leg over to the other side while coasting into the bike rack. So I guess you could say I was on X-Games Mode.
I rounded the corner off Laurier to the front of Tabaret Hall, which is uOttawa's ~~fancy~~ building and happens to be our school's logo. It's on the very edge of campus, and the surrounding buildings are a mix of churches, a coffee shop, apartment-style dorms, student housing, and normal townhomes in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood. Five streets down is Ridea Street, one of Ottawa's busiest downtown streets. In between the two is the Ottawa Mission, a homeless shelter.
On this day, I turned left off Laurier onto Cumberland, because I wanted to get a celebratory Shawarma from the restaurant down the street. But as I did so I noticed a commotion a few blocks down. As I got closer, still talking to my mom, I let out a surprised and nervous giggle when I realized what I'd heard was a man standing in the middle of the street next to Alex Trebek Hall (yeah we have a building named after the Jeopardy guy)banging on an upturned metal trashcan with a hockey stick (I think? The memory is hazy) and yelling. People were watching from the sidewalk and their porches. Hindsight is a bitch. Why didn't I turn around? Why didn't I turn onto another street? Why didn't I keep my mouth shut?
I told my mom what it was I'd seen. I don't remember what I said. Just some guy banging a trash can, maybe? I don't think I used the word crazy or anything. But it would have been better not to have said anything. I'd called attention to myself. And I think he must have felt I'd disrespected or otherwise engaged him. Bad move, Nat.
I was past him at this point, but I started to hear a metallic scraping sound from behind me. I looked back over my shoulder. Holy shit, he was following me. Moving surprisingly quickly, trash can still in hand. What the fuck. Oh shit. I was like 'omg mom he's following me!' She told me later that she could hear the yelling and scraping through the phone.
peddle peddle holy shit fuck peddle peddle peddle please God peddle peddle peddle.
Curse my inability to change gears! But I made it to the hill and prepared to coast down to safety. I thought I was safe. My hair caught the wind as I picked up speed and I sighed in relief. He chucked the garbage can at me. In quick succession, it made contact, I lost my balance and tried to brake, grabbed the front brake, crashed face-first into and over my bike, landed and skidded down the hill. My phone went flying and wouldn't turn on again. My mom was in a major panic. My super cute shirt? ruined.
I lied on the ground, dazed. The man made his way up to me and stood over me. He said something angrily and I don't remember what it was. I was afraid he was going to kick me or something. I was out of it and shocked and I felt like I couldn't move.
A woman came and shoed him away. She had been sitting on a stoop with her friends. They looked on curiously. She was obviously on something. She helped me sit up and get to the curb, pressed a rag (which she'd already had on-hand and idk if it was for drug reasons or what?) against my face and said "honey, that hurt my heart".
A man my age walked up. He was a student who lived in the building across the street. He picked up my bike and offered to give me an ice pack and some bandaids. I followed him. He was super hot and it kinda calmed me down. He fixed me up let me use his phone to text my mom that I was ok. I thanked him and headed home.
When I got home I facetime called my mom and told her what had happened. I decided that since going to a hospital would be troublesome and the campus clinic was closed, I'd just wait and see how I felt the next day. I ended up not going to the ER or anything, but I did go to the dentist when the tooth and jaw pain didn't go away.
This is a picture of me later that night. Or at least this is where the picture would go, if I hadn't deleted the photo from my facebook (shakes fist... Dinkelberg!).
I'm guessing I took down the post at the behest of my mom, because in hindsight posting a no-context pic of your bloody face on social media where all of your aunts and uncles can see it is kinda ~chotto.~ Whoops! I had a lil checky check to see if I could find it on my iphotos- no dice. My old laptop died and I got a new one in 2015, that's as far back as the timeline goes. I'm disappoint.
But wait! UPDATE JULY 30: It has come to my attention that facebook photo archive existed back then. And I'm a useless gay (well technically biromantic demisexual but yeah). SO obviously when facebook synch stopped being supported, I downloaded the entire archive of 7000+ photos to my computer, and then just never expanded the zip folder, and the pictures I want are probably in there.
Great. OK. Hypothesis supported, Natalie for Big Gay Dumbass Energy 2020. Here's me. Please note the peace signs: proof that unlike most of my peers in Higashi, my compulsion to #ジャスチス pose predates the indoctrination we've experienced at school and in purikura.
My jaw got jostled pretty hard when I face-slammed into my handlebars (mid flip! and probably also an 800-degree barrel-roll because I am graceful and majestic and there are no eye-witnesses reading this to counter my claims of athletic prowess), so it's pretty swollen. One of my teeth turned grey but luckily it ended up going back to normal and not falling out or anything. My eye swelled mostly shut for a few days and started bleeding, and my vision was blurry for a few days. In hindsight, I might have been a bit concussed?? My eyebrows were decidedly not snatched, and the bald spot has never filled in.
This is me two weeks later. I spent the next month or so post-incident with my new sunglasses on indoors and outdoors, and that is a fashion choice I honestly would have made even without the shiner, sharingan and missing left brow. I found a rare picture where I'd placed them on top of my head. Check out that newfound brow pencil realness! Also I'm lowkey proud of past me for hopping back in the saddle(seat) so soon.
Here's me in late August. I went to the dentist 3 times in one month because my chompers were a lil messed up after the whole landing on my face thing (and I developed TMJ). I got a handy new dental splint that I still wear (and spit out) when I sleep!
Eyebrows doing a little better. Still not as well as I think any of us would have hoped, but baby me was still learning.
I saw the man again almost a year later. He was standing outside the mission smoking a cigarette. He didn't react or recognize me. I felt in my gut that it was him. But he didn't seem like he was about to go off any second, and honestly I didn't get any kind of vibe from him. I think at that time he was going through some kind of transcient mental health episode, and I know you can't blame someone for something like that. It was unfortunate and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I'm all about the silver linings. If there's one thing this incident taught me, it's that brow pencils and brow gel exist. So now my eyebrows are marginally less sad than they used to be. It's the little things, y'know?
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