Full moon over North Beach and the weirdest thing happened. We were leaving a sushi restaurant and taking pictures. It was my mom, Edward, my grandma and I. I saw this guy in a Prius wearing a skull cap drive by. We smiled at each other. I saw him turn his car around as we got in ours.
They wanted me to drive. As I was fumbling around trying to figure out the lights, my mom said, there’s was a guy who was almost naked. We looked around and she said he was gone. We asked her a bunch of questions–was he in a car, was he showing her that he was naked… She said he’d been standing by a car and was wearing a g-string. Her story sounded bizarre and I wondered if she was going senile. But then, a few minutes later, we turned out of the parking lot and there walking along the side of the road with his bare ass cheeks to us was a naked guy in a g-string.
We busted out laughing. I wanted to go back and take a picture of him so people would believe this, but when we turned back, he was nowhere in site. As we turned onto the highway, a Prius screeched by in the left lane. I remember thinking simultaneously that this was the guy from the parking lot, and that I must be driving too slow.
We were driving and talking about the g-string man. We wondered if he was going to the house party that was going on near the restaurant, or maybe he was doing some night swimming. As we were lamenting not having a picture to verify our experience, we rounded the corner and there, walking away from us was a butt-naked guy wearing a g-string. We howled in laughter and my mom demanded this time, we had to take a picture.
We turned around and rolled down our window, but the guy was back inside his car. Just go, my mom said, and we jammed out of there, but we were going in the opposite direction from the hotel. They were telling me I needed to turn the car around, but I was watching the rear-view mirror. Bad news, guys, I said. It looks like he’s following us.
It was seriously scary. He followed me through these empty streets lined with trees that reminded me so much of that forest road in la push when I went out driving alone under the full moon. Come to think of it, one of the local cops had pulled me over, but acted like he just wanted to talk to me.
So this guy followed me, flashed his lights and kept trying to get me to pull over. My family was freaking out and keep saying that she was very scared. I told her to calm down. I wondered if I would have to prepare for defensive driving maneuvers in case he tried to run me off the road. A fucking Prius! I wished I could be doing this in a BMW but I figured I learned how to drive with minivan, And I used to race with it.
So I kept an eye on him, trying to drive like I didn’t even notice him, not panicking. Edward navigated me to a loop that would allow me to drive towards the hotel, which saved me a 180 maneuver. At one point, he was honking but we ignored him. So he swerved into the right lane as soon as one opened up and looked right at me as he passed by.
Slowed down, letting him increase the distance ahead of me. I would rather have him in front but I was afraid he would stop and block the road or something insane. My family calmed down but I was still tense watching his taillights. He did slam on the brakes once and I slowed to a crawl. The car behind me must have thought I was drunk. He started moving again. So did I, keeping as much distance as possible. He gained a lot of ground, then suddenly hit the brakes. I got a rush of adrenaline. He pulled over!, my mom yelled.
I approached carefully, seeing his car but not him. I worried he would jump in front of my car. I decided to make break for it, stepping on the gas. As we pass his car, he suddenly jumps out of the shadows with his thumb out like a hitchhiker. Still in nothing but a skullcap and g-string.
He’s waving some blue squares of paper in his other hand. They look like club fliers or something. Of course we don’t stop for this crazy motherfucker so we keep driving, passing him as he furiously waves his thumb at us. In my rearview mirror, I saw him throw his hand to the sky in naked frustration. Then he scrambled to his car,
He’s still following us, I said.
We were about 10 miles away from the hotel, arguing about why this was happening and what could he want. He was behind another car that was keeping him at bay, but it looked like he’d given up anyway. I performed a scary dotted-line pass of two cars and with them between me and the Prius, I felt better. The whole experience was bizarre and creepy, and I was glad I wasn’t the only one who’d witnessed it. How weird would that be if that guy was some ghost who haunts is stretch of freeway?, I said.
The weird thing was that there was something on the windshield the whole time we were driving, like a frost stain.the wipers weren’t resolving it; neither was the defrost. It was troublesome enough that my mom was complaining about it. But after we got Way from the guy, my mom made the comment that the weird frost was gone. Like somewhere during that guy chasing us, the weird frost disappeared.
When we pulled into the hotel, we asked the woman at the gate if shed ever heard of some guy in a g-string, then we told her the story. She was blown away. I’ve never heard of that, she said. You should have called the cops. The guy at the valet wondered if it was some guy he called Monkey Man that he’d heard some stories about, but when pressed for the details of those stories, he couldn’t provide details.
The funniest thing? My t-shirt read, WTF?