The encounter about which I’m going to write actually happened in 2007, but writing about the naked man in the subway reminded me of it. That should give you some idea of what’s probably coming.

In the spring of 2007 I saw The Reverend Horton Heat play at the TLA down on South Street. I was new to the area then, living out in Haverford, and I didn’t know that the Regional Rail lines stopped running late at night. As such, I found myself stranded in Philadelphia at around 1am without enough cash to take a cab and in weather a few degrees to cold to feel good about sleeping on a bench. Luckily, my good friend Liz lived on 10th and South at that time and she was still awake, so she told me to come over and crash on her couch.

Now, I should let you know that I have a habit of looking into illuminated windows at night because I am clearly a giant creeper. Really, though, it’s that I have a hard time not looking when it’s dark outside and light inside and I can see everything that’s going on. So as I walked down South Street from the TLA I was looking into any and every window that had something going on. Generally the scenes I encountered were boring until I looked into a second floor window on the south side of the street near 5th.

When I looked into the window I noticed several things in quick succession in a matter of seconds. First, I noticed that there was a man standing up against the window, almost touching it with his body. Second, I noticed that the man was wearing a halloween mask, one made to look like a combination of Edward Munch’s painting The Scream and a ghost. Third, I realized that this was the only thing the man was wearing. And finally, I realized that he was masturbating. Remember, he had the lights on. He clearly meant to be seen.

Some people - normal people - would probably have disgustedly looked away, or walked faster, or something along those lines. What did I do? I stopped. And then I laughed hysterically, right there on the sidewalk, all the while watching a naked man in a halloween mask masturbate against his window with the lights on. The best part is that the man in the window saw me stop and saw me start laughing. What did he do? He waved to me with his free hand. I waved back, composed myself, and continued on towards Liz’s house.

It was a Tuesday night around midnight when I left my friend Tate’s house in the Rittenhouse Square area and walked over to the Walnut-Locust station. The walk was pleasant, and I spent most of it enjoying the weather and appreciating the fact that nothing particularly weird had happened to me in a while. That’s probably where I went wrong.

I entered the subway at Walnut Street and Broad so that I could catch the Broad Street Line down to South Philly. On my way down the stairs I passed by two guys on their way out of the underground. One of them was on the phone and as he walked past I picked up some of his conversation. All I heard was, “Naw, man, for real, nigger’s like butt naked in the train!”

I should have turned around at that point but apparently I’m a glutton for this kind of shit so I continued down into the concourse. I looked to my left and there was no one there, so I panned around to the right. Sure enough I saw a completely naked man heading towards me at what I can only call a prance. Seriously. Genitals waiving, pot-belly sagging, this guy was practically skipping up the concourse and he was only about 15 feet away.

Once I’d mentally registered what was coming at me my instincts took over and I made a bee-line for the turnstile. Quickly swiping myself into the system I took what little comfort I could in the fact that an official SEPTA employee was now nearby, manning his booth in case of an emergency. (In retrospect I have no idea what the SEPTA agent could or even would have done for me if I’d actually needed him.)

Unwilling to witness much more of the naked man’s parade, I quickly made my way down to the platform and prayed that he wasn’t planning on taking the Broad Street Line southbound. Luckily, he wasn’t, but the images still haunt my dreams.

I live in the Italian neighborhood down in South Philly, which means that when it comes time to buy groceries I grab the old-ladyish black wire shopping cart I bought from a korean store in the Italian Market (go figure) and go to ACME. I was on the way home from just such a trip, my shopping cart filled with things like cat food and yogurt, when I met Big Anthony.

Big Anthony was wearing a wife beater, basketball shorts, and Adidas sandals with socks that went halfway up his legs. He was with four other teenage boys, all of whom were wearing almost exactly the same outfit. They were about half a block ahead of me and when I noticed them the only thing I could think was, “This is so South Philly!” They were walking slowly the same direction I was, and though I was gaining on them bit by bit I didn’t think much of it because my tiny street was coming up and I figured they were heading towards Broad.

I was wrong. Lo and behold, Big Anthony and his friends turned onto my street, and as I made my way towards my house I passed them sitting on a stoop arguing about something. Before I could determine what it was they were arguing about, one of them yelled out “Hey, you smoke weed?” I don’t know if I look like I’m perpetually high or something, but in Philly this always seems to be the question. I shook my head no and continued down the street towards my house. I hadn’t gone far, however, before Big Anthony came over and asked me if I lived on the block.

At this point I could either tell the truth and retreat into my house - which was now only a few doors down - or say no, walk all the way down to the end of the block, turn a corner, and hide until the group went away. The latter seemed like too much work, so I told the truth. Big Anthony promptly introduced himself (“Anthony, but you can call me Big Anthony”) and told me that we were neighbors. Turns out he lives a few houses down on the other side of my street with his parents. He very politely invited me to head over to his stoop any time I saw him sitting on it if I changed my mind and decided to smoke some weed.

I thanked him for the offer and went home to put my groceries away.

It was just another day and I was on my way to work, incredibly hungover, and looking forward to a greasy sandwich with which I could line my stomach. Around 1pm I made it to 15th and Walnut where I headed towards a street cart operated by a very nice man named Abdul. On the way to the cart, however, I was intercepted by a 20-something crusty squatter in a wife-beater. I guess he saw my bullet belt and decided that we might be kindred spirits because as I walked by him he stopped and shouted, “Hey where’s the show at!”

I paused momentarily, caught off guard, and told him I didn’t know. I then walked over to Abdul’s street cart and ordered my food. I expected the man to go away but instead he walked over to me and stood about a foot away from where I stood. He repeated himself: “Yo where is the show at!” Once again I told him I didn’t know. He seemed confused. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You seriously don’t know anything that’s going on right now?”

Abdul was making my sandwich and watching everything bemusedly. I was trying not to engage this crusty squatter in conversation but he kept repeating himself and inching closer, so finally I said, “No, I’m just trying to go to work. It’s like 1pm on a Tuesday…” That seemed to give him pause. “Do you like Black Flag?” he asked? I nodded, moving away another few inches. He pulled up his sleeve to show me an incredibly poorly-done stick-and-poke tattoo of the Black Flag bars. I don’t remember what I said, specifically, but I think it was something like, “Oh. …Nice.”

The dude finally shut up for a second, then opened his hand to reveal a crumpled ten dollar bill. “I just found ten dollars!” he said excitedly. “It’s time to go buy 40s and sit in the park!”

I congratulated him on his afternoon aspirations, told him maybe I’d see him around later, paid for my sandwich and booked it to work.

On Friday May 6th I made what I believed to be an excellent wardrobe decision: I wore my snazzy white cowboy boots with some short black denim shorts. I felt pretty awesome, and everything was fine. Until the sun went down.

The fun started during my walk through Center City to Suburban Station. At around 16th and Market a cab went flying by me and a guy leaned out the window to yell “Nice boots!” I waved acknowledgment of his compliment and continued walking, thinking nothing much of the interaction.

It continued at Suburban, when I entered the station behind two young bros. As we walked in a crazy homeless man petitioned us for money, asking us first for spare change, then for spare dollars, and finally yelling “WHERE’S MY MONEY!?” after us as we made our way down the stairs into the station’s concourse. The bros and I shared a moment of laughter on the way down, and then parted ways at the bottom of the stairs. I assumed the interaction was over until I heard them call out, “Have a good night, Boots!” Once again I waved acknowledgment and continued on my way.

Again everything was normal for a few minutes. As I swiped my transpass and walked through the turnstile to the Trolley bays, however, someone in the crowd of people already waiting yelled out “You get ‘em, cowgirl! Wooo!” which, of course drew stares and additional comments from the crowd. Having no specific person I to wave to this time around, I pulled out my phone and pretended to be doing something important.

The trolley came and I made my way to West Philly. The ride itself was uneventful and I hoped that the evening’s excitement was over. I made my way out of the 36th Street station eager to meet my friends at the Blockley Pourhouse but found myself disconcertingly disoriented.

As I was standing on the street checking my phone’s map to figure out where the hell I was, a man approached me out of the darkness. “Nice boots,” he said. “Where’s the party at tonight?” Startled and confused I told him I didn’t know and was just trying to find my friends. “Are you an undergrad?” he asked. “Um, no…. I’m not actually associated with Penn in any way,” I replied. “Ah, well I’m just trying to figure out where the party’s at tonight,” he repeated. “Let me know if you find it!” I told him I absolutely would and hastily walked away.

Lilly is not the typical crazy person about whom I write in this blog. And by that I mean I didn’t meet her in a cab or on the subway or waiting for a bus or drinking coffee. I met her in a living room at Haverford College. She had come over from nearby Bryn Mawr College - her alma mater - to spend the night chilling with friends of a friend which, in this case, happened to be me.

The whole event was low-key. Several of the people in the room (myself excluded) had taken mushrooms and were having an excellent time lying about giggling at nothing, struggling to roll their joints and failing miserably. The rest of us were sipping on drinks and listening to music. I was sitting on the floor against a coffee table when Lilly walked in.The conversation was generally mundane. Until Lilly joined: she was with 3 other girls, all of whom seemed understandably mellow upon walking into a strange room full of people they didn’t know. Lilly, however, seemed destined to break that mold.

For some reason we were talking about TMJ, the thing that makes it difficult to open your jaw very wide (or something like that). Lilly complained of suffering from it, and my friend Colleen revealed that she is also afflicted. Lilly, suddenly interested, leaned towards Colleen and said, “Oh you have TMJ, too? Have you ever like, gotten it when you’re giving a blowjob? That’s like… the worst!” Colleen, at whom this question was directed, didn’t really know what to say. And neither did the rest of us, so we awkwardly let the moment pass.

The next half hour or so went by generally quietly, Lilly’s only real contributions to the conversation being “The past tense of ghost ride the whip is ‘I have ghost ridded!’ It’s slang so that’s the slang past tense!” and something concerning a girl who wasn’t present that was along the lines of “Oh it was really bad she took like a percoset and drank a margarita and got all crazy and…” and at that point I zoned out.

Lilly’s cardinal moment came directly before she left, however. We were all still lounging about listening to Colleen’s 90’s playlist, commenting on how badass Alliyah was before she died and wishing someone other than Beyonce had made it big out of Destiny’s Child. Lilly stood up and said, “Wow I mean, I can’t believe you guys aren’t like, above this music.” We all stopped.

“What do you mean?” my friend Anna asked.

“Well, I mean,” Lilly said, “I’m just surprised we’re not listening to some obscure band from a Washington coffee house or something.” There was silence for a moment. Colleen and I commented on the fact that we were both wearing plaid shirts but other than that everyone was basically too confused to know what to do.

As that point one of the girls with whom Lilly had entered the party stood up to leave. “This is why I don’t like going out with you!” she said to Lilly: “You alienate everyone we hang out with!” After that they all went home. And so did I.

Because I am busy and bad at studying, I needed a place to catch up on reading before my LSAT class one Sunday. Hedging my bets I headed to the ING Cafe on Walnut street.

Everything went fine for about an hour an a half, at which point a large group of people - composed entirely of the homeless and insane - entered the Cafe. (How did I know they were homeless and insane? What else would you assume about 11 people covered in stains who reek of urine, wear mismatched shoes, and twitch a lot?) Their conversation suggested that they came to this particular Cafe every Sunday under the auspices of someone named Kevin, who may or may not have been there with them.

Initially there was no problem. I remained at my table, the two girls studying law briefs at the table across from me continued their activities, and the dude reading Faust by the window stayed where he was. But then, one by one, all those people left. And of course, because I am brilliant, I had chosen a table in the middle of the Cafe, so I now found myself dead-center in a ring of crazy.

I kept my headphones on and looked determinedly at my study materials but the surrounding noise made it impossible to really concentrate, so after a while I stopped trying and chose to focus instead on what was being said. Most of it was mundane, if strange, but the crowning moment came when one particular gentleman (who was continually asked why he had consumed an energy drink before arriving and summarily denied any coffee by the group) decided to share his opinion on women.

He said (and I quote): ” I just mess with Jewish Girls. I don’t want no dark women. Or if I see a pretty Vietnamese girl, I ask her too, Lord knows! My name is Delano, not McDonald. I only do Jewish through and through!”

At that point I relocated to a Starbucks. Where the only armchair left was next to an obese homeless man with shit-caked jeans. Philadelphia, you complete me.

Whitey approached me while I waited for a bus near City Hall. I swear to God I didn’t engage him in any way: no subway tokens, no cab rides, no crutches. He simply wanted to talk. To me. About weed.

First he asked me my name, and I told him it was Stephanie (which it isn’t). He then asked me if I went to school and I said I went to Temple (which I don’t). He also asked me where I worked, and I said I was a barista at a Starbucks in North Philly (though at the time I didn’t know the difference between a Latte and a Macchiato).

The questions and answers continued in a mundane, non-threatening but vaguely annoying fashion for a minute or two until Whitey came to his real point: he had to know if I smoke weed. I told him no I don’t (which is true) and he didn’t believe me.

After pressing me for “the truth” and running into the same answer several times, he finally switched it up by saying, “But you know people who smoke weed, right baby?” At this point I thought that maybe Whitey (who was black, by the way) was a cop because seriously, who asks you this kind of shit at 9pm at the bus stop across the street from City Hall? I gave him a non-committal answer. “How would you like to sell weed for me? You don’t smoke it, you could make a whole lotta money. How about I give you some premium bud and you can sell my weed?”

I thanked him for the offer and got on the next bus that pulled up to the stop (which wasn’t mine).

So today I fell on some stairs at work and had to go to the hospital. But that’s not important. What IS important is what happened in the cab ride home from 30th Street Station.

Fully equipped with a set of Rite Aid crutches, a bag full of store-brand Ibuprofin, and a killer limp, I got into the taxi line. My driver was a young man named Nasser who was checking his reflection in his cell phone when I winced my way into the back of his cab.

“What happened?” he asked. I told him. ” Did your doctor give you some percoset?” he asked. Honestly disappointed, I informed him that all I had was my giant bottle of run-of-the-mill, store-bought medication. “That’s too bad,” he continued. “I got into a car accident once, and my back hurt, and I went to a doctor and he gave me this muscle relaxant bullshit and I was like what the fuck is this?” I nodded, not entirely sure where he was going with this story.

Thankfully I didn’t have to wonder much longer: “So I went to this other doctor and he gave me percoset. That was like, a few months ago or something… All these people want to buy it from me, but I got to keep it for myself, you know? People say it’s addiction. I know its addiction.” Once we got to this point I knew I was in trouble. He went on: “I take four before work. Otherwise, you know, I don’t want to work.” And then I knew I was really in trouble. My taxi driver had just informed me, while driving through the streets of Philadelphia, that he popped 4 percoset before every shift. I silently prayed that it was nearing the end of his day in the cab.

At this point my father called my cell phone so there was a break in Nasser’s monologue. After I hung up my call, however, he wrapped up his tale of percoset addiction by telling me that when he stops getting prescriptions written he is going to buy his hillbilly heroin on the street. Then he called his doctor (while driving on persocet) and set up an appointment to see her later that day.

I swear to God I can’t make this shit up.

No good deed goes un-punished.

Getting onto the Broad Street Line at Tasker Morris one day, I passed a woman who was 20 cents short of the full fare. The SEPTA agent on duty wouldn’t let her through. Since I’d found a token on the ground earlier that day and had a monthly trans-pass, I gave her the token.

Down on the platform I took a seat on a bench and waited for a train. A few minutes later the woman sat down next to me. We sat in silence for a moment, and then she turned to me and said, “Have you heard about the Kensington Strangler?” This is how I met Danielle. “Oh my god I saw him on the El this morning! It was crazy! He’s killed like 5 girls oh my god!” I think I said something like, “Wow, that’s pretty crazy.”

There was a brief moment of silence and she said suddenly: “Do you do drugs?” I told her no, I do not do drugs. She shrugged and said, “I just got outta jail. I was in there for three months cause of heroin.” What do you say to that? I’m sorry? Did it suck? Were you someone’s bitch? I was silent. “I got clean for a while but then they went and arrested me again! Can you believe that? t I don’t do heroin anymore though. But lots of other stuff.” When I didn’t say anything she began twitching frantically.

Luckily, that’s when the train arrived. I said goodbye and walked onto a car, assuming the interaction was at an end. Danielle sat down directly across from me spent the rest of my ride, commenting on my shoes. I got off a few stops early and waited for the next Northbound train.