Junior and the Serial Killer

For Piñata: A Personal Essay Show (December 2007)

Junior was a fixture on The Ave, the major thoroughfare just west of the University of Washington campus where the street kids often congregated. I was never quite clear whether or not he was actually homeless. I don’t recall him asking for money or anything, and his ceaseless dancing seemed less like busking and more like his personal gift to the world. He had a never-ending supply of plastic sunglasses, the lenses of which he decorated with glitter so thick it was hard to believe he could see out of them. He looked like a pimp from a bygone age whose flash and sparkle were slightly tarnished.

I have it on good authority that Marcus extended the first invite. My roommate Marcus wanted our parties to be epic, legendary. If Junior, a minor celebrity in the UW student circle, were to show up to one of our house parties it would be a total coup. And it was, that first time.

“Dude, is that the guy from The Ave?” someone asked in line at the keg.
“Yeah, Junior.”
“That guy’s hilarious.”

And sure he was, like the Energizer Bunny before the commercials got old and repetitive.
Once that door had been opened, however, it was impossible to close. Junior would spot one of us on the street and we wouldn’t be able shake him. If we ducked into a store or coffee shop he’d simply wait outside for us, continuing the barrage once we reemerged. He took to sleeping on the old couch on the front porch, leaving empty 40 bottles like his calling card. He’d let himself into our backyard where roommates and friends could always be found on warm nights and we learned that outside the context of a party he wasn’t nearly as charming to be around. His voice seemed unnecessarily loud, his spontaneous dance breaks grew tiresome, he monopolized conversation and just couldn’t take the hint that we didn’t want him there. I couldn’t avoid The Ave completely but when I’d see Junior I’d cross the street, pretending to be late for class, wanting more than anything to not have to deal with him.

One night Claudia, Carew and I were watching TV in the living room when the front door flew open. In stumbled Marcus who dropped his bike on the carpet and ran across the room.
“Junior’s heading down the alley!” We all sprung into action, turned off the TV and all the lights and then belly-crawled to the stairs. Staying as low as possible we snuck up to my room where I had a good view of the backyard. There was Junior, dancing through the gate, announcing his arrival as if he were Flava Flav. Met with silence he walked up to the house and peered in through the windows. I pictured Marcus’ bike on its side in the living room, the front wheel still spinning slowly, contradicting the notion that no one was home. Junior looked up towards my bedroom window where we crouched, spying on him and we ducked down, faces to the carpet. The four of us stayed up there for what seemed like hours, positive he was on the back patio just waiting us out. He stopped coming around shortly after that. I felt a twinge of guilt, thinking perhaps he saw us hiding from him that night. But that tiny twinge was far outweighed by the overwhelming feeling that if I never saw that guy again it would be too soon.

That was until a couple years later.

Molly, Claudia and I were headed back to the U-District from a party in Eastlake. It had only been lightly misting when we left the party but soon the rain took on more weight until it was a downpour. We huddled under a bus shelter to avoid getting completely drenched. I wasn’t really familiar with the Eastlake bus schedule - it could have been more than an hour for a bus, or they might not have even been running that late at night. This was ten years ago and I only knew one person with a cell phone and that one person wasn’t one of us, not that it mattered because none of our friends had cars anyway. We were potentially stranded. Down the street a pair of headlights came our way, slowing to a stop alongside us. I’m not very good with car models; it was a boat of a thing from the seventies. A figure leaned over from the driver’s side and rolled down the window.
“You need a ride?” A forty-ish man with shoulder-length stringy hair blinked at us behind little wire rimmed glasses. Claudia’s eyes were huge and panicked, she might as well have yelled “Hell no, get out of here you freak!” But I shrugged and Molly shrugged in return. Two shrugs beat a panicked look so I opened the passenger side door. Pushing the seat forward, I told Claudia and Molly to sit in back and I would take the front, figuring that my giantess-like size would prevent him from trying anything. The car smelled like wet dog, everything was damp from the rain and I knew in an instant we should have listened to Claudia.

“I’m Andy,” he offered. He wore a leather patchwork vest which in retrospect I guess could have been human skin.

“I’m Gretchen, this is Claudia and Molly. Molly, Claudia and Gretchen, Gretchen Molly and Claudia. Claudia, Gretchen and Molly.” I kept saying our names focusing on something I heard in a sociology class about serial killers thinking of their victims as objects not fellow human beings. If Andy saw us as real people with real feelings he would be less likely to torture and kill us, right? It really made so much sense back then.

“I have to make a quick stop,” Andy said and pulled onto an unlit street that led down to the water. We passed boarded-up house boats and dark sailboats and the car began to slow. Holy shit, this is bad. This is really bad. I reached my hand between the seats and Molly and Claudia immediately grabbed it, all of us squeezing on to each other for dear life.

“It puts the lotion on its skin,“ I said to myself.
“Gretchen, that’s not funny,” I scolded.
“I have no upper body strength, how in the hell am I going to climb out of a hole?”
“I’ll be lucky if he leaves me alive long enough to even consider how I’m going to get out of a hole.”
“My mom is going to be so pissed at me.”
“She can’t be mad, I’ll be dead.”
“Okay, she’ll be sad. And then she’ll be mad.”

This may sound over-reactionary but Seattle, the city I’d fallen madly in love with, my adopted home, was also home to Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer and…Andy. The most gruesome scenarios I could possibly dream up had probably already been storyboarded by some freak in my neighborhood with women issues.

“Andy, we really do have to be getting back. Any way you could drop us off first?” Molly asked. He considered this staring straight ahead, and surprisingly turned the car around and headed back up to the main street.

Oh sweet baby jesus, you are brilliant Molly.

The rain had stopped by the time we made it to the bridge taking us back over to the U-District. “Anywhere along here is fine,” Molly said as soon as Andy turned onto The Ave.

“No. I’ll take you all the way to your place. Where do you live?” he asked, never once looking at any of us. Claudia and I lived together a little farther north in Greenlake, but Molly’s apartment was just a few blocks up the street and there was no way we were going to show this guy where she lived. Andy, however, didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was going to take “no” for an answer. What in the hell were we going to do, drive around with this guy until he got a hankering for the taste of human intestines? I couldn’t think of an ending to the evening that didn’t involve us begging for our lives.

Then, out of nowhere, like an angel he appeared. Junior. He was dancing with himself on the corner. “That’s one of our friends! You can drop us off here!” I flung open the door, forcing Andy to stop.

“Junior!” Claudia called from the backseat. Junior bent over looking into the car through his glittered sunglasses.

“Hello ladies!” he said grinning from ear to ear.

We jumped from the car one by one and into Junior’s outstretched arms. Glaring at us, Andy slowly drove away, only to turn around and head back for another look before speeding away for good. We leaned into Junior, our accidental savior, and walked up the street toward Molly’s building. I forgave him all the nights he invited himself into our lives, and all the beer bottles I had to clean up and all the energy sucking conversations he trapped me in. That cold, wet night, I loved Junior. Getting into that car was a horrible mistake and I knew how very lucky we were it turned out the way it did, walking up The Ave like Halloween castaways, a ragamuffin pimp and his three hoes.