I’d set up my stand on the Ave, sold a few fish, and there were no Christians preaching, so it looked like a good or at least an ordinary day. Until I noticed the same tall, kinda skinny, kinda funny-looking guy I’d spotted a few weeks ago (5/26).

This time he wasn’t wearing the baseball cap, but he has a distinctively ugly face, a face you’d remember, more memorable for me because the last time he’d hung around on Telegraph he’d tailed me all the way back to San Francisco, gotten off at the same station as me, rode the same escalator up, and followed me across the street before I shook him off.

Ever since, I’ve wondered if it had been my imagination, but today there he was again — leaning on a wall on Telegraph. His pointed his head in various directions, didn’t openly stare, but it felt like he was watching me. That’s unlikely, right? Impossible. But there he was again.

I sat and sold fish, keeping an eye on that man who seemed to be keeping an eye on me.

In the mid-afternoon, I asked Umberto to watch my table, and headed for the basement boy’s room in a tavern across the street, where they don’t mind vendors peeing. My route would take me past my watcher, and I was going to stop and talk to him, introduce myself, make a snide remark, and see what he’d say.

After I’d crossed the street, though, he was gone from where he’d been leaning for half an hour. When I came back to my table, he was still gone, and he stayed gone for the rest of the afternoon.

Which was a relief. It’s all only been in my head, I figured, as I packed my cart and said good night to Umberto and a few other vendors I don’t hate. Rolled the cart to Jay’s house, locked it up, then walked to the BART station, where that same man was sitting on the subway platform, reading a newspaper.

My heart leapt, my spirits dove, and I was suddenly certain none of this has been my imagination. From across the platform, I waved at the man, and shouted a friendly, “Hey, fucker!” I wanted him to know I’d seen him. He didn’t respond.

We got onto the same westbound train, but in different cars. I wasn’t sure what to do. I enjoy watching spy movies but never wanted to be in one.

A natural-born coward, I decided to put distance between us, and as the train rolled along I stepped through the doors into the next car, and then the next, further from my possible/probable pursuer.

At MacArthur station, as usual, I transferred to a San Francisco-bound BART. I didn’t see him step aboard, but knew he was on the train. Exactly the same thing had happened two weeks ago. Exactly the same everything, actually.

For safety’s sake, I did something different — rode past my station, all the way to Glen Park. I got off but stayed on the platform, scanning the crowd for the tall, skinny, ugly man, but he wasn’t there. I boarded the next eastbound train, and stepped off at the station near my hotel. Didn’t see my pursuer, and I did spend some time looking.

I rode the escalator up, and decided to walk away from my hotel, not toward it. Crossed the street and walked further from home, waited, then walked all the way around the block until I was back above the subway station.

Still didn’t see the guy, but I wasn’t feeling good about not seeing him. It was all way too much. I wanted it to all be coincidence, but knew it wasn’t.

It didn’t seem wise to walk home, so I stepped into the cutaway entrance for a shop that was closed, and stood in the shadows. I hadn’t even seen him coming, but almost immediately, the tall, skinny, ugly man walked briskly by, looking into the distance instead of seeing me in the cutaway, right beside him.

“Hey, motherfucker,” I said softly, and he jumped but stopped. “Why are you following me?”

He slowly turned, found me in the shadows, and said, “I’m not following you,” but damn, he looked flustered.

“Bullshit. You’re following me, and I want to know why.” He didn’t answer, and the situation started to overwhelm me.

Ever wondered what you’re capable of, under the right or wrong circumstance? I’ve wondered. I was wishing my switchblade was with me, but it wasn’t. I had my mace, though, and fingered its safety latch in my pants pocket.

“Look, asshole,” I said to his silence, “the longer you stand there and say nothing, the rougher this is gonna go.”

And still I was thinking it might be a big fat misunderstanding. Maybe I’ve been mistaken about all of it, today and two weeks ago. Maybe the man lives in my neighborhood, and he’s headed home. Maybe this, maybe that. I wanted him to convince me I’d been wrong.

“I just,” he paused and swallowed hard. “I just like your zine…” and I didn’t even hear the rest of whatever he said.

I’d thought he was a cop or a pervert or simply a nutcase, but hadn’t seriously considered that he might be yet another reader trying to get past the paper-and-mail wall, to meet me in the flesh. It’s happened several times, and I hate it, but it’s never happened like this before.

“You like my zine,” I said, slow and angry. “Why didn’t you say hello on Telegraph, like the other nutzoids?”

“You don’t like it when people say hi on Telegraph.”

“I don’t like it when people follow me, either!”

My mind was whirling ahead of itself, stumbling around, falling flat on its face, trying to understand.

Is this John Bennett, I wondered — the jerk who used call-return to find me at the hotel’s pay phone? (5/6)

Is he Mr Previn, the man who’d offered me a gig, but been a no-show when we were supposed to meet? (5/29).

Is he Mr Urgent, the caller who’s called a dozen times to hire me, but won’t say what for? (6/3)

Maybe he’s some goofball whose zine got a bad review in Pathetic Life, and he’s looking for bloody revenge?

So many possibilities, none of them good.

And another thought: this man had followed me home from Telegraph Ave, but on my way to the BART station, I always stop at Jay’s house to lock up the fish cart. So he might know where I live, but he definitely knows where she lives. I’ll have to call her, and tell her to be paranoid and scared and worried, just like me.

“What’s your name?” I demanded like a cop.

“Lance Collier.” His eyes were reddening, like he was about to cry. Well, boo hoo, butt-head.

“Give me your wallet.”

“Why?”

I let the question hang. It didn’t deserve an answer, but I said again, “Give me your wallet, you fuck, or you get a face full of mace.”

He reached into his pocket, handed me his wallet, and I opened it and found his driver’s license: “Lance William Collier,” I said, and he smiled like we were pals.”Sit down, Lance.”

He hesitated, so I pointed at the concrete base of the vestibule I was still standing in. He stepped over, put his back to the wall, and slid down until his butt was on the ground.

I pulled my notebook from my backpack, and wrote down his name, address, and license number, then put the license back in his wallet, and dropped the wallet on his head.

“Tell me, Lance Collier — are you sane?”

“Yes,” he said, “I’m sane.” He glanced embarrassedly at a few people passing by, and I can only wonder what they were wondering.

“Why are you following me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I— I just wanted to see where you live.” Thoughts of John Lennon flashed across my mind.

“You are so far out of line, I ought to mace you just on principle.” He said nothing. “And what were you going to do after you’d followed me home?”

“Well, nothing,” he pleaded. “I’m not some stalker.”

I gave that a single fake, exaggerated “Ha! You’re not? Man, you do what stalkers do. You followed me from Telegraph, twice — hell, maybe more than twice. Twice that I’ve noticed. If that’s not stalking me, what do you call it?”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, and I sometimes call myself pathetic, but this guy really was. He was shaking, maybe starting to cry, rubbing his watery nose with his shirt sleeve. “Can I go now?”

It took a few seconds to think what to say. “You’re not under arrest. You can leave any time you like.” But I was standing over him, and the angle was perfect for giving him a hard kick to the nuts.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, as if that mattered. He put his hands on the cement to start hoisting himself up.

“There’s just one thing,” I said, swinging my leg and foot to emphasize what I could’ve (maybe should’ve) easily done. He stopped mid-hoist. “I have your name and address, which I’ll be sharing with a few friends of mine. Just know… you fuckin’ schmuck… that if I see you again, ever, or if anything unlucky happens…  to me, or to anyone I know, there’s not gonna be a knock at your door. You won’t know what’s coming.”

“Jeez, I said I’m sorry,” he said.

“But I haven’t said all is forgiven, and it’s not. Something to remember, Lance Collier — if there’s a next time, I won’t just be standing here, talking. If there’s a next time, I will kill you.”

“I said I’m sorry!” he said, now standing up.

“And I said I will kill you. So, do we understand each other?”

“Yeah.” 

“Goodbye forever, Lance Collier.”

He said “I’m sorry” for the nth time, promised he wouldn’t bother me again, and then he walked off toward the subway station.

I stood where I was, and watched until he went down the stairs. Then I crossed the street and went into Western Donuts, bought two glazed and a big cup of coffee, and decided this would be the last entry in my diary/zine.

T H E     E N D

our 84th weekly open mike

Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.

6/13/2026

Anything goes

itsdougholland.com 
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A 30-ish black woman was riding the bus, and all I saw was a black woman riding the bus. Ordinary scene, ordinary woman, ordinary everything. Gave it no additional thought, as I looked out the window, watching a young kid on a skateboard, wishing I could skate, wondering if it’s too late to learn.

A black man came forward from the back of the bus, and said “Excuse me” to the woman. He looked every bit as ordinary as she, and she ignored him, probably assuming he was just trying to make time.

Maybe he wasn’t, though, because his second line was, “You are Kenyan,” stated as a fact, not a question. It came with an accent, presumably Kenyan.

“Yes,” she said, with what sounded like the same accent.

“I am also Kenyan,” he said, and then their conversation switched to a language unknown to me. Wild guess? Kenyan.

She lit up, and for the next ten blocks they talked like old neighbors, which I guess they were. They both enjoyed the chance to speak their native language, until eventually the man rang the bell and stepped off the bus, saying, “Goodbye, and welcome to America,” in English (obviously). She continued smiling for another few blocks.

Race is weird, ain’t it? An Asian acquaintance once told me that he could tell what country another Asian person was from — Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc — by the structure of their face, but whatever he could see, I couldn’t. I can certainly tell the difference between individual faces, but have no idea what makes a random Chinese face distinguishable from a random Korean face.

And I guess it’s the same with Africans, if two Kenyan strangers can recognize each other as Kenyans.

Hell, I’m white, but there’s no way I could tell a Scotsman from an Irishman from an Australian, unless one of them’s wearing a kilt or waving a flag.

♦ ♦ ♦

The fat, balding guy sitting toward the back of the bus? Yeah, it was me.

Diagonally opposite, an East Asian woman sat with her daughter, about four years old. Little kids on the bus can be unpleasant, squawking and screaming and singing and throwing toys or whatever, but this kid had been properly trained and was hardly any bother at all.

The mom rang the bell, the bus pulled into a stop, the doors opened, and mom & kid got off. As the door closed, I noticed a pink hat with ears, on the seat they’d just left. Probably would’ve done this if the kid had been loud, but she’d been quiet so what the hell, I grabbed her hat, and shouted to the driver as he let the brake off, “Could you open the doors again please?”

I was too far away to hear whether the driver sighed or muttered, but he stopped the bus again, and opened the doors. I didn’t get off, but hollered, “Hey lady!” She was the only lady there and only a few feet away, so she stopped and turned and looked at me, and I leaned out the door, holding a stanchion in one hand and the kid’s beanie in the other. She took the hat, and smiled and nodded but didn’t say thank you, possibly because she didn’t speak English. On the bus, she’d been talking Pakistani or whatever to the kid.

Then I shouted “Thanks!” to the driver, sat down again, and we rolled away.

Please note, I don’t like telling stories where I’m the good guy. It’s bad for my image. In this story, the good guy is the bus driver, for stopping and re-opening the doors, even though he’d already stopped and opened the doors. Some drivers won’t do that a second time.

♦ ♦ ♦

A youngish white man was riding the bus, in a ponytail and stripped Aztec-style shirt. He was talking zen nonsense to strangers who didn’t seem interested, and he said something about crystals and his chakra, and I rolled my eyes and wished I could shut off my ears. He babbled on with a few more blocks of zen talk, and then said, “That’s why I work at Safeway. My way is safe, and I hope yours is, too.”

It was too stupid to be tolerated, so I spoke up from two rows behind on the bus: “Is that really *why you work at Safeway? Not for the paycheck, but just so you can have that pithy line?”

The zenny guy looked at me for a long moment, and then forgot the zen and said, “What is your fuckin’ problem?”

I shook my head but said nothing more, simply turned and looked out the window.

♦ ♦ ♦

A different day, on a different bus, I was in a front-facing seat, just behind a woman wearing cut-offs with her legs up, in a sideways seat. She was half a century too young for a man of my age, but did I mention, legs up in a sideways seat.

Spent half my ride side-eyeing her legs, wondering how high they went, and half my ride looking at a man in a sideways seat in front of me, facing the leggy woman. He had a better view of her, but was being less discreet about it. When she rang the bell, she glared at him but not at me (discretion is the better part of valor). She stepped off the bus, and that man’s eyes followed her until the bus pulled ’round a corner.

Me, I’d seen enough of the legs, so I just watched the watcher watching, and wondered why he had to be so brazen about it. Do the math, man. If you make a lady wearing cut-offs feel self-conscious or endangered, she’s less likely to wear cut-offs next time. Why would you do that?

Should’ve said that to the dude, but he had muscles.

6/12/2026

Transit Takes

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