An Unusual Encounter

In pursuit of my continuing efforts to meet new people and make new friends in Salt Lake I once again turned to meetup.com to see if I could find any new and interesting groups to join. I found several but one in particular caught my eye, the Beer Meetup Group. Now being a fan of drinking, and liking beer as a beverage I thought great I want in! Fortunately they were having their very first meetup that same evening at the Squatter Pub Breweries in downtown Salt Lake City. I sent a text message to Ahmed asking if he’d like to go and arranged to meet him at his house right after work before going to the meetup location. It was after I picked Ahmed up that the evening became really unusual. I was almost out of cigarettes and so I stopped at a gas station really close to his house. As I was getting out of my car a girl walked up and said something about a ride and I absently said no rides and continued to walk into the gas station. I did notice that she’d opened the back car door on the passenger side of the car.

As I was waiting to pay for my cigarettes I kept trying to look outside the door but I’d parked too far back to see what was going on. I paid for everything and went outside to see what was happening and saw her in the back seat of my car talking to Ahmed and thought to myself… damnit I really don’t want to deal with this right now. I think she was high or might just be a tweaker because she wasn’t in a very coherent state. She explained that she’d just left the hospital and that she didn’t want to go back to the homeless shelter because she had been raped the night before, unusual that since she hopped into the car of a complete stranger without hesitation, and that she needed a ride to Roy where her grandma lived.

I explained that I wasn’t going up to Roy as I lived in Salt Lake and didn’t really want to drive that far and miss meeting new friends. A little callous but under the circumstances things were very strange and I didn’t want to be any more involved than I had to be at that point. I explained that I was on my way to Squatters and she asked if I’d take her that far. I figured at that point it wouldn’t cause me any trouble to take her there even if it didn’t really get her any closer to Roy. She started to explain how hard things had been on her and talked about how she was walking around barefoot and had scabs all over her feet. She wasn’t able to keep a straight line of conversation going but asked if we’d be able to call her grandma for her to see if she could arrange for someone to pick her up. Ahmed called the number she supplied and gave the phone over to her, she said her name was Crystal, and after a couple minutes of conversation his phone died.

I then dialed the number again on my phone and let Crystal talk to her for a few minutes before she started to make a confusing mess out of the situation and demanded my phone back so I could tell her grandma were I was going and how to get there so she could pick up her granddaughter. I agreed to keep an eye on Crystal until she could get down to Salt Lake from Roy but by then we were at Squatters and I was interested in meeting new people and making friends. I did go out a couple of times to make sure everything was ok and at one point Crystal asked me if I’d get her a drink to go. I made some non-committal agreement and decided at that point that I wasn’t going to go back outside until I was certain she wasn’t there anymore.

When Ahmed and I left she’d gone and it was no longer my problem. I don’t know if her grandma found Squatters or if she just wandered off on her own. The few times I went out she kept pacing up and down the length of the side walk and would occasionally wander into the road a few steps. I have to chalk this up to be one of the most unusual encounters I’ve ever had in my life and I’ve had a few that are up there.