I don't even know.

I'm shaking. I can't even bring myself to title this.

So, here's the thing: tonight, for the first time, I felt unsafe in my (relatively secure) neighborhood. This evening, I met with a new coworker in Wicker Park for pizza and a beer, then headed home. I exited the subway and crossed the street to buy shampoo and hand soap at the local 24-hour CVS. I was talking to my mom on the phone as I made my way toward the cash register. And then I heard this voice--

"Hey, sweetie. You look real good tonight. You so pretty, sweetheart." Et cetera. Et cetera. He kept walking closer up behind me.

This is nothing (too) new, although the incidence of my being whistled at in the street as I walk from my home to the local coffeehouse, of being shouted at from cars, is something that has ramped up significantly as the temperature in the city has soared. Maybe the heat does something to people's inhibition, accounting for the rise in both homicides and street harassment. I don't know. But, anonymous sir who tried to holla at me at 9:30 p.m. in the drugstore, you picked the wrong goddamn day.

"Hold on," I said to my mom. I turned around and looked him right in the eye. "Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? Really. What kind of response are you expecting from me?" This guy was my age, maybe a little younger. He looked shocked that I would actually call him out on it.

"Oh, not you, sweetie. I was talking to my friend." His slightly older male friend, who was walking behind him. No. I'm sorry. Bullshit.

"Seriously," I said, and headed for the register, ending the phone call with my mom. As I was checking out at the self-scanner, I heard him again, scanning his items two machines down. I finished first. They seemed to be finishing, too. He kept looking over at me. There was one woman working, a younger Latina girl. I walked over to her and said, as quietly as I could, "Listen, those guys--one of them was saying stuff to me, walking behind me in the store. I called him on it. I just don't feel comfortable leaving right now. Is it all right if I hang around for a couple minutes until they're gone?"

"Those guys over there?" She nodded when I indicated that, yeah, that one there. "Yeah, sure, you can go, like, look at a magazine or something."

And I stayed, for around ten minutes more, just to make sure they were gone, because, after having embarrassed that asshole in front of his friend, who is to say that he wouldn't have followed me, or waited to harass me outside? I know literally nothing about either of those men, and no amount of experience I have being in the presence of men could possibly assure me that they wouldn't take action beyond calling out at me behind my back as I walked down the tissue paper aisle talking to my mother.

I just arrived home. It was a half-mile walk, and I went the whole way with my mother on the phone again (so someone would know exactly where I was if, god forbid, anything went down), my keys clutched in one hand like a knife, my heavy bag held so I could swing it at someone if I needed to. I have never, never felt unsafe in this neighborhood before. I have always been aware of the threat--statistics say that, in the United States, 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted (and that doesn't include assaults which go unreported)--but never before have I felt personally threatened or at-risk.

Of course, there is someone out there reading this who will say to him- or herself, "You're overreacting." But with statistics like that (ONE IN FIVE), with the number of my friends who have themselves been victims of sexual assault, with the knowledge that we live in a society which, should the worst happen, would ask me, "Why were you wearing that dress?" or "What were you doing walking down that street at that time of night?," how can I not?

The pepper spray is going in my purse now, permanently, and it will, to me, feel like an added weight, a constant reminder that, yes, you are at risk, it could happen at any moment, and there is, in all likelihood, nothing you can do about it. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to rail at a world in which I am held responsible for the prevention of my own possible rape, in which so many of my friends who have been violated in the most horrible and demeaning of ways are hesitant to speak out about it for fear of facing the humiliation associated with reporting their assault.

I am tired of being treated like an object, because when a man whistles at woman on the street, when he shouts at her out a car window, he is not expressing his appreciation of her as a person, as a complete human being, but reminding her that she is an object presented for his, and other men's, visual consumption. Because when I wear a dress, when I put on high heels and makeup and jewelry, I am not dressing myself up for the approval of men, even if I happen to be going into a situation in which I will encounter men; these are things I do for myself. In the summer, I wear skirts and dresses because it is more comfortable than squeezing myself into a pair of confining trousers. I wear makeup because I like to, and I wear heels because public transportation gives me the privilege of never having to walk farther than I want to.

I am angry. I am so, so, so angry. I am angry for the one in five American women who will be assaulted in their lifetime. I am angry for my friends. I am angry for Savannah Dietrich, the young woman who had the courage to call out her rapists, then to defy the court-issued gag order which prevented her from making their names public. I am angry because this isn't just me, isn't an isolated incident where a man tried to chat me up in a drugstore without knowing what he had just stepped in. This is something that I--and so many other young women--deal with every. single. day.