As someone that travels along the east coast fairly regularly, I’ve traveled through here plenty of times and never had too much of an issue before. I had just gotten off a very long amtrak from NY and I was waiting up in a secluded area of the parking garage just doing my own thing. My partner who I usually every time would meet up there was wrapped up in some pretty heavy traffic. I hadn’t checked my phone while dragging my luggage from the platform all the way to the parking lot top to see it as I was expecting him, otherwise I would have known to wait inside the building instead.

I wasn’t bothered to wait, but I wasn’t sure how long I’d be up there. It was after a good 10 minutes that I noticed there were two men sitting in a tucked away corner in my line of vision smoking a joint. This didn’t put me off or anything since I like to smoke myself. After another good chunk of minutes went by I started to hear one of the men shout, “hey, girl! Look at me! Get over here! Come take a hit!” I turned to see the 3 of them looking at me as 1 was holding the joint, and I truly don’t know what came over me— I didn’t even really know what they were really smoking, and I just… walked right over to them all smiles and bright eyes, knowing my voice was high due to my nervousness, I cringe typing this at how cheery I sounded when I said “oh, wow, thank you so much!” As I took it from his fingers, brought it up to my mouth, wrapped my lips around it while maintaining flitting eye contact between these 3 men surrounding me as my hair blew around my face and I took a drag.

They didn’t say anything more, so I took another hit and smiled wide thanked them again and walked back to the side to wait for my ride. I was already feeling good, I wasn’t paying attention much and I was pretty warmed up now. But I guess they didn’t really like that I just walked away… and I guess I should have expected they wanted a reward of sorts from me, I don’t know why I thought I could just walk up to them and away like that…

I was giddy, high, and playing on my phone near my luggage at this point, where I was standing just a few feet away I could hear that the group of men were mumbling to each other things I couldn’t exactly make out. I also started to feel their eyes on me, like heavy weights boring into my skin. I glanced at them a few times and confined it was true. For reference I was wearing black leggings and a long sleeve shirt that were all very form fitting. I was both sweating from anxiety and from the hits I took, my mind was swimming and my blood felt like ice. Suddenly one of the men were shouting for me to “get back over here, bitch, I know you can hear us talking to you!” That’s when it hit me what was going on, what could be going on, and fuck my heart was racing!!!! My head snapped up and I couldn’t see ANY other people in the parking garage, there’s no roof up there as it’s the top open air parking floor, and very little cameras.

A part of me started to steel myself for there altercation that was to come, I braced for it all— when a police office somehow by chance ended up coming through the parking lot to get to the elevator the group of men were in front of, and they dispersed upon sight of him. I took that chance to scurry inside to the elevators myself, heart pounding in my chest and mind spinning from the drugs. Feeling like a fool, because god if that wasn’t just the perfect opportunity to have been attacked then what is?! Drugged and gang raped, stuffed beyond my comprehension in broad daylight, forced to take load after load…

My partner was still quite late even after it had been broken up, and the possibilities of what could have happened in that amount of time make my head spin. What’s really sick, is how badly a part of me wishes something like that would happen again 🫠