My first street harassment experience: I was 17 and walking my friend back to his hotel in New Orleans, our other friend we were with has this amazing sense of direction and so we were kind of just following her assuming she knew what she was doing. However, she is kind of oblivious to the world and the dangers on the streets (there was a similar situation a couple months earlier in San Antonio when a couple homeless men started following us when she lead us above the canal which I do not recommend doing) and she had taken us into an empty alley. The friend we were walking back was being weird and walking on the other side of the street so it looked like it was just us two young girls. About half way down the street I realized that we were in a completely empty alley that had no businesses in it and started panicking a bit. Then, a car drove by and I thought it was just a taxi, but then the car lights flashed at us blinding me and these men slowed down and made kissy noises at us and saying crude things-- I started walking as fast as possible and luckily at the next street was his hotel. Neither of my friends were near me when this happened so I don't even think they're aware of it. The whole walk back to my hotel I was incredibly tense and aware of my surroundings, making sure people were always around.

I know it's not that scary of an experience, like I've been followed by men before, but it was during the day; I've been on the street alone at 2am when a man u-turned multiple times within a couple hundred feet just to stare at me, but I was able to run home; I've had a guy stop traffic to cat call me, but I ducked into a store-- this was the first time where I felt so vulnerable and like there was no escape-- I was in a foreign city, I had no phone and it was nighttime. And I don't know why, but it freaked me the fuck out. After I just felt dirty and like I was violated, like they were going to come back and take me away, which wasn't a far-fetched idea since a man had tried to push his way into our hotel room earlier on and it is common for women to be followed back to their hotels. I couldn't sleep all that night and it kind of fucked up the last few days of my trip sense I just ended up being scared of the city.