I was in the Cayman Islands on a research assignment. It was my first night out with the girls and I didn’t want to be a “party pooper”, so I agreed to meet up with people at a local outdoor bar/restaurant. There was a man, pretty drunk, at the bar where we met up. The man approached and immediately offered to buy me a drink, in fact, to buy all my friends drinks if he could sit with me. I was reluctant to stay around him, but the friend I was with thought it was funny and started laughing; and b/c I didn’t want to be the Debbie Downer, I agreed he could buy me an OJ and my friend got a Bloody Mary. I stuck around out of obligation and listened to him say every “nice” thing he could about me – how beautiful I was (I don’t think I am); how much he admired my facial features; how he loved me; how he was going to leave his wife for me. I prayed he wouldn’t try to touch me. I finally felt creeped out enough to leave the bar to another corner of the beach, praying he didn’t tail us. He didn’t, but the next day while I was working a survey on a local road, he approached me again and said we should run away together. I was working the survey on that part of the road alone and I immediately got chills. He looked to be at least 30 years older than me in a pickup truck and I a young female on a deserted roadway. I acted chill and talked him off, saying I had to get on with my work and it’s too bad we couldn’t hook up – maybe next time. I didn’t feel safe outright refusing him while alone. After he drove off, I immediately found and told my research coworkers. They promised that we’d walk the rest of the surveys in pairs from then on. And I spent the rest of the trip actively avoiding situations where I thought I might see him again.
