in this day and age – you can’t be too sure of any guy’s intentions. it sucks having to be paranoid….
i find it quite sleezy when a perfect stranger comes up to me at a bar/club and comes on to me. they’re just interested in looks – they don’t have a clue about my personality, wit, smarts, anything that i find more important that what’s on the surface. in fact, i get pretty damn insulted when somebody wants me for just my looks – it’s insulting to my intelligence and all the cool stuff i’ve done with my life…including the wacky wit i’ve culled over the years. so screw them – i typically mess with their heads, give them a wrong name and then one of my ex-boyfriend’s numbers.
i remember one time for halloween, i got pretty depressed about my life and my old home….our family was losing it to the bank. mark left me alone that night in the city – didn’t want to be around me when i am drunk and depressed about my life. i’m not a very nice drunk. i ended up at some bar next to the civic center in san francisco. i just wanted to be alone with a gimlet, a la Philip Marlowe in “The Long Good-bye” [he had this one English client who kept ordering those, so Marlowe felt it was fiting to order this limey cocktail] so, i was content to brood, by myself. i was in some costume – cute dress, pink bobbed wig. then some guy barged into my personal space – saying wow he didn’t think he’d be so lucky to find a beautiful girl here in a bar, by herself, and that he was a teacher and that he was here with his friend and that he wanted to talk……i told him i wanted to be alone. he left me alone. the bartender knew i was in a bad mood, so my next drink was on the house. i gave him a ten dollar tip….
so, if I don’t enjoy being approached by strangers at a bar, you can imagine how i feel when somebody tries to get close to me when i’m exercising, yes?
yesterday, all i wanted to do was run.
I went for a run in the canyon, next to my house. I noticed that some smoking guy came out from off the path….i didn’t think anything of it. but i got a wierd vibe – after 10 minutes or so, i decided to go off the path and look at some scenery. it was path covered with flowers and split off in one direction, up a hill and another direction parallel to the path. he followed me. i was freaked out. thankfully, i had my cell phone on me. i called mark and asked him to stay on the phone with me. the guy walked in the other direction. i stayed at that spot from a while longer. when i went back to the path – the guy looked like he was waiting for me – but he walked ahead of me. i stayed on the phone until i got back to my car.
argh. it sucks being a girl, sometimes – all i wanted to do was run and i have to worry about this crap. yeah, he was about my build and i could have taken him down in a fight. but i’m not stupid, most folks don’t play fair when it comes to these situations. who knows, maybe all he wanted was my phone number. but these days, i couldn’t take that chance….it was too much of a coincidence for him to be on the same off-path track. it was too much of a coincidence for him to come back in my direction…as if he was trying to anticpate where i was going next.
i remember reading a nytimes article about an increase in sexual assults on women going for their daily run…..in this column, the female writer felt these reports were not enough to deter her from her daily run at dusk. she didn’t want these assholes to mess with her mind and trap her in paraonia. she knew the risks, but, she also valued her sense of freedom, as she commited this daily ritual. i was so impressed with her no-nonsense approach to the reports. she knew that if she changed her daily ritual one bit – those assholes would have already won – gaining the power to change this aspect of her life. She refused to give them that influence. i hoped i can be that strong.