You know, the one that shoots down the person hitting on you in a public place?<\/p>\n
Guys approach me on the street with some regularity, asking me if I date “brothers.” Usually if it’s that innocuous I just reply that I would, but that I think my husband might have issues with it. I laugh. They laugh. Everyone has a polite out. As if you’d accept a date with a random stranger leering at you from a car window or a street corner.<\/p>\n
I’ve learned when I travel alone to wear a ring with a jewel-like stone. It doesn’t stop everyone from hitting on me, but I feel like it cuts down on it.<\/p>\n
Other encounters, however, are harder to brush off. There was the guy in a church courtyard\/public lunch spot who touched my toe and told me I needed a ring for it. There were the elderly men (old enough to be my father, if not my grandfather) who made dirty comments about me as I sat obliviously reading my book in a “family-friendly” pocket park next to Eastern Market earlier this spring. When I noticed, I bolted, and it freaked me out for weeks. In London, a certainly drunk and possibly homeless man kissed me — with an astonished Rudi and a snickering security guard standing right next to me. My cousin later told me I was taking politeness a bit far.<\/p>\n
I used to think I was the only one. But then I talked to a few girls at work and it seems to be a cultural thing. One colleague was so irked by an encounter on her walk to the Metro one morning that she learned PowerPoint by creating a presentation containing her response. Another once had someone come on to her at a bus stop. He licked<\/strong><\/em> her. She belted<\/em><\/strong> him.<\/p>\n Tonight Rudi asked me to pick up beer for him. I had already passed Whole Foods by, leaving a liquor store as my option between there and home. I knew when he asked that it wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience. I was wearing a skirt. I thought about saying no — particularly since I<\/em> wasn’t going to drink any of it. On the other hand, Rudi doesn’t shirk from buying personal things for me, so that didn’t really seem to be a fair excuse.<\/p>\n Ultimately, though, I didn’t want to feel powerless. I don’t want it to be my<\/strong> problem. I don’t want to have to alter what I wear and where I go and how I conduct my life just because I’m a woman and some stupid git can’t keep his comments or his leers to himself.<\/p>\n But there’s always one. Sure enough, some guy comes up to me as I’m paying for the beer. “Wow, look at those legs. Are you a kickboxer?”<\/p>\n “Yep,” I replied, remembering Amani’s advice to look as if the person hitting on you is remarkably laughable and inconsequential.<\/p>\n “No, you aren’t.”<\/p>\n “Then why did you ask?”<\/p>\n “I just got out of the army. Where did you come from?”<\/p>\n “Home.”<\/p>\n I bet if I’d threatened him with the drop spindle and US6 knitting needles I had in my bag, he would have left me alone. Of course, I bet if I’d done that the liquor store clerk who idly watched the whole encounter would have called the cops.<\/p>\n Instead, I just walked home, getting madder and madder as I went along until I arrived at home fuming.<\/p>\n Maybe next time I’ll ask him if these sorts of encounters ever work and why he bothers if he’s guaranteed rejection every time.<\/p>\n Maybe I’ll ask him what he’d think if some skeevy old guy were hitting on his daughter.<\/p>\n Sadly, I bet he wouldn’t see the correlation.<\/p>\n So, anyone have a killer line to end those sorts of encounters?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You know, the one that shoots down the person hitting on you in a public place? Guys approach me on the street with some regularity, asking me if I date “brothers.” Usually if it’s that innocuous I just reply that I would, but that I think my husband might have issues with it. I laugh. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc-life","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n