Last Saturday of Winter Vacation

A friend and I spent a delightful afternoon indulging ourselves at a famous strawberry buffet in a place fancier than I could normally afford.

After much self coaxing, I rolled myself to the gym still wearing full make up from my strawberry themed outfit. Of course the trainer who I once asked to find my sports bra was there and his shirt was distractingly low cut. Not one of the standard gym uniforms that the rest of us plebeians wear.

Unsettling encounters with men would not end there, however. I decided to take a more leisurely bus ride home and while wearing a mask and sitting in the same seats, a very startlingly similar situation occurred.

Recall that sometime ago while I was wearing a mask, sitting in the back right seat which was the same as tonight, the man two seats to my left “dropped” a business card and used that as an in to ask if I would work for his private karaoke room.

Well tonight, and sitting in the same seat, another man nearly pulled the same stunt. My spatial awareness tingling told me that the newcomer on the bus was taking special notice of me. I can’t tell you how exactly, but if you’re a woman you probably have some idea.

I was wrestling with updating the email on my Skype account when I almost missed a phone in my line of sight angled towards me. It was subtle enough that he could play it off as an accident but obvious enough to me that if I paid him any attention he would thrust the phone into my hands and silently ask for my number.

I didn’t really even register what was happening until the phone had quickly disappeared.

And while I’m certainly not averse to chatting with strangers on the bus, I find it grating when a strange man says absolutely nothing to me and expects to receive my personal contact information. You have given me nothing sir. Life isn’t that easy. You have to try speaking to me at least once.

(And if you do speak, you probably shouldn’t ask me to work for a private karaoke room or interrupt me while I’m alone at a station to tell me to hang up on my international phone call because talking to you is more important.)

Luckily the man was too shy to follow through again and the rest of my ride went by quite nicely uneventful.