Yesterday at work, we had a gelato truck come at 2:00 (I had salted caramel. Griff pointed out that there's no such thing as just caramel anymore. It all has to be salted now), and then we had a department happy hour at 4:00.
I feel like Mike, formerly known as The Editor Who Sits in Our Row, is not a fan of tomatoes. Or maybe those are peppers. Whatever.
Still going to glean he's not a fan.
Here's one of the Alexes, trying to look bitchy and fooling no one, and there's Ryan, for your viewing pleasure, you buncha Mrs. Robinsons.
Griff's deep thoughts are deep. And look, back there in the plaid shirt is Neil, who I talked about yesterday! The circle of life. Boom.
I did not take a picture of myself at happy hour, as I was too busy being happy, and hourly, but I did take a picture of myself at work yesterday, as I was texting with my cousins and we all sent a picture of what we were doing at that moment. I pointed out to my cousins, who are my "little cousins," that the women behind me are younger than both of them, who I think of as children, but they're both in their 30s.
At the happy hour, I sat with some women down at the end of the table, a bunch of hens, as it were, and I'd like to take this moment to say hello to my feminist mom. So the skirts and I were talking, you know, about the only stuff women talk about. Jewelry, shoes, boys. The rest is just too hard.
But really, we started talking about how many of us had almost-rapey stories. Like, mostly they took place in college, and in our cases they all involved escaping, fortunately. I went to college with a woman who was just walking two blocks between these two houses where groups of of us lived unsanitarily–Division Street. I eventually lived in both houses on Division Street, and all of us who were friends just referred to the houses by their numbers. "There's a party tonight on 358." That sort of thing.
So, this woman I knew was walking from 545 to 358, when a man grabbed her from behind. "Don't scream," he said, gripping her. She didn't scream, but she sure did reach around and twist his man parts, hard, and he let her go. She ran as fast as she could to 358.
I can't believe I can still remember the numbers of the houses on Division.
I can't believe all I had to do was Google those addresses and I could get screen shots of 545 and 358. Dying. I so have a picture of me leaning on that tree at 358 right before I left for a date with Marvin; I'll have to find it. I was hot then.
My POINT is, do you have an almost-rapey story? Mine was that my roommate in the dorms asked me to leave the door unlocked because she was going to be late coming home. Why she couldn't just take her KEY is beyond me. There were some boys visiting someone or other in the dorms; I'd met them earlier in the night. I was fast asleep when one of them just walked right in and sat on my bed. "Hey, um…" I sat up.
I can't recall all that happened, exactly, just that it quickly became apparent this wasn't a friendly, "Hey, wake up and let's go get nachos at Middle Earth" kind of visit. We had a little walk-up grill in the basement of the dorm, this little connector hallway between my dorm and Marvin's, called Middle Earth.
Yes. Middle Earth. And this was in the '80s, when any Hobbit mentions were distinctly not cool.
"Friendship is offered to all who enter Middle Earth." That's what it said over the archway to Middle Earth, and I'll bet some hippie painted that in 1976, and here it was 8 years later, looking distinctly dated. However, I can still taste the blueberry yogurt I'd get down there at 10 a.m., to avoid having to watch my roommate watch Barnaby Jones reruns. Who in their right mind selects Barnaby Jones?
MY POINT IS, I told the guy to leave, and he got really angry really fast. I remember he said, "I hope you get raped by a black man," as though that would somehow be worse than being raped by HIS stupid ass, which looked imminent. So, a rapey racist. Even better!
"These walls are thin, and I am less than one second from screaming," I told him. I wasn't scared, I was pissed off. He got up and left, and I locked the door after him, and then I started shaking.
WHY do we have stories like that, most of us? How are we raising the men, that so many of them think this is okay? I wonder if that asshole went on to be a lawyer or some other perfectly acceptable-looking member of society, while in the meantime he got drunk and tried to force himself on women all over yonder. Did he grow out of it? Did he grow up to regret it? Or does he still feel entitled to aggressively pursue anyone he feels like having?
Furthermore, why am I straight, again?
If you have an almost-rapey story, tell it to us here, or if you're one of the .00006 men who read this, please pontificate on this phenomenon.
Friendship is offered to all who enter Middle June. Wait…
