“robert”
ed note: inspired by tequila mockingbird’s brilliant writing, i remembered how the following episode had bothered me for days. feel free to share yours – god knows there are too many of these stories floating around.
i had spent the night carousing with a guy friend of mine. i get on the homebound subway unfortunately without a book, which is my shield of choice for rude subway intruders. with my book lifted up to my eyes, i’m practically invisible – i simply ignore anyone who tries to interrupt me.
i am without a book. this is the big problem when he moved from his seat on the other side of the car to sit in the empty seat next to me. he’s hispanic, well dressed in a navy blue suit and a mildly expensive briefcase. on a full train, with classic new yorkers staring directly forward, he sits down next to me.
“hi,” he says. great, i think. a talker. i flicker the briefest of smiles. anyone reading body language would scuttle away quickly. my entire torso is facing the window and i barely make eye contact. i pull my coat down to cover the flash of leg between my boots and my skirt.
“my name’s robert.” again, i smile wanly for two point three seconds. i am not encouraging this, i tell myself. but eyeballs that slide over someone else’s body while seating half a foot away cannot be poked out in polite society. that this man has chosen, of all the women on a subway train, to mentally undress me – there’s nothing i can do but move away and risk him following me.
he starts talking to me. asking me questions. i lie, of course. there’s this:
“so, you live in astoria?”
“yeah.”
“with who?”
“my boyfriend.” (lie)
“oh, yeah? i don’t see a ring.”
“…”
“your boyfriend doesn’t mind you going out late at night?”
“no.”
“if you were my girlfriend, i wouldn’t let you go out late at night without me.”
at this point i just stare at him, incredulously, and sputter that, well, that’s nice.
“no, seriously. he should take better care of you, you know, protect you.”
kind of hard when he’s imaginary. i simply say “well.” and turn away again.
this is that turning point, that all women understand. where you get beyond being simply annoyed by the unwelcome intrusion and start to play out all the wrong scenarios in your head. i’m getting off at the next stop. it’s midnight. what do i do? okay, i’ll go into the deli if he gets off the train when i do. i’ll go into the deli and that’s where i’ll be brave and rude. i’ll say “PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE” like our moms all taught us to do when we were five. the guy at the deli knows me. it’ll be fine.
the thing is, “robert” doesn’t follow me. nine out of ten of them don’t. but i don’t know that, sitting next to this harassing little shit on the train. and because i don’t know if he’s a rapist or a murderer, i don’t stand up for myself. i’m not agressive. i don’t turn to him and say, “would you please stop talking to me?” because i don’t want to piss off the potential one-in-ten rapist. i don’t want to ineffectually fight off some sleazeball in an alleyway. so i don’t tell “robert” to fuck himself sideways like i should. because he might follow me and trap me in some alleyway and attack me. pure and simple. there’s a mechanism in my brain that says, warning, back away slowly without inciting agression.
i hate this mechanism. i appreciate its presence. i know it’s cultivated and necessary. but i still hate it. i hate that as a woman, i have to even stop and consider my personal safety when some snivelling asswipe decides to hit on me. this doesn’t happen to men. men don’t get undesired come-ons that make them think, “will he club me?” but women do. we have to assess some rotting fucktard’s opportunity’s to do us harm before we tell him to shove off. and even when, as julia did, we stand up for ourselves as best we can, there’s still a chance that we’re in danger. it happens. all the time. and it’s not, at the risk of sounding cliched, fair.
so as i see it, the only solution is to stealthily become a black belt in the martial arts and beat the fear of god into the unlucky shitbag that tries to follow me anywhere.
that, or move into place my plan for female global domination.
deedle deedle deedle digguh digguh deedle deedle dummm
when i am rolling in bling bling, i will have the following:
1. an entire cashmere wardrobe including but not limited to cashmere pajamas, cashmere blankets, cashmere hats gloves and scarves, and cashmere towels.
2. a good medium-rare sirloin and a glass of chateauneuf-du-pape every day for lunch.
3. cabs all the time.
although i am not yet rolling in the bling bling, i do own the following:
1. cashmere pajama pants.
LIFE OF LUXURY, HERE I COME.
the prodigal blogger returns
after months of scattered silence both real and cyber, seastreet returns to the page and our stage. welcome back.
wonky, check
5 am: wake up on four hours sleep. drive to new york city from rhode island, due to horrifically inclement weather prior evening. fight urge to impale self on knitting needle while groggily riding shotgun for five years hours.
11:30 am: arrive at office. fight urge to transfer impalement-desires to entire pen jar. would be a right messy clean-up, that.
12:30 pm: while attempting to point out that flying me down to texas would be costly, gaffe and say “laying me is expensive”. actually, may not have been gaffe.
1:34 pm: fly into 2.5 minute murderous rage over mysterious disappearance of candy bar just purchased. discover after exactly 2.5 minutes that candy bar is actually in palm of hand and melting now.
2:20 pm: jealous of recent flurry of transatlantic phone calls not seen since the heyday of the revolutionary war [if they'd bothered to invent telephones by then], pick up phone to call old shag pal in london, marnix. flatmate of shag pal answers phone. identifies self as george. accent irresistibly plummy. plummier than mark’s. fight urge to propose marriage followed by sex and babies to complete stranger flatmate-george based solely on plummy swoony meltiness of accent. restrain self to a simple “cheers!” at end of conversation, hang up phone, and say “ms. george, haver of sex and babies with mr. george” aloud at desk. get strange looks from co-workers.
conclusion: must. get. sleep. then, promptly fly to england for multi-purpose trip of seeing friends, shagging marnix, and marrying george.
NB DO NOT POINT OUT SNAFU OF SHAGGING ONE AND MARRYING HIS FLATMATE STOP WELL AWARE STOP
unfade: nineteen eighty nine
the screen fades from black, a suave little trick her mother always uses with her semi-professional three ton camera that she gladly lugs all over the world, recording moments in a daughter’s precious life. the screen fades up, delicate and subtle, like the mother herself.
the scene is greece, and the most cliched of greeces. the square for the unknown soldier, in the scrambling center of athens. sure, the camera sweeps the square, why not? there are miles of unused tape, miles of life and faces to be recorded onto celluloid. let’s pan the square, for posterity. but it doesn’t take long to zero in on a darting little shadow, a scrawny little form dashing fearlessly around the impervious marching soldiers with their silly pom-pommed feet. the changing of the guards. there she goes! and there her mother’s watchful optical eye follows. but we can’t see her face, til her mother’s accented and disembodied voice, close to the microphone, calls her name.
she turns, as young do because they can always hear their mother’s cry over the din of crowds. she skids to a stop and turns, throwing her arms in the air and smiling. we fade, again.
unfade. there she is again, standing in what can only be described as a teeming mass of pigeons. her tanned skinny arms stretch out, comtemplatively staring at the three pigeons perched there. like a true little girl, she wears a cotton white slip of a dress, hanging off her tiny body and falling to her shins. no doubt the manufacturers meant it to be knee length. no matter – she’s small but feisty. jarringly, she carries a purse, a grown-up-girl’s purse, that hangs all the way to her knees. the camera tightens as a pigeon descends onto her shoulderblades and stares dumbly at her golden-streaked messy brown hair, held back with a red headband. the camera tightens more. she laughs, a scratchy peal of a laugh. the camera fades.
unfade. the little girl squats amongst the dirty little sky-rats. did we say squat? it’s more delicate and ladylike than that. look at her, modestly tucking her skirt between her knees! her mother must silently smile, behind the lens, at the grace her child radiates, even with that skinny frame. there she is, communing with the birds. funny, that this little girl grows up to positively hate pigeons, longing to kick them out of her way in washington square park. not here. here, she watches them almost mesmerized by their screetches and their incessant pecking at her hands. and the shoes! tiny little open-toed slides, white, with red bows at the top. bows, you’ll notice, which match her red headband. remarkable.
look at that face. her glasses near slide off. glasses which, while made by christian dior, are pink and far too big for her tiny face. she chose them because they came with a free glittery barrette, and her parents have always allowed her free choice in this manner. even when the glasses are obviously too big. looking up, she beams for the camera, delighted in her mother’s photographic admiration of her obvious rapport with the winged critters. fade.
unfade. a busy street that mom pans, setting the scope, always careful to give future rapt viewers a context for her little girl’s early years. perhaps she imagines them shown one day, on 20/20. she always likes that barbara walters, strength against adversity, the kind of thing this mother holds in high regard. she lowers the camera to the confident little face next to her.
“what’s that, pumpkin?” the camera moves to the other side of the hectic honking street, to a statue that seems to be moving forward in space, a running man in green abstraction.
“that’s hermes.” pumpkin pronounces it like the designer, whose perfume caleche her mother wears to perfection. subtle accent on the e. “he’s the god of mischeif,” she says into the screen, grinning with knowledge, “and he’s a currier.”
“courier,” her mother corrects gently.
“courier,” the little scholar nails it. this’ll be great for 20/20, maybe she’ll be a mythology expert or a professor, proud mama might think. “what else?”
the little girl cocks her head at the statue. yes, a professor, mom thinks. “well, it looks like it’s made of trees, but it’s not. it’s made from plates of green glass. isn’t it beatiful?” she beams.
“yes, it is.”
“the greeks don’t like it.”
“well,” corrects mom, “some of the greeks don’t like it.”
“that’s right,” she takes correction well this early in life, not so later as her father often bemoans, “some of the greeks. they think it’s too modern.”
she’s nine! such a capable little nine year old, with her too-big glasses and her tanned skin and her messy goldened hair. so sure of herself, so happy in the moment of knowing something about this beautiful moving statue.
“let’s go across the street, mommy, can we?” she smiles at the camera – these summers in greece, the camera almost becomes her mother’s face, so often does she talk into its black murky lens.
“sure, pumpkin. let’s go.”
fade.
ATBloodyQAlready #4: Stuart’s Autoblography
1. What’s an embarrassing story that your family or friends could tell about you?
Take your pick. Already written about are ‘Sky Sports Shocker’, ‘A Very Public Dropping’ and ‘Celebrity Foot In Mouth Disease’. I shall offer you another…let’s take the moment, at my Sixth Form Summer Ball, just
after the fireworks, when I was back inside demonstrating to another guy (who’d got it so wrong), exactly how Joey from Friends dances. It was also the moment when my entire sixth form came back into the clubhouse and thought I was dancing in earnest. I won one of those end-of-year certificate things; the ‘I wanna dance like Carlton’ Award.
3. What or where is the most inappropriate place you’ve ever been turned on? Extra points if it involves famous people or religious institutions!
St. James’ Park, Newport, Isle of Wight. Fourth tree from the left, by the wall behind the library car park. Hideously wide open space. About half ten at night in December. Drunken sex with a girl in a nurses
outfit. There is a church about five minutes from there, if that helps.
4. Tell me about your relationship with your parents or parent figures.
My parents are amazing. I found out that the man I thought was my Dad was in fact my Stepdad at the age of nine (that moment was a serious contender for Question Two) and the only thing that changed was that I called him by his first name from then on. He has the amazing talent of being both a friend and a parent – both a mate you can have a laugh with and an authority figure, sometimes in the same sentence, something I appreciate greatly. My Mum has had such an enormous level of suffering in her life, but she is still an immensely giving person. She would do anything for me, and I for her. I love making her laugh.
5. Recall a moment in your past that you remember as being absolutely perfect harmony in your life.
It was twilight, the sand was gritty and grey. The bench we were sitting on was a white cool smooth concrete, the wind was blowing warmly off the sea and towering clouds hung over the horizon in a coruscating hash of orange, red and grey. Out of sight on the beach someone was playing bongos and the sound of it grew with the blowing wind, taking the thrill of realisation and hurling it onwards in the imagination to the months of travelling ahead. I was relaxed, Gemma was relaxed. We were still, sitting and looking at the sea, and we knew exactly where we were. We were off.
the little owl that could!
despite my winning smile, winning brunches, and winning charm, i’ve never been much of a winner. i’m always sauntering in second or third to the finish line on most things, more interested in the journey than the destination.
so imagine my surprise when i stumble across a weblog competition and discover i’m actually in the running for best Female Authored Weblog! well, not in the running, per se, because i’m at a woefully short fifteen votes, since i didn’t know to pressure you guys to log your admiration for me through meaningless online competition.
so consider this your campaign poster, your milk and cookies, your KRISSA #1 button all in one… get your tail over there and vote for me*!
*voting for me is not considered an exchange for sexual favors. don’t even ask.
petit Hiboux Cupcake and Vodka Hour® Presents: We Lurv You Kate Party
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well! here you are then. i hope the foul weather didn’t dampen your spirits too much. did it? well, that’s what drink and pastry is for. give me your sopping coat, okay, and your umbrella as well. oh, do you have to shake your head like that? you’re getting water all over the cupcakes.
under the spotlight, there’s kate, mouth full of vanilla cupcake with strawberry icing, topped with a chocolate garter belt. of course she’s drinking straight vodka a la russian samovar, her flavor of choice being a lemon-raspberry mix. she’s telling shivlet all about the sudden and traumatizing death of her blog yesterday. shiv proposes a toast “to the pilgrims!” with her delicious sweet summer. course, it’s hard to toast when she’s waving about a red velvet/choco-topped cupcake with a miniature bust of the smarmy agent cooper. but she’s a pro – she does it anyway.
ah! and who do we have tucked in this dark corner but mark! he’s splashing around his citronade tonic while drunkenly praising kate to karen, who’s staring with suspicion at mark’s squirrel-topped cupcake. mark, dear, i am sorry about the cufflinks, can i offer you these instead? there, now stop your snivelling.
karen, of course, has paired her death-by-choco cupcake with a neat hungarian vodka [i had it in the freezer all night, k, should be plenty cold], perhaps a palinka?
the phone’s ringing, hold on – oh, karen, it’s pete for you, and i think he’s warbling something that sounds like white christmas on crack. and stuart, honestly, here’s your stoli, you’re going to need it when i release your cupcake from the cage in the backroom. honestly, diddy munchkins? and stop playing with kate’s hair.
and stuart, darling, do me a favor introduce mr. D around? make sure mark explains about the squirrels. and keep replenishing his smirnoff blue and cupcake dip. that’s a good lad. oooh, and here comes an anonymous
matt! he wants munchkins on top of his cupcake. stuart’s munchkins or dunkin donuts? we’ll find out, eh?
and moi? well of course, i’m manning the door with biscuit, who’s quite tanked on the entire bottle of ice-cold russki standart drunk out of these adorable shot glasses. he’s wailing on and on about AT&T, i just put another cream-cheese-frosted-choco-topped-raspberry-filled cupcake in his hand and nod sympathetically.
and of course, i keep it simple and classic. i’m having a vanilla blue-iced cupcake with a tiny manolo blahnik stiletto on top, with a cosmopolitan, which i happily double for ms. fish, who’s whispering in my ear…. no… really? … you don’t SAY!.. the NERVE of some…!…indeed! well, fish, have three more cupcakes, darling.
now, kate and shiv, scoot over. what are we gossiping about? boys? i’m not drunk enough.
another round, everyone?
it’s happy hour somewhere in the world*
as kate is leaving sunny climes for the foggy days of london town, i am saddened beyond consolablility that i will not have her perky and hysterical IMs to quicken my days.
thus, in order to stymie the rapidly cascading tears we’re all experiencing at the impending infrequency of fauxhemian glitter, let us raise glass and pastry in her honor. how, you ask?
well, hold on to your propriety, lads and lasses – in true FG fashion, welcome to the first petitHiboux Cupcake and Vodka Hour® …
thursday december the eleventh
half past noon
…held for the express purpose of drunkenly sending off our dear kate. we’re now taking all requests for what you want decorating your cupcake (a bunny? a corvette? an impossibly large sugar diamond?) and what you want to swill with your vodka (you real alkies can have it straight, chilled. the rest of us need mixers).
to make it interesting: nice things said about kate, excellent song requests and/or your own personal sob story will get you an extra cupcake.
order away – and see you tomorrow at half past noon. i’ll be the one stuffing her face with cupcake batter.
* as always, with much slobbering respect to karen for making cocktail hour what it is today.
