Cee and I were talking the other day.
She had hired someone to come clean her apartment through an app-based service. The app-based service sent a man. He wasn’t, as I imagined in my comic fantasy, wearing a cute French maid’s outfit.
But he wasn’t either what Cee had hoped. His cleaning was lackadaisical and somewhat careless. He broke an hourglass that had sentimental value to Cee and failed to tell her that he had done so.
Alas, this wasn’t his worst offense. His worst offense was that he was the sixth person in not so many more days than that to come on to Cee. He asked her out.
Now, Cee is fucking hot. I don’t blame him for wanting to ask her out. But she didn’t meet this guy through a dating app or in a bar. She met him as someone brought into her apartment. Someone to whom she made herself vulnerable in that way. His advance was unwelcome, and she told him so. I don’t know if she reported his advance to the people who run the app, but I hope so.
For fuck’s sake, a woman should be able to have her apartment cleaned without having to fend off an unwanted advance from someone she had no reason to imagine would be a suitor. I apologized to Cee on behalf of those of us who carry around penises. Or rather, who carry around a penis. It’s just not cool to intrude on a woman in that way.
I’ve always been hyper-cautious in this regard. I don’t ask women out unless I’m certain that if the answer isn’t going to be “Yes,” it’s at least going to be a rueful “No.” Or at least, I try to abide by that rule. I might have violated it unintentionally by misreading signals a few times. But only a few. I really am cautious.
The most recent example of my misreading such signals was the hostess at EJ’s – my replacement for the bar (and which, henceforth, will both be and will share the tag with “the bar“). I asked her out. Sort of. I loaned her two books she had asked me for, and suggested she find a way that felt comfortable to her to thank me – be that a drink or meal with me, or just a “thank you.” Judging from her reaction, which was a little flummoxed, I had the sense I had overstepped. I apologized instantly. It seems not to have gotten in the way. But who knows? She is a hostess. She has to be nice to me.
And that’s why I was mistaken in asking her out.
Asking out a waitress or a hostess is a dicey move. It’s not one I think I’ve done more than once or twice in my life. I take it back. Two or three times. I take that back. Three or four times. At least twice. I didn’t just ask a waitress out – I ended up making out with her in the bar. And in one instance, the make-out session continued (and, progressed, natch) for 48 continuous, heavenly hours thereafter (and, got me forever into Angela McCluskey, may her memory be a blessing, and the Wild Colonials). I wonder what ever became of that particular woman???
Anyway, I think my judgment’s, generally, pretty sound.
But still, I feel bad. It’s not cool to put a woman in that position.
“Why does this always happen to me?” Cee asked.
I wondered if there’s not something about how she carries herself, about how she presents herself in the world, that somehow communicates unconsciously a message she doesn’t want consciously to be transmitting. Not in a “you-asked-for-it” kind of way. In a “you-can’t-help-it” kind of way.
Serena has a version of this as well – though slightly different. Somehow, everywhere she goes, people put her in a position in which she feels, somehow, like she has to trade sex for what it is that they might have to offer her. When she tries to rent an apartment, when she orders a meal, whatever.
I’ve known very beautiful women who never get approached. Not because they’re so beautiful. God knows, men come on to beautiful women all the time. No, there’s something else.
I don’t know if it’s pheromones, or a get-the-fuck-away-from-me attitude, or a certain kind of unconscious transmission of sexual unavailability and disinterest, or rather, lack of interest. But there’s some phenomenon at play.
I apologized to Cee shortly after our conversation. I feared I had left her with the mistaken impression that I meant that in some sense she might have asked for this. I really don’t mean that. I think women get to wear whatever they want. I think women get to be themselves. I think women get to present themselves and hold themselves however they want. And they should be entitled to imagine that they won’t be asked out, if that’s not on their agenda for the evening.
Never mind the afternoon in their own apartment.
Notes:
I listened to the Wild Colonials’s first album as I wrote this.
Midjourney produced the images I’ve used herein. Not without some massaging.