hittin' on

The other night, I took a small detour on the way from the train to the doctor's office. This was not an intentional detour. My goal was to walk away as quickly as possible from the guy who was hitting on me. Here is the conversation that took place as I walked up the subway stairs:

Hey, I like your hair.
Thank you.
You got a number I can get?
I'm married, actually.
----?
I don't think my husband would appreciate other men calling. Sorry.

I flashed my sparkly ring at him, relying on the fact that he won't notice it's on the wrong hand. Then I walked straight ahead, which turned out to be the completely wrong direction. No matter, made it to my appointment on time, with no more potential boyfriends to hinder me. Later I was relaying this small anecdote to Suzanne, and she remarked that this always happens to me.

She's half right. Normally I'm walking with the Boyfriend, so most people have enough sense to not hit on me. If I'm walking alone, I'm in a busy area. But when I was working a temp job in Brooklyn (and I mean real Brooklyn, not this "just across the river" thing I have going now) I got hit on constantly, just walking to & from work.

(Quick anecdote intervention: I always use the "I'm married" excuse, and it usually works. But one guy was really trying to convince me that he's good enough to cheat with. He was persistant, I'll give him that, but it didn't work.)

The guys that hit on me mostly are black or Latino guys. I don't know if this is because (to make sweeping generalizations here) these guys are just more aggressive in their flirting, or I am just more attractive to them than to white guys. I do have what we call in the ghetto a "ghetto booty." I'm not rail-thin like the white guys might think is attractive. Also, I think I intimidate white guys*. And Asians. Asian guys don't even look at me.

As The White Chick on my block, I would expect to be hit on by my neighbors a lot more than I am. But they all know me. And they all know my white boyfriend. But it's pretty worthless to hit on your neighbor, because you either have to do it every time you see her, or do it a couple times and then accept the awkwardness of seeing her often after the rejection. My neighbors have all opted to not hit on me, which is good because I actually don't like being hit on at all.

I don't know what I was trying to explore here. I guess I'm just racist or something. And I think it's funny.



*Yes, I know the Boyfriend is white, but I think I was a bit intimidating even to him when we first met.