My daughter Tafv, who turns 17 next month, has lately been the recipient of a good deal of unwanted male attention, from the pimp (yeah, a real one) who hangs out on a stoop around the corner from us and says, as Tav passes on her way from the bus, "Hey, why don't you let me take you out sometime?" to some homunculus who followed her on two buses and up our street. By the time she got in the house, and I was out on the street looking for the fucker, he was gone. Worst of all was two weeks ago, when I got a call from Tafv, from her cell phone. She was near-hysterics.
"I hate men!" she said, through tears. She was on the bus, but while she'd been waiting, a car full of three black dudes had stopped, in the bus-stop, and for ten minutes tried to lure her into the car. She walked away--and another car pulled up; more men, more catcalls. Finally, the bus rolled up, and Tafv ran to it.
"You can't have your friends parking in the bus stop like that," the driver said to her.
"I hate them all!" she continued. "And there's nothing I can do!"
Yes, there are things we can do. One, she's not taking these bus lines. Two, I signed us up for a self-defense class, which began last Wednesday and was about sixty times more interesting and informative than what I'd expected, which was, I don't know, a bunch of women talking about their periods. What we got was about forty women, all ages, with all different worries. There's the gal who's cinematically scared, of a man jumping out of her closet or grabbing her while she takes a shower. "And you know," she said, "you can't always take a gun or a knife into the shower." There's the woman who has low-level anxiety at all times, and when it was suggested by someone (okay, me) that perhaps some anti-anxiety meds might help, cracked, "Cool. Got a librium?" There was the woman who, as I approached her in a menacing way, and in her bid to stop me, started doing this sort of Bojangly thing with her feet. It made me laugh, and I imagine, might confuse a real attacker to the point of distraction.
Tafv and I learned some rudimentary fighting techniques, eye-jabbing and knee-breaking, and a roll-out maneuver that looks awfully handy. Tavie did a good job, and we learned quite a lot in the 3-hour class, even if we did duck out 15 minutes early to catch Project Runway. We do, after all, have priorities.
I was speaking tonight with Cathy Seipp, and when I mentioned Tavie's confrontation with the bus-stop creeps, she said, "She doesn't know to ignore them?" No, because Tafv grew up being driven around in a car, so, she acts polite; she says, "No, thank you" when they ask her to get in the car, rather than what my best friend growing up in New York might have said when we were 16 and being come-on to every nine seconds, things along the lines of, "FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!" Me, I tended to smile and wheedle; 20 years on the streets and subway taught me how to talk or not talk to anyone.
Until today. I was carrying some boxes out of Ristretto at closing, which is four, which is the same time the middle school across the street lets out. Waiting at the bus were about eight boys, all black, all about 13. They were nicely dressed and were not misbehaving or being overly loud. As I passed one, who was about my height, he looked directly into my eyes, and in a playfully seductive voice said, "Why didn't you call me last night?" I gave the kid a you gotta be kidding me look, and then his friend said something to back him up, I dumped the cardboard, and when I walked past again, the boys had dispersed.
"You have to admit, it's a pretty good line," Cathy said. Yeah, it is, but it's also no more than patterning, and aside from our reactions, I don't really see a qualitative difference in this kid saying this to me, or his dad saying it to my daughter. It also pissed me off that I wasn't fast enough to give it back to him. What would you have said?
