It was 6:00 p.m on a summer evening. I was in the Best Buy near my house, a Best Buy I come to quite often. While looking at the car accessories for my poor, poor aux cord-less car, I could feel eyes trailing me as I walked. Looking up, I smiled meekly at the fair skinned Latino man smiling at me. He was older, probably in his mid to late thirties, dressed in bright green pants with a domineering presence that made me uneasy. “You’re sexy,” he mumbled to me as I shifted uncomfortably. I curtly replied “thank-you” and walked away. I was finished with the conversation, but he wasn’t. He continued to attempt to make small talk, asking me if I lived around the Best Buy (I replied “no”), and paying me with compliments. When I had reached my capacity of uncomfortableness and he was not taking the hint that I was uninterested, I walked out of the store. It didn’t have what I needed, and the man’s presence was daunting. I could feel him picking at me with his eyes, dissecting me and undressing me.

In the parking lot, my keys in hand, I heard someone calling out to me so naturally, I turned to the source of the “Hey!” To my bitter and unpleasant surprise, it was the same fair skinned man from inside the store. “Do you need a ride,” he screamed at me, quickly hopping into his car. Now, my keys were clearly in my hands and I was clearly en route to my car. I shook my head, “no,” and quickened my pace. It hadn’t been five seconds in my car when a vehicle quickly swerved beside mine. Guess who it was? This man had been following me in the store and in the parking lot. Now he had swerved into the spot right next to mine. I quickly shouted “I have a boyfriend.” (I don’t, but that has become a quick method of rejection to say when a man comes up to me and I’m uninterested). He mouthed “I don’t care” and I didn’t stay long enough to find out what he was going to say next.

As I left the parking lot, I kept glancing in my mirrors. My heart was racing, my adrenaline was high, I was terrified he was going to follow me in his bright blue car. When I got to the stoplight, I noticed a bright blue car behind me. I was really terrified now. My thoughts were all over the place: what am I going to do? Where am I going to go? Why is he following me? I looked up at his car in my rearview mirror to make sure I wasn’t delusional. I couldn’t quite see the driver but it was a man, and the car was the same color and about the same size. When the light turned green, I sped off to the direction of the nearest police department. My mother would always tell me to drive to the police station if I was being followed, and that day, her words of wisdom proved to be more important than I thought. As I made my way to the police station, I kept looking back, checking for the man who I assumed was following me. Eventually, as I made a turn into the exit that would take me there, the car stopped following me so either:

A) I was crazy and paranoid and it was not the same man

B) He was never following me, or

C) He chose to stop

Regardless of what it was, the fact that this man continued to follow while I was noticeably uninterested is problematic. Even more problematic is the fact that this happens to women all the time. Women are harassed by men on the street on a daily basis. It’s fine to come up to a woman and compliment her, it’s fine to approach her respectfully and ask for her number. What is completely and utterly unacceptable, however, is how most men take rejection. Simply saying “no, thank you” is never enough. There’s always a back and forth:

“No, thank you”

“Why not? Come on.”

It’s at this point I’ll have to lie and say: “Oh, I have a boyfriend, sorry.”

But see, even that rarely works because then they hit you with a: “well, he don’t let you have friends?”

From there it’s about finessing and getting out of the situation: “oh, well, I’m faithful” or “if we were dating, you wouldn’t want me out here entertaining other men would you?”

Many times when women bring this up, men are quick to react defensively: “well, how about women just be upfront and say they aren’t interested?” Maybe that’s because women are harassed even further when they do. After the initial rejection, some men quickly scream a storm of insulting and derogatory words, a stream of “b*tch, I don’t know why you’re being stuck up, you’re not even that cute” and derivatives of that. Some women have even been beaten, burned to death, brutally murdered for rejecting men and bruising their very fragile male ego. How hard is it to move on to the next person? How entitled must you be that if a woman does not gravel at your feet, you harass her until she does?

I had another incident a few days after the Best Buy debacle. I was walking into Starbucks and a dark skinned man with a thick West Indian accent stopped me and said “You’re very pretty, can I see your pretty face again?” Now, I love a compliment as much as the next person, so I simply smiled and said “No, but thank you” (this man was old, way out of my acceptable dating range). And you know what this man did? He simply smiled, said “okay, have a nice day,” and walked away. It was literally that simple. The fact that I was in shock because a man did not engage in a back and forth with me once I rejected him is an issue. There is no reason this shouldn’t be a normal encounter. There is no reason I should be in literal shock because a man did not badger me to give him a number. Women have gotten so accustomed to these incidences of harassment that they have entire methods on getting out of them. We have fake boyfriends, fake numbers, hell, we even lie about our sexuality sometimes. We’ll do anything to get out of uncomfortable situations.

There was a Twitter post claiming something along the lines of: If you think a girl is giving you a fake number, ask her to read it back to you. Well, if you think you’re getting a wrong number, that means she’s not interested. Why would you even continue something with someone who isn’t interested in you? Again, why do you feel so entitled to a woman’s number? Why do you feel so entitled to a woman’s being? Is your masculinity going to be damaged that bad because you were rejected? Are you less of a man if you do get rejected? Were you ever truly a man if something as small as rejection makes you feel like less of one?

Here’s a Public Service Announcement: If a girl isn’t interested, she isn’t interested. Move on, go to a girl that actually wants you, and carry on with your day. Don’t spew venomous words from your mouth because you feel like a hurt little boy whose schoolboy crush just circled “no” on the “Do you like me? Yes or no?” note. Take the rejection with dignity for God’s sake. We’re supposed to be grown and mature people, stop pouting like a child when you don’t get your way and grow up.