Somehow I've managed to find myself seated on the dirty couch of someone I've never met before in a tiny apartment in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. A friend of my girlfriend has invited us over for a small party, and we've
arrived late. By the time we showed up, most of the guests were already merry, if you will, and I'm just happy to be spending time with the resident's cat.
Wheezy, the gorgeous and well-tempered tuxedo cat, is snoozing on the coffee table in front of us next to a full Jenga stack while my arm is around my girlfriend's shoulders. The boy slumped over next to me on this grimy couch, whom I've just met this very evening, sees his window of opportunity as I lean in for a kiss. He takes careful aim, and fires a single shot:
"Do you want to make this weird?"
He misses completely.
We put our PDA on pause and stare in confusion. She asks him to clarify, without really needing any clarification on the matter at all. We are always targets, walking through shooting ranges. He puts us in his crosshairs once again and takes a second shot.
"Do you think, maybe, I could get involved here?"
The laughter begins a moment before the apologies start spewing from his leaky faucet mouth. I can't tell if she's faking it, but I am. I'm not laughing on the inside. He puts his gun, loaded with blanks, away for now and the evening goes on without a further hitch.
(The hit rate for that question, by the way, is zero. Every time.)
I'm thinking about this brief incident as he dozes off once again and I feel weak. The fact of the matter is that he was not expecting us to say yes. He knew he would be rejected; it was written all over his face from the second we started chuckling. I asked him, in between fits of forced giggles, what his success rate was with that question in the past. He answered me with his own inebriated laughter, and that was all he needed to say for me to know she and I had just been made victims.
Catcallers and fetishizers don't do what they do to score dates with the young women they pursue. No man who has ever yelled, "Nice tits!," from the smudged window of a filthy van at a young woman on the sidewalk has expected her to strip down, right there, and beg for him to take her number. No man who has ever insisted on being a lesbian couple's "third" has expected them to invite him back to their place. This is an exercise of power, an assertion of dominance, a humiliation tactic. When predators say, "Smile, baby," or, "I can fix you," women hear, "I'll say whatever I want to you, no matter how inappropriate it is or how uncomfortable it may make you feel, and there is nothing you can do about it." The men keep on driving and keep on insisting. They keep on taking their shots. Catcalling and unwanted sexual advances are always threats, and never compliments.
She and I discussed this encounter a few days later when we were both of sound mind and body. We're only a few months into our relationship, and she recalled how that was our first time as a couple being approached in such a way.
I don't know how many more I can take.
