I’m a relatively attractive female. I’m tall and proportionate with blonde hair and nice green eyes. They’d probably love me in Japan. However, I live in Los Angeles, the same city as Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Giselle, Halle Berry and Scarlett Johansson.
I’m an attractive female for, say, northern Michigan, where my parents live, but in Los Angeles, I hardly make the cut. I’m no Giselle and I am perfectly okay with that. Really, I am. I don’t want to be a star. If I had been born looking like Angelina Jolie, I might have no other choice and that would suck.
One of the reasons I like living in LA is that I’m not the prettiest girl around by a long shot. I don’t want attention. I love being an anonymous member of the crowd, which is why it’s so weird that I’ve had a spate of random admirers of late.
Today, we’re going to talk about some strange but true encounters that I’ve had in the past few weeks.
Prius Guy
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you might have seen this:
I was standing outside on a break from work enjoying the sunshine and doing stuff on my phone when an older foreign dude in a Toyota Prius drove by, reversed about twenty feet, rolled down his window and asked if he could ask me a personal question.
What are you supposed to say when a total stranger asks if they can ask you a personal question? My response was to shrug my shoulders in a not very encouraging way. He asked, “Do you have a boyfriend?” to which I happily almost shouted, “YES!” because I initially thought the personal question might be even more personal.
Even if I didn’t have a weird, complicated, near-boyfriend thing with Male, I would have said I had a boyfriend to a guy who hit on me on the street in a Prius.
Cardboard Sign Guy
I take the freeway to work and back. Every day, when I get off the freeway to go home, there’s someone at the exit asking for money. Usually, it’s a different person and there’s never more than one. They must have some territorial rotation trade agreement worked out so that they’re all not congregated there at once.
I generally ignore them. For whatever reason, I’ll sometimes give money to people as a pedestrian, but never when I’m driving. It’s probably an invasion of personal space sort of thing. I don’t want people reaching in my car.
So, I was busily ignoring said panhandler, waiting for the light to change, when he walked up to my car with his sign and asked me if I could spare some change. I said no. Then, he asked me if I’d like to go out sometime.
I’m not one of those women who’s all that concerned about social status or money in a potential mate. I don’t have a salary requirement, but I do kind of hope that a potential mate might have taken a shower sometime this month and have a mailing address. Stringent standards, I know.
I have to credit cardboard sign guy with gumption. It’s not every day that a filthy homeless dude works up the courage to ask a non-homeless woman out, or it could be that he asked every female who drove by. I’m not sure.
In any event, I’ve never been asked out by a homeless guy holding a cardboard sign before. I regret to inform you that I declined his generous offer to buy him a meal.
Dog Park Guy
I take my dog to the dog park every day since we no longer have a yard for her to go insane in. Now, she goes insane in the dog park every day. I’ve gotten to know a lot of the regulars there.
Last weekend, it was rather warm, so I wore a skirt to the dog park. It wasn’t a short skirt. It was well and truly covering my behind and then some, but above the knee. Nor was it fancy at all. It was an olive-green, machine washable cargo skirt, similar to this one:
I was standing there chit-chatting with some of the regulars, when I felt a cold nose on the back of my leg. One of the dogs was trying to go up my skirt from behind, the cheeky monkey. He didn’t make it very far before I turned around. There were a couple of men who thought that was the funniest thing in the world. The guy whose dog it was said, “Well, that’s what you get for dressing sexy.”
That was not the first time that guy made some remark about how I’m cute or attractive. He’s mostly harmless and married, so I typically blow it off, but this particular remark rubbed me the wrong way. I was wearing muddy Converse with a cargo skirt and a plain black T-shirt. That is not my idea of “dressing sexy.” His use of the word “sexy” irritated me. Had I been wearing the same shoes and shirt with shorts, he wouldn’t have said that. Now, I’ll think twice before I wear a skirt to the dog park again. Thanks, jerk.
Bike Guy
Just last night, I was out walking my dog. It was the last time before bed that we go out, so it was somewhere around 10:30pm. I was waiting for her to finish sniffing and do her business when a guy a rode by on a bike. He had one of those lights on his bike which is powered by pedaling so it was flashing as he approached.
When he got about five feet from me, he stopped his bike and said, “You’re beautiful. I love you,” and rode away. Dumbfounded, I watched his flashing light go on down the street. Meanwhile, I was ready for bed, so I was wearing an over-sized sweatshirt, glasses and slippers. Really, dude? What the hell?
Seriously, menfolk out there, stop hitting on me. Don’t call me sexy, beautiful or tell me that you love me. You don’t know me. You have no idea who I am besides what you see. Anyone who’s drawn to me strictly on appearances will surely lose. I don’t respond to men who hit on me, and I certainly won’t believe that you love me having never spoken to me before. Knock if off.
Fish Of Gold 