Date Hair

Evo's Coffee Lounge
8oz Soy Mocha
Vegan Heart Biscuit with jam

I am 34 years old.  Thirty-four years.  That's a long damn time.  Carter was president when I was born.  Gas prices were causing rationing with long lines of gas-guzzlers stretching down the road.  My brother's and I used to fight over the front seat as kids.  Now we would have been squeezed into into three booster seats in the back.  Lenders couldn't charge you more than 10% interest when I was born, and a summer job could pay an entire year's tuition.

And on and on the changes I've seen in thirty-four years...  I remember the Challenger disaster.  I remember coming home from school to the news that we were at war in Iraq (the first time).  I remember the L.A. Riots.  I remember not really caring for Bill Clinton until the impeachment spectacle.  I remember thinking then that I definitely could never be president - I do not have that kind of emotional stamina to go through that and just keep working.

But I did give serious thought to being president when I was a kid.  It was really an option for a while.  Along with many other things... philosopher, physicist, writer, lawyer, truck driver, opera singer...  My biggest problem then was deciding.  But I'm not a kid anymore.  And I'm not any of those things... on a professional level, anyway.  On reflection, I'm kinda all those things informally.

Because I'm interesting.  I am an interesting, autonomous human being.  But the most interesting thing is that, in thirty-four years - I haven't thought of you once.

...Mr. You're-a-Fat-Bitch-because-you're-not-interested-in-me...

I have contemplated the shape and nature of the Universe.  I have worried over things large and small.  But I have never once in 34 years worried about the opinion of a man who does not respect me enough to leave me alone.  I have never gotten up in the morning and said to myself, "How should I dress today so I can please the next guy who wants to stare at my ass?"  I have never once - not ever - wanted a complete or virtually complete stranger to comment on the size or buoyancy of my tits.  Never.  It is not a compliment.  It is a threat.  It is the reduction of a human being to an appendage, an object, a thing inferior to the person making the comment.

I shouldn't have to say I'm in a relationship or that I just forgot to put my wedding ring back on after cleaning apples for my kids' lunch.  I shouldn't have to say, "Yeah, I'd totally be into you, but the chemo is really taking it out of me today."  I shouldn't have to say that I have some emotional stuff going on and I'm a little fragile.  Or a lot fragile.  I shouldn't have to tell you that it is not okay to touch me in any way at all.  I shouldn't have to say that grabbing my ass is actually a sexual assault.  That should be a goddamn given.

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the time, if a girl rejects your advances, it has almost nothing to do with you.  Sometimes there's nothing wrong with the guy asking you out for coffee but there's nothing particularly appealing to you either.  There's nothing wrong with just not being interested.  And I completely respect that guys feel vulnerable asking a girl out and it's hard to deal with even a kind rejection.  But just as a woman should not feel validated as a human being only when someone finds her sexually attractive, so should a man not feel like less of a man if any given woman isn't interested.

I know that women are sometimes very unkind to men.  And again, that is often mostly unrelated to the man talking to her.  Just try to remember that for every shy guy who plucks up the courage to ask her out, there is a barrage of assholes calling her a Fat Bitch just for walking past them wearing any amount of clothing, not to mention all the subtle and not-so-subtle misogynist messaging from every imaginable source in society.  Some times it's just bad timing.

I have turned down a number of potentially wonderful relationships simply because I didn't have my Date Hair on. 

Date Hair means you are willing to invest the energy getting to know someone.  You're willing to shave your legs and make yourself more presentable to society at large.  You feel stable enough with your own crap that you're willing to let someone in, to take the emotional hit if it turns out bad.  And even when you're not looking you may still find someone who knocks you off your feet anyway.  (So don't take it personally if someone who said she wasn't dating anybody right then ends up going out with some other guy a week later).

So, good guys, hang in there.  Don't get cynical, and maybe experiment with getting to know a girl for the purpose of being a friend rather than being a perspective girlfriend for a change.

And please knock your asshole friends upside their heads because they're kinda ruining for the rest of you.



Okay, posting!  No edits. 

My boys are waiting in the car for me.