Heeeeey Sexy!

Chapter 18: Getting’ Holla’d At

I know that many women hate getting catcalled on the street. I never catcall women. I simply don’t like encroaching on a woman’s (or anyone’s) personal space. I rarely even approach women in bars for the same reason. It’s also the reason online dating is so nice, you already know the person’s intentions and availability before you actually meet. They are there to hook up, all you need to do is be the type of guy they want to hook up with.

It’s a shame that some women don’t like getting catcalled though, as for me its loads of fun to be on the receiving end. I understand why some women don’t, women always have to be at least a little on their guard around men. Nature gave woman less upper body strength, but more importantly, men are socialized to be masculine and dominant whereas women are socialized to be feminine and “nice”.

(I hate generalizing, not every woman feels on guard around men. I’ve dated two women that didn’t. One that liked to go topless whenever she was legally able, and another that liked to start bar fights.)

I think it’s more the socialization issue than the body mass issue that creates the problem. A woman can always learn a martial art, buy a knife, buy a gun, or get some less-than-lethal weapon to protect herself. While I know I can fight ok, but I’m not exactly a big guy. I usually carry a switchblade for that reason. It resting on my hip makes me feel secure that if someone messes with me, they are coming out of the situation far worse for their trouble.

The socialization issue is more a problem with the way boys are socialized than the way girls are. Teaching girls that they will be labeled a bitch if they aren’t meek, isn’t great. Teaching boys that in order to fulfill their self-esteem, romantic, and sexual needs, they have to be dominant, is toxic. The implied relationship, that masculinity rules over femininity, is something even a child can intuit. Those impressions form behavior patterns that last a lifetime.

I somewhat intuitively understand the caution that some women feel. I had hippy parents, so I didn’t get the masculinity stuff, they were the type to buy me Barbies instead of GI Joes. I was also born a little bi. This lead to me being a fairly feminine kid.

I was extremely skinny after puberty, to the point that I had an eating disorder. My first girlfriend used to make fun of me for weighing less than her, and she was not at all overweight. Suffice to say, I got beat up a lot.

Even once I got into art school, a very tolerant environment, I was still always scared all the time. Someone catcalling at me in the street would easily have been enough to ruin my day with anxiety.

I began to make a conscious effort to be more masculine. I put on weight, I started lifting weights a little, but most importantly I made a conscious effort to change my mannerisms.

Instead of crossing my legs I would sit with them open. Instead of making limp-wristed hand gestures I kept my hands straight. I started paying attention to my posture and gait. I made sure to square and roll back my shoulders to make myself look bigger, and to walk like a cat stalking its prey whenever I entered a room. And of course, I never mentioned being bisexual, not even to my friends.

Over time, by my early twenties, my efforts had paid off. I knew they had when I went to pick up a girl from her parent’s house to give her a ride back to the City after a holiday weekend. At the time I was dressed in a leather jacket, aviators, a black tee, jeans, combat boots and had my head shaved. I was also driving a jet-black Mustang GT. A rental, as a City resident I didn’t need a car, but it still made an impression.

I met her father, a Southern European man. He greeted me in a charmingly thick accent and immediately complimented me on the car. We talked while she finished getting ready, and he decided his nickname for me was going to be “Mr. Macho”. At first, I thought he was just fucking with me. He was a little bit, but later I found out that he was actually sincere.

He was under the misapprehension that I was dating his daughter; she and I in truth were just friends. She didn’t date much, and he didn’t like the fact she wasn’t married yet but did like the idea that she had apparently landed a dude that looked like he could defend her from a mugger and was driving a pit-bull of a car. South European machismo at its finest.

It was at this point in my life I started getting holla’d at.

The first time I screwed it up royally.

I was on the train coming out of Bushwick. At the time I had developed a love of Adidas sportswear. I was dressed head to toe in matching, classic white stripes on black Adidas. Jacket, tee, pants, and high-end leather Samba shoes definitely not made for ruining by playing soccer in them. Basically, I looked like a Russian mobster.

It was late afternoon. The sun had fallen to just below the skyline. I was on an above-ground train, suspended just high enough that the warm orange sunlight flickered on and off, on and off, with each building we passed. I was listening to my iPod, one of the ones that still had a click wheel on it. My eyes were drifting shut beneath my sunglasses, hypnotized by the rhythmic pulse of the fading sunset.

A woman put her hand on my leg and said something in my ear. Being touched on the train is seldom a good thing. I instinctively recoiled from her. Then I realized what she had said: she was flirtatiously complimenting me on my Adidas kicks.

I had no idea what to say. I had zero cool back then. The fact that I had just jumped a foot in the air and pulled back from her made things awkward. She was a cute girl, dressed stylishly, probably about my age or slightly younger. I had just leaped away from her and essentially treated her the same way you would treat a crazy homeless person if they put their hand on your leg. In my socially awkward panic, I think I muttered something completely weird, embarrassing, and inappropriate, like “Have a Good Day” or something.

To this day I’m still embarrassed by that interaction. First because of the missed opportunity to flirt with her. Second, because I probably hurt her feelings by jumping away from her like that. Third, because she was black, and I am white. I hope that she didn’t misinterpret the way I acted for racism. I could definitely see her doing so, and it compounds the hurt feelings of being awkwardly rejected.

Since then I’ve gotten a bit smoother. I went through a phase where I was not only dressing like a mobster, I was also driving a bright yellow convertible.

If you want to get hit on, get a convertible. Getting catcalled by women went from an every-once-in-a-while thing, to an everyday thing. It was nice. A little pick me up when I was out, just letting me know I was looking great. It made me much better at responding when a woman pulled up and yelled, “Hey Baby!” I got good at having a flirtatious response ready.

The best times I’ve had with getting holla’d was when I was working for Uber. I never, ever, hit on passengers. I’m not a sleaze bag. They would hit on me though. I was constantly getting propositioned, sometimes openly. Several passengers simply asked me to come in and sleep with them when I dropped them off. Unfortunately, I was married at the time.

Drunk women are just as bad as drunk guys, especially if they are in a pack. If you pick up four drunk girls from a bar, they behave just like frat boys and will get all over you. I think on some primordial, subconscious level if you drive a girl home from the bar she feels like you’re her boyfriend, even if she is paying Uber for you to do it. If you drive four drunk women home, they start competing for whose boyfriend you are.

I was driving home four drunk girls from a shitty Italian chain restaurant. They were trashed, it was four in the afternoon. They had all gone to college together, probably at Towson State, as they were all from New Jersey and Towson State is for some reason a magnet for Jersey girls. The women in the passenger seat had just had her first kid, and her friends were taking her out as it was the first time in since her pregnancy that she could get hammered.

I was wearing an expensive motorcycle-style leather jacket, though it was made of lamb leather. While it would not protect you in a crash, it was very, very soft. The women in the front passenger seat, the one that had just had the baby, kept reaching over and running her hand down my chest, commenting on how soft and smooth the jacket was. I didn’t do anything to discourage her.

She noticed the car had a sunroof and asked me if I could open it and let her ride out of the sunroof so that she could get her “woooooooo!” on. Because she’s from Jersey.

I agreed, but under the condition that we had to do it on a side street where we wouldn’t get busted and at a speed where if something bad happened she wouldn’t get hurt.

We did exactly that. She stood on the center council, sticking out the roof, going “woooooooo!” waving her hands in the air as we drove down the side streets, at about 20 mph. It was hilarious.

When I finally got them to their destination, they all got out, but she walked over to the driver’s side window and made a gesture to roll it down. I did, expecting that she had left her phone in the car or something. Drunk chicks are always leaving their phones in Ubers.

Instead, she bent down and kissed me. Not a kiss on the cheek, the full tongue-in-mouth variety. She then invited me to join her and her friends.

I declined. They were drunk, I was married… but her offer was so tempting.