When girls begin puberty they don't just grow a pair of breasts, they also grow the body armor that goes with it. Not that there's any way to comfortably deal with the catcalls, hoots and hollers that travel hand-in-hand with being female in public if one of Leah's latest posts is any indication.
At 34, I've had just over twenty-five years of learning how to deal with this problem, as I started puberty at eight. It didn't matter who I was with or what I was wearing; if I was nine and holding my father's hand or walking to baseball practice at ten or coming out of the local breakfast joint after Sunday Mass at eleven, I adapted to the chorus of hey-babies and sweet-thing and nice-tits. I learned to look straight forward as a car full of testosterone slowed down to check out my adolescent awkwardness. I ignored them just like I ignored the fact that I was boobtacular at all, continuing to play basketball and baseball and every other sport that they let girls play at that time. But people never let you forget. Family, friends, construction workers.
Yesterday it was the parking lot of the Whole Foods. I wondered if the long-haired, stylishly-disheveled guy knew the meaning of irony as he remarked nice tits in the parking lot. I'm no longer a chubby hunched-over adolescent, and I realize that purple hair + pink car = attention. However, I had grocery shopping to do for younger slackbrother's birthday lunch today (wild mushroom and chicken enchiladas with an ancho-chili cream sauce, chipotle black beans, guacamole and salsa and chips and sangria) and I was moving some stuff into the trunk of my car, preparing for the onslaught of groceries that I was about to buy. I raised an eyebrow, as I'm known to do, and continued with what I was doing.
I should have been impressed with his can-do attitude, because this one didn't give up. He approached the car and continued with his comments. But I just wanted to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible, so I ignored him until he was practically on me, at which point I just locked my car and walked away. It was 4pm on a Saturday afternoon, and the place was teeming with people.
Three steps later I could hear him say it, bitch, and I thought to myself does it really make a man feel important to try to physically intimidate someone half a foot and a hundred pounds less than he is? But then I heard the unmistakable sound of a loogie being hawked up, and I turned to see him spit on my car.
I watched the mixture of saliva and snot slide down the fender like a teardrop and wondered if I should repark my car, but anyone who's been to a Whole Foods in Los Angeles on a Saturday afternoon knows the sheer folly of that idea. I swallowed the lump in my throat and was thankful for my overly large sunglasses. An elderly woman who had witnessed the tail end of the tailing handed me a crumpled kleenex - for the tears that hopefully she couldn't see or for the car I do not know - but I used it to wipe his DNA from the Mini's pink frame while she muttered MEN and I just nodded, afraid that my voice would give way.
It's been twenty-five years of hey babies and nice tits and woo-hoos. Twenty-five years of sussing out harassers. Twenty-five years to figure out who will shirk away from a comeback and who will take it as an invitation to raise the stakes (as the lovely "girls like you get raped" duo told me from a few years back). Twenty-five years of being reminded that no amount of good humor or snappy comebacks or self-defense or weightlifting or sheer will and sassiness can fend it off, and even if I carried a weapon, it wouldn't get rid of that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Twenty-five years and I'm still just a kid and there's nothing I can do but suck it up and move on.
I came home and lugged three stores' worth of groceries as well as the dry cleaning inside while the garbage I had asked Mr. Boy to take out while I was gone still sat in the service porch, blocking my way. I dumped everything in the driveway, hauled it mountain or garbage and boxes out and brought the groceries in. He woke from his nap and said he didn't feel well, and all I could eke out was the only thing I asked you to do was take out the garbage. I was sorry as soon as I said it, and he shook his head and made his way down the hallway to the bathroom to shower. I cursed myself for taking my anger out on the man who I knew loved me, and not at the stranger who I knew definitely did not.
