I have just been permanently crippled by an army man with a bayonet. I didn’t even see him coming. They’re very sneaky and like to hide in the pattern of the carpet. Fucking army men. I bet Hans could tell me what kind of bayonet it was too. I also found one in my bed the other day. WHY WAS THERE AN ARMY MAN IN MY BED? My bed is clearly not the sacred space I thought it was.
After I finished writing last night, the party went on and on. Symon and I were watching Malcolm in the Middle at 1 in the morning and during the commercials he was switching to this really stupid British talk show on BBC America. The guy was interviewing this chef who Gabby loves and Symon hates. Symon called him a knob, so I asked him what a knob was. It is a penis. We then had a superbly immature conversation about the cultural differences in human anatomical slang. He says tit, I say boob; knob, penis, und so weiter, und so fort.
I slept in a little today, but was awoken at 9 by Jake practicing the theme to the Pink Panther on his trumpet and the sounds of war between Hans’s tanks and the neighbor kid’s armored motor boats. I tried to go back to sleep, but unsurprisingly was not successful. I had breakfast and did a pile of mending for Gabby (the first of many such piles I’m sure), before heading off to Arlington for a lunch date with the Smithsonian and government Smith interns. I love being with Smithies. When it’s just the 9 of us Smithsonian people, the Smith vibe doesn’t really come out and I find myself almost forgetting that we all go to the same school. But when there are 20 or so of us, it’s a different story. I was trying earlier to put a finger on exactly what it is that makes a group of Smith women so different. I mean, there are the obvious reasons like that we’re all fairly intelligent, liberal, and mostly interested in the same things. Then there’s the fact that a good portion of the interns are gay, but I don’t think that’s it either. We have a certain crassness, rudeness almost, but also an affectionate sort of self deprecation. We’re the kind of group that I would be scared to approach if I weren’t already a part of it.
Anyway, I have skipped the most interesting part of my day. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like a piece of meat here. I get leered at, followed, groped, or in some way hit on, on what is becoming a regular basis. Either I have obtained some new qualities that I am hitherto unaware of, or DC men are of a different breed. Or maybe it’s because I’ve spent the majority of my life in Vermont (the nicest, safest place on earth) and at a women’s college. Incident number one was on rout 95 on the way to Virginia, when this guy in a black SUV stalked me for almost 2 hours. He would pull up to one side of me and wave his fingers at me to role my window down and at one point I think he actually wanted me to pull over. At any rate, after about 10 minutes, I completely ignored him and eventually he went away. In retrospect, I really wish I’d given him the finger or called 911. Not only was he harassing me, but he was also compromising not only my driving safety, but his as well.
Incident number 2 was the Indian guy in his mid 20s who sat down next to me in a virtually empty metro car on my first ever trip into DC. He proceeded to grill me on how old I was, what I was doing in DC, and other not-his-business types of things. I was careful not to give him any specific information like where I live or anything, but I continually dread that I’ll meet him on the metro again. The best part of this encounter was when he reached over and grabbed my side fat. MY SIDE FAT! I mean, that is MY side fat. NOT his side fat, and definitely not his side fat to GRAB. I understand that there were some major cultural differences in this exchange, and that he was actually trying to compliment me when he told me that I would be much prettier if I was just a little bit fatter. HA. Then he said that I shouldn’t wear jeans and that women should wear very short skirts (he demonstrated how short by grabbing (again with the grabbing) my thigh). Then I said that I was not in the habit of dressing like a slut and that, no, he was not allowed to touch my thigh or any other part of my body. He gave me a lovely hug before he got off the metro.
And then there was Brendan. Ah, Brendan. To validate that this keeps happening to me, my friend Jess (unbeknownst to me) was standing across the street at the time and witnessed the entire exchange. I was walking innocently through Arlington on my way to my lunch thing when I heard yelling. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from and figured it wasn’t directed at me so I kept walking. A minute later, this 30 something year old guy wearing no shoes comes running across the parking lot to my left and from maybe 30 feet away says that he was the one who had yelled before and that I must not have heard him. Apparently, he had seen the grungy paint covered cut offs I was wearing and had given a shout out because he was a painter too. Yay for him. I mean really, what does one say to this. His friend had said why not go talk to this girl so off he went. What’s your name, how can I contact you, can I see you again, what’s your number, my name is Brendan, etc. I was off to see Smithies. I was sick of being hit on. I was not very nice. He was parked in a no parking zone. The end.
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