Of the Jackass in the Red Shirt

Click image to view source.

Social rules exist. Everyone knows this, or rather, I hope they do. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are some things that are just not okay in certain social situations. Swearing at the Pastor’s house. Outing someone. Wearing a long white dress to a wedding that’s not yours. Staring up a girls dress as she climbs a tree. Crashing a baby shower. Talking loudly throughout a movie. These are just things that you should really rethink attempting.

I deal with jerks who don’t understand the basis of social etiquette on a daily basis, but I rarely let it truly bother me. Most the time I throw those people into the column of stupidity and move on. Like the man who insisted on showing me his Yankee tattoo (on his calf). Or the woman who stormed out of Ice Age 4 because she was under the impression that she had bought tickets to a documentary about the ice age and not a children’s cartoon. To these people I think, really?, laugh to myself, and move on.

But when a man insulted my most favorite hobby, the teacher, and the overall Blues culture – that’s where I draw the line.

A man in red. I don’t know his name, I don’t care to, he pissed me off. When I walked into the venue I could sense that he was going to awkwardly hit on me. And I was right. He had that look that men on the prowl get where their eyes squint (as if women are some mysterious object), widen (ah ha! they spy a female), and then attempt a casual smile (target acquired, no way she can say no to this sexy manliness). I proceeded to put on my dance shoes, fill my water bottle, and sit down against the wall. The dance floor was respectably full. Sometimes it’s fun just to watch people twirl around.

He walked up to me and started talking, but I found it challenging to follow his pointless chatter. Here’s the basics: “I’m not really much of a Blues dancer I just like to do my own thing, you know what I mean, more of a freestyle dancer, you know what I mean, like Chris Brown or Kanye West, everyone here is so into pair dancing, I’m more of a solo act, you know what I mean, I like choreography, you know, so I’m trying to figure out what the girls like for choreography, I’m here to challenge myself, I like a challenge, I’m not here just to talk and meet girls, it’s kind of like a school dance, you know?” Ugh, never have I want to wave my rainbow bracelets in a man’s face so badly and yell, “LESBIAN!!” at the top of my lungs.

He asked me to dance, and like any good social dancer, I accepted. I wouldn’t call it a dance, unless I was at a wedding, it was more like me walking back and forth while he attempted to do fancy footwork. It was lame. It was awkward. I was laughing – but he probably just thought I was smitten. For the rest of the night I did my best to avoid him (I suddenly went to go get water more often than normal).

An hour or so later I came down from the bathroom to see the man in red attacking the teacher. He was loud, angry, and contradicting himself about every twenty seconds. I couldn’t believe it! I blatantly sat down and sipped my water as I eavesdropped – not that he noticed. He proceeded to bash the group lesson format, he got mad at her for not asking for a detailed account of his dancing experience, whined that they only taught Blues (at a Blues venue … *rolls eyes*), that he couldn’t dance with any of the girls here, blah, blah, blah. Everything that he said, all of his complaints, came down to him not understanding, or even attempting to grasp the culture.

From what I understood of his conversation, which was so emotionally heated and scattered that I can barely remember what he said, he felt insecure about his dancing and thought that people should pay him a lot more attention because he’s new. Shocking as it might be to understand – we encourage new dancers to dance. Crazy right. I don’t know a single follow who will bitch to her friends that she had to dance with a beginner. She’ll bitch because she had to dance with a weirdo.

Based off his body language I determined that he ultimately he wanted to feel like a star, to have everyone ooo and ahh over his impressive skills, and ideally take a lady back to his apartment. When that clearly wasn’t going to happen, he freaked out. If he wanted special treatment he should have paid for a private lesson. He crossed the line, simple as that, in what situation is it ever okay to yell at someone who was trying to help you? I must say, I applaud the teacher, she spoke gracefully and tolerated his attack much nicer than I would have.

Social dance has rules just like any other scene:

• If you attend the lesson do what they teach the group, don’t try to move to far ahead – remember that there’s most likely a wide variety of skill levels in attendance, sometimes you’ll have to learn the same dip/twirl/concept multiple times, consider it practice.
• If you receive a correction don’t get offended, learn from it – I promise you’ll be a better dancer if you do.
• If you have a question, ask – don’t expect the teacher to know that you’re struggling (like the jackass in red did).
• If someone asks you to dance, say yes – unless you have a really good reason to say no – like a hurt joint, you’ve already promised this dance to someone else, you’re a lead who needs to change your shirt, or you already danced with him/her and they got really creepy.
• AND DON’T DISRUPT THE EVENT AND PROCEED TO YELL AT THE TEACHER ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY’VE BEEN TRYING TO BE POLITE AND HELP YOU.

Aka – use common sense.

Of the Creeper at the Doorway

Click image to view source

My roomie and I were talking about life, love, success, food, old friends, sweat pants, basically anything and everything, when we heard a pounding at our door.

First – it was about midnight.

Second – we rarely get visitors without pre-planning.

We live in one of those apartment complex’s where there’s no lobby or indoor hallway. We’re set up like a motel surrounded by trees. Basically, our building really wanted to become an edgy cabin but failed in its execution. Our apartment is on the top-level in the corner where our door and the neighbors form a perfect 90 degree angle. Now, since they get more visitors than us, we normally assume that the banging is on their door. Tonight the knocking was for us …

I went up to the door first and peered through the peep-hole. I saw a stout man about my height, wearing a seashell choker necklace (very 90s of him), and knocking on the door in a fist-pumping-Jersey-Shore-fashion. He then began to repeat the phrase, “Open up” several times. Quickly, I motioned for my roomie. She hesitantly made her way towards the peep-hole.

This is the closest image I could find (Click image to view source)

You see, my roomie has an unusual fear of leaning up against doors, windows, and things of a similar nature in high pressure situations. When she was a kid she watched Scream (the original). The bathroom scene, where the girl leans up against the stall to try to hear what’s going on only to end up with a knife in her head, has left a residual worry in my roomie’s heart that she too could end up with a knife in the head. Anyways, she didn’t recognize him either.

Then he left.

About 5 minutes later he came back doing the exact same thing, yelling at us to open up, banging on the door like an angry man whom we had somehow wronged.

Then he left.

We were freaking out, ALL my roomie wanted to do was get her laundry, but we were both not comfortable with the her going outside alone or us leaving the apartment unattended. Eventually we called the campus police, who transferred us to the city police, who took our report and said that a police officer was going to stop by. I threw my hands up to my face slightly chuckling at the whole ordeal, I really didn’t want to deal with police. My roomie kept on saying how bad she’d feel if he just had the wrong apartment or something, but maybe now she could have an escort to the laundry room.

Click image to view source.

I’ve never been hesitant when looking through my window or peep-hole until tonight. I moved with caution, I felt like Simba during the scene in The Lion King where Mufasa teaches him how to pounce, quiet, steady, steady.

He never came back. Maybe he gave up or maybe he found his friends.

Then the police never showed up.

Oh, we got a phone call, saying that an officer circled and didn’t see anybody lurking. But, they NEVER asked what he looked like. I find that highly peculiar, I would think they would want to know who they were looking for so that some poor Joe smoking a cigarette or hanging out on the lawn wouldn’t become a suspect of creeping around our apartment. All they knew was that a man scared us.

I don’t think I’m in danger, I found the whole thing creepy, and I’m disappointed in the police officers who didn’t even bother to see if we were safe or okay.

Of Homosexuality and Media

Click image to view source

Lately I’ve been watching more gay/lesbian media than I usually do, and I’ve stumbled upon a semi-annoying discovery. In both movies and TV it’s a lot easier to find gay (likable) men than women. The token gay best friend is always a guy. There’s a crazy difference in the amount of movies about gay men versus gay women – when looking at titles it’s like a sea of gays with the occasional lesbian thrown in for kicks. In said movies, they typically function like the hetero couples, just a bit more flamboyant. An easy tangent would be to talk about the clear stereotype for how a gay man functions in society, but I think we all know what that would be. For instance: shopping, superficiality, hair with frosted tips, and “Hey girl , heeeeyy.” Even so, the media seems to be far more comfortable with the idea of two men than two ladies – unless they are behaving as a sex symbol.

Lesbians are portrayed as either super butch, anti-men feminists, or high maintenance lipsticks. This is not to say that butch lesbians aren’t walking about or that women are always easy to be around, but they get placed on an extreme binary scale. When I do find the rare lesbian movie that sounds interesting, the woman almost always ends up with a guy in the end. And if by some miracle she doesn’t, she still messed around with one. Of course, clearly if she sees a penis she’s going to stick around – at least in the media. This is not to say that these aren’t good movies, The Kids Are Alright is wonderful, I own it, but it does fall into that mindset of needs a man. The films that don’t have the switching teams factor are typically low-budget indies with acting that’s either superb or painfully bad, there’s no middle ground. I’m sick of watching these romantic or dramatic movies just to have the couple you’re rooting for suddenly break up and retreat into a hetero normative world. I want to cheer on a lesbian couple and have them stick it out with that Hollywood romantic comedy happily ever after ending.  Straight couples and gay men get that all the time, it’s the ladies turn.

Click image to view source