Another Freak Thinks I'm Hot

Oh, can I attract the freaks.

The weirdos.

The pedophiles.

The drug users.

The psychopaths with anger problems that lead them to hurl other psychopaths through plate glass windows.

The middle aged white men who have not shaved or bathed in decades, who smell of stale cigarette smoke and broken dreams. Or was that gin?

Yep, I know how to find them. If there is a loser in a room with a hundred nice, good looking guys who like sci-fi and their moms, the loser will be the one who actually likes me. The rest of them will talk Trek with me and then ask out my friends. Or at least they used to, when my friends and I spent any time with boys.

And they aren't just the marginal losers, they are the hard core losers. The first guy who told me I was pretty is in the Federal Penitentiary (capitalized because it sounds so scary) for trafficking in illegal weaponry.

Oh yeah. The guys who like Laura carry rocket launchers around. So be careful.

The good news, aside from the fact that I can spot these freaks of nature with my Danger Meter from miles away, is that usually they are also hugely stupid, and make dumb mistakes like picking fights with police officers or just having the rocket launcher laying around where anyone could see it and call the cops. Or by pulling an honest to goodness switch blade on the bus as a joke.

Yep. That guy asked me out.

I turned him down.

But I was really nice about it.

Just in case.

The last thing I want is to push some unstable guy over the edge and have him driving around the country side killing girls who look like me as he gradually works up to eviscerating me on the anniversary of my refusal.

You really never know with some of these guys.

Others of them don't actually say anything, or at least they don't say anything to me. Instead, they make comments to the other men with them as if I am deaf to any words not spoken directly to me, with eye contact established. I think that some men think you don't hear them if they use cunning code words I can't repeat without going blind or deaf for real, or being struck down by God for the evil I utter.

You have to worry about being struck down by God if you read any of the Old Testament. That stuff used to go down a lot.

Usually those are the sort I have the biggest problem with, because they are the type that objectify and leave, looking me up and down (as if there is any part of me that justifies notice) and lingering on certain areas--you know which ones, Jen, but don't say them out loud or I will black out with horror--even though those one such area is mostly miracle bra and their imaginations.

Oh, but the freaks I hate the most, more than all others, are the kind that think because I am in a service industry job, retail, library, etc, I have to listen to them and be nice, even if they are freaky people I want gone. The ones that ask me questions and try to have long conversations I know are only going on because I am standing in front of them taking their money when they buy their car magazines they only buy for the girls. You know what I mean.

Oh, they are horrible. Standing there high and shirtless asking me questions about layaway at Walmart for jewelry that costs five dollars. Because they just want to keep talking, or because they have to save up all their change after they buy their drugs in order to end up with that nice thick hip hop chain and fake bling they got from a toy vending machine at the grocery store.

And yesterday, I was working at the computer minding my own business as one of them came up to the window in front of my computer desk. The window that opens out into the foyer that I am mostly invisible through.

Oh yes, He had to stand on his tip-toes and lean forward in order to glimpse me at all, and when I noticed that he was doing it, I gave him a dirty look because--what a freak! I don't even need a reason. He deserved that dirty look for being a human stain.

Then he got all happy and left with his dirty friends, because a girl noticed him. It doesn't matter why. Just that she did.

And this is why I am so cynical. This is why I expect men to be disgusting and horrible creatures of darkness, and I feel vindicated when they are.

This is the reason why I will end up old, angry, and alone. This is why I will have an apartment or a house of my own, filled with books, and be noticed by my smell three weeks after I am dead. And if Myst, my cat, is still alive, there won't be much of me left to find.

That cat is possessed. She would totally eat me if I died. She's waiting for it. That will be her liberation day.

At least, until that day comes, I will have my knitting to console me. And Jen loves The Golden Girls so much, we will probably end up re-enacting the series by moving into the same house and being persnickety together.

One can only hope.