#propositioning

When I was about fourteen, when I’d walk home from school, there was a kid on the way to the bus stop that would proposition all the girls who passed him, in very explicit terms, under his breath. The bus stop lay about halfway down the route I took home, and it was on one of those streets that only had a sidewalk on one side. It was too busy a street to make walking in the road a viable proposition, so you had to walk by him, and as he walked very slowly, sooner or later you’d step around him and pass him, and immediately from behind you, in a tone slightly louder than a whisper, you’d hear “hey baby wanna suck my dick hey baby I wanna lick your pussy hey hey wanna suck your tits” in a sort of monotone until you got out of earshot. You learned not to stop to tie your shoes. It wasn’t just me, of course—he did it to everybody female, except on Wednesdays, when he didn’t show up at all. (You got to appreciate Wednesdays.) Once he got to the bus-stop, he would stand a little way away, leaning against the sign, and maintain this running monolog until the bus arrived. (A friend of mine took the bus, and sometimes I’d wait with her. I never asked if he did it on the bus, too. I assume he probably did.) This lasted through my freshman and sophomore years. As a junior, I got an internship at a vet in the other direction, but presumably it continued until he was eighteen and no longer the school system’s problem. More about that in a minute. I was reminded about this the other day when I was reading “Lies My Teacher Told Me” which is actually about American history, and perhaps I’ll talk about that at some point. From mild shock over the state of history teaching, however, I went on to thinking about the failure of schools to teach some extraordinarily vital skills—like, say, “What do I do when somebody creepy/pushy/unwelcome propositions me?” Case in point—9th grade sex ed. I had a very good, very progressive sex ed program that told us how things worked, how you got pregnant, and showed us all the birth control options at our fingertips. Because of this class, I felt comfortable asking my doctor for the pill some years later. But even in a very good class, we spent a whole lot of time doing (I kid you not) word searches for terms like “epididymus” and “Cowper’s gland” and absolutely no time on things like “signs you are in an abusive relationship” and “how to tell when you are being sexually propositioned and what to do about it.” To this day, I still generally don’t know if somebody is trying to pick me up until some weeks after the fact, but if you present me with a xeroxed word search, I can circle “Cowper’s gland” with the best of them. And if somebody makes an unwelcome pass that is sufficiently crude to register as “No, seriously, you’re not reading into this, dude really DID just say that,” my first instinct is still to pretend to ignore it and leave the area immediately, because I haven’t a clue what to say or do next, and I really want it not to be happening. D.A.R.E., generally laughable though it was*, at least did role-playing and showed us videos of kids being Pressured To Take Drugs. In thirty-five years, with extensive exposure to stoners, my entire experience of being pressured to take drugs consisted of the following: STONER: *passes joint* ME: “Nah, I’m driving.” STONER: “Oh, okay.” *repeat entire sequence some minutes later, owing to short term memory loss on the part of one participant* I am more than willing to allow that this is not a universal experience, mind you, and some people probably do have terrifyingly aggressive drug pushers pouncing on them–but I would be very surprised if, pound for pound, the number of “people-offering-me-drugs-that-have-made-me-uncomfortable” experiences tips the scale anywhere near “guys-propositioning-me-for-sex-that-have-made-me-uncomfortable.” I had more unwelcome sexual propositions before I was old enough get a learner’s permit than I have had unwelcome drug offers in my entire life. A class in that would have been nice. I can see all the reasons why it would never, ever make it past the Arbiters of Morality, but I wish it would. A class in “This is how you find who’s in charge at this event/place/whatever and get help.” “This is how you file a police report.” “This is how you ask for help.” Instead we flounder around on our own, and each one of us has to reinvent the wheel. *As I signed the little pledge, in sixth grade, I remember thinking clearly “If I want to do drugs, the fact that I have signed this sheet of paper will have absolutely no effect on me whatsover.”