Metro Journal: October 14 Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

I got on the 207 at Western and Hollywood. As I was stepping on, this guy behind tells me he's in love with me. This is generally not a good way to start a conversation with me when you are a complete and total stranger, as "stranger" starts to take on multiple meanings. I gave my polite-but-dismissive smile-and-nod and got on the bus.

Of course, he sat next to me. And then proceeded to try to put the mack on me. I quickly wanted to put a Mack Truck on him.

Him: Will you hang out with me?
Me: Um, no, I need to go work.
Him: You?! You don't work! Hey, give me your phone number.
Me: Um, no.
Him: Can I give you mine?
Me: Um, no.
Him: What, you don't like me?
Me: Um, I am not going to spend the day with you and I am not going to give you my phone number.
Him: Aw, come on! Come over to my apartment!
Me: Um, no.
Him: Come on! I'll clean it for you! Want me to clean it first?
Me: Sure, you can clean your apartment, but I'm not coming over.
Him: Why not?
Me: Um, I don't know you.
Him: Get to know me!
Me: Um, no, I don't think so.
Him: You are the most beautiful white girl I've ever seen.
Me: Um, ok...
Him: I got on the bus just to be with you! Why don't you like me? Am I doing something wrong? What am I doing wrong?

Fortunately, the longest mile-long bus ride was finally over.

I was sitting there wondering, does this work??? On anyone? Do I look that desperate/easy/stupid? Do I look like I'm turned on by people who reek of cigarette smoke?

I got off, and thank whatever deities watch over bus riders, but he stayed on the bus. If he hadn't, I would have been calling someone. Someone large. Or gotten really mean.


That morning was our weekly group meeting. We tend to get radically off-topic, which in this case was welcome because the work situation which has been threatening to make me physically ill has not much improved and I am sick of hearing my co-workers bitch about it non-stop. I forget how we meandered there (I was semi-tuned out, in case I needed to wander off to Planet Karen when someone started complaining again), but I ended up mentioning how someone on the bus had been hitting on me in a rather unwelcome fashion. When I said the guy had told me I was "the most beautiful white girl" he'd ever seen, Bob says, "Yeah, and I just got off the boat from Zimbabwe."

This, after I'd given him this monkey the day before:


(He's been extremely stressed about the situation, too. With his diet of cheeseburgers, I fear he will have a heart attack. Someone two floors down actually did have a heart attack on the lot about two months ago and supposedly required bypass surgery.)

Yeah, Bob, you're going down for that one.

Joe-the-Bear, protector of women (in a way that manages not to offend the self-sufficient feminist in me), said he wished he could ride the bus with me to make guys like that back off. I pointed out that I had survived without baring my fangs.

(Joe's been really stressed, too (no one in the group hasn't, really), and after I gave Bob the retroactively ill-deserved monkey, Joe said I should make him a bear. "No, no, just kidding, you don't need to make me anything." (See this entry on why Joe is Joe the Bear. Well, ok, there the picture is labeled "Bob's Big Boy" for reasons I won't get into, but we call Joe "Joe the Bear" because he's a big guy.) (Ok, I've lost track of how many open parentheses I have.) The thing is, I had already planned to make Joe a teddy bear. I even had the yarn for it. I had planned to give them all these things for Christmas, but, well, because people needed pick-me-ups, the schedule got accelerated.

(Joe's Armenian, so I thought I'd make the bear in the Armenian flag colors of red, gold, and royal blue. I found a yarn that had the right fiber content, felt soft and that it would be easy on the hands doing the tight crochet tension necessary, and came in the perfect colors. That night I sat down to start the bear. I was looking at the label to see the recommended crochet hook size, when I see that... I can't use this yarn. It was made in Turkey. Why would that matter? Well, just read about the Armenian Genocide. Yeah, crap. I'm in a self-imposed yarn-buying moratorium as my stash overfloweth, but I had to order more yarn, trying to guess by the monitor which suitable yarns came in the right colors.)


That evening, I got on the 780 at the Vine Red Line station. As soon as we pulled away, some guy started yelling from the back, saying he wanted the next stop because he wanted to get off now. Ok. He started getting kind of ornery about it and walked up to the driver, in front of the yellow line, yelling (which is the only reason I heard him as I was pretty far back) that he wanted off and that the driver couldn't keep him on. I'm pretty sure the driver really wanted him off, too, but the next stop wasn't until Western, which is about a mile from Vine, so he had to wait. He was ranting and raving the whole time. I'm pretty sure that besides himself (and the driver), there were plenty more people who wanted him off the bus.


This is all making you really want to ride the bus in Hollywood, isn't it?

Monkey pattern from Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden