{"id":262306,"date":"2013-08-18T22:51:41","date_gmt":"2013-08-18T22:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/08\/18\/he-waited-until-the-train-was-in-motion-to-make\/"},"modified":"2013-08-18T22:51:41","modified_gmt":"2013-08-18T22:51:41","slug":"he-waited-until-the-train-was-in-motion-to-make","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/08\/18\/he-waited-until-the-train-was-in-motion-to-make\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
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He waited until the train was in motion to make his move\u2014a true sign of someone who knows how to make the environment work to their advantage. Then he leaned forward. \u201cHi.\u201d \u201cHow you doing?\u201d \u201cWhat are you reading?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d \u201cI really like your hair.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s a really nice skirt.\u201d \u201cYou must work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was painful to watch. She clearly wanted nothing to do with him, and he clearly wasn\u2019t going to take the hint. Her rebukes got firmer. \u201cI\u2019d like to read my book.\u201d And he pulled out the social pressure. \u201cHey, I\u2019m just asking you a question. You don\u2019t have to be so rude.\u201d She started to look around for outs. Her head swiveled from one exit to another.<\/p>\n

The thing was, I had already heard this story, many many times. I knew how it would play out. I knew all the tropes. I probably could have quoted the lines before they said them. I wanted a new narrative. Time to mix it up.<\/p>\n

So I moved seats until I was sitting behind him. I leaned forward with my head on the back of his seat.<\/p>\n

“Hi,” I said with a little smile.<\/p>\n

He looked at me like I was a little crazy\u2014which isn\u2019t exactly untrue\u2014and turned back to her.<\/p>\n

“How are you doing?” I asked.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m fine,” he said flatly without ever looking back.<\/p>\n

“I really like your hair,” I said. \u201cIt looks soft.“<\/p>\n

That\u2019s about when it got\u2026..weird.<\/p>\n

He sort of half turned and glared back me, and I could tell I was pissing him off. His eyes told me to back the hell away, and his lips were pressed together tightly enough to drain the color from them completely.<\/p>\n

But no good story ever ends with the conflict just defusing. He started to turn back to her.<\/p>\n

"Wait, don\u2019t be like that,” I said. \u201cLemmie just ask you one question\u2026"<\/p>\n

“What!” he said in that you-have-clearly-gone-too-far voice that is part of the freshmen year finals at the school of machismo.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not exactly a hundred percent sure why I didn\u2019t call it a day at that point, but\u2026..maybe I just love turning the screw to see what happens. I gave him the bedroomy-est eyes I could muster. \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n

Right now I\u2019m sitting here typing out this story, and I\u2019m still not entirely sure why I\u2019m not nursing a fat lip or a black eye. Because that obviously made him so mad that I still am not sure why it didn\u2019t come to blows. There are cliches about eyes flaring and rage behind someones eyes and shit like that that are so overdone. But it really does look like that. When someone gets violent, their eyes just kind of \u201cpop\u201d with intention\u2014pupils dilate, eyelids widen. And his did. Even sitting down he was clearly bigger than me and I was pretty sure he was kind of muscular too, so at that moment I was figuring I was probably going to need an ice pack and sympathy sex from my girlfriend by day\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

“DUDE,” he shouted. \u201cI\u2019M NOT GAY.“<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I dropped the bedroom eyes and switched to a normal voice. \u201cOh well I could see not being interested didn\u2019t matter to you when you were hitting on her, so I just thought that\u2019s how you rolled.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Writing About Writing (And Occasionally Some Writing): Changing The Creepy Guy Narrative<\/a> (via veruca-assault<\/a>)<\/p>\n

instant reblog<\/p>\n

(via koi-ms<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He waited until the train was in motion to make his move\u2014a true sign of someone who knows how to make the environment work to their advantage. Then he leaned forward. \u201cHi.\u201d \u201cHow you doing?\u201d \u201cWhat are you reading?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d \u201cI really like your hair.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s a really nice skirt.\u201d \u201cYou must work … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}