Hustler

Yesterday was the first day of a four day weekend. Since I got a key several months ago to the church so I could come in and do the Thursday meditation thing, I was able to let myself in and work all day long on my novel without being disturbed. I used the old office, now called the lounge; I wrote scene 17b and a little bit of 17c.

About 2:30 I went across the street to Safeway for some coffee. Outside they had -- for the holiday, I suppose -- a barbecue grill set up. They were selling hotdogs for two bucks for prostate cancer research. I needed something for lunch, so I got one and sat down on the concrete ledge of the planter nearby. A stripper came up and bought one too -- I could see by her outfit. She had on huge platform shoes, a plaid skirt, a black HUSTLER t-shirt, lots of bangles, and hair died strawberry red. She sat down next to me with her hotdog.

Did I speak to her? I did not. I just smiled briefly and then we ate hotdogs companionably.

I could have said, “Your hair totally rocks. I’m glad we have a place for people like us in San Francisco. I can see by your outfit, and by your slim, muscular legs, that you are a stripper. I love strippers, would you like to go out on a date?”

None of that seemed quite appropriate, though. Except for a simple compliment, it’s all about hitting on someone. I’m never good at striking up conversations with people, much less hitting on them, so I just let it go at a smile. I never seriously considered the possibility that she sat down next to me to invite me to say such things. Indeed, I usually assume attractive women allow themselves to be near me because I don’t look like the type who does that. And I’m not.

That’s the good thing about a place like the Market St. Cinema. If the girls don’t come up to you, put their hands between your legs, and practically demand you pay them for a lap dance, then all you have to do is go up to one and say “Hey baby, come over here with me.” It sure makes it simple. I can see why men resort to sex workers. No chance of rejection; everything very simple and straightforward.

There’s a blog by a girl named Tara who is insufferably superior and serious. The first year or two of the blog was about her career as a stripper; during the last couple of years she seems to be out of that business and into web page design or somesuch thing -- actually she's so vague about it, as if she's somehow protecting her identity, it's impossible to tell exactly what it is she does now. A while back while she was launching her business, whatever it is, she wrote an entry that goes, “I just got a _huge_ amount of valuable information for my infant business from a complete stranger. He gave me all this info and then asked me out for coffee. Ugh.”

Part of me sympathizes, but the other part of me knows that first, she’s naïve for thinking that a guy is not going to put all his energy into a long conversation without hoping to get something in return, and second, she’s either not being honest with herself for failing to admit that she was putting some flirtatious energy into the interaction in order to hook the guy long enough to find out what she wanted to know, or she’s got such an outsized sense of superiority that she thinks she somehow deserves to have people share their goodies with her without going to the trouble of giving them anything in return.

It’s this sort of misunderstanding that I hate and avoid at all costs, which is one reason I hardly ever speak to strangers, even if they totally look like strippers and are wearing a t-shirt with the word HUSTLER on it. If women like that have the idea, as expressed by the blogger Tara, that anyone who speaks to them inevitably hits on them, then fine, I won’t speak to them. As for the girl in the t-shirt, she had very recently dyed her hair, most probably for last Sunday’s parade, and thus was probably a dyke anyway. That’s the funny thing about being a man in San Francisco -- you have better chances with owomen because there are so many gay men, but on the other hand, most of the interesting, good looking women are dykes.

To be fair to the Tara girl, she does go on to wonder about the imbalance of getting information for free without being willing to offer what the guy really wants, i.e. some sexual energy. But she can't think of anything else she has to offer -- and judging from her blog, I think she's right.