Living for Disco

He was thin and wiry, and intelligent looking, and he smiled at me from across the room. I was in an animated conversation about weight belts and buoyancy with a Dutch friend of mine at the time, and I believe I was miming bobbing to the surface of the water like a balloon, so it seemed inconceivable that he could fancy me. However, it seemed to be the case. He came over, and bought me a drink, and we had a shouty conversation, and a bit of a dance.

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, and so we moved to the benches outside where it was cooler and quieter, and we could actually hear each other speak. This proved to be a big mistake. We were having a perfectly amiable conversation about something, when he blew himself totally out of the water by uttering the following words:

“I like you, Rachael. You know your place as a woman.”

Anyone who knows me will at this moment be burying their heads in their hands and thanking God they were far from the inevitable explosion. But they would be wrong. I smiled pleasantly*, and said:

“And my place as a woman… What would that be exactly?”

“These women nowadays. It has all changed. So many women, they are having jobs where they are put in a position of authority over a man, and that is wrong. Women have a place, and it is not to tell men what to do. You know that.”

“Er, excuse me, I know nothing of the sort,” I replied. “Are you trying to tell me that women should be subservient to men?”

“Well, it is obvious. Women are weaker than men.”

“Physically, sometimes, I’ll give you that. But generally speaking?”

“What do you mean, generally speaking? Be specific.”

“OK. Do you believe that women are not equal to men in every day life?”

At this point he looked a bit shifty, but he still hadn’t really clocked onto the fact that he was digging himself a hole so deep he could have warmed the cockles of his heart on the earth’s core.

“Well, yes”, he said. My mouth must have dropped open, because he hurriedly tried to explain himself. “Look, if someone breaks into the house, where we are living together, what would you do?”

“What would you do?” I asked.

“No, I asked you first. What would you do?”

“What would you do?” (We went on in this vein for some time - I won’t bore you with the number of repetitions.)

“Come on Rachael,” he said placatingly, while preparing to deliver the coup de grace, the argument that I could not refute. “How can a woman be equal to a man? You do not have a penis.”

Oh, well, doh. Silly me. How could I be so stupid?

“What the FUCK does having a penis have to do with anything at all? How is this relevant? What in GOD’S NAME are you talking about?”

“It is women like you,” he said, as if explaining to a small and stupid child, “who are lesbians. This is what is wrong with the world.”

At this point, I became incoherent with rage.

“What? What? Jesus. What the fuck?” Never let it be said that I cannot hold a reasoned and articulate argument in the face of utter lunacy. This man had clearly sped through delusional and was now on the superhighway to deranged. He looked about 30, but perhaps he was in fact 150 years old, and had simply discovered the elixir of youth.

“Come on Rachael,” he said, looking at me reproachfully. “Don’t piss me off.”

“Don’t piss you off? Don’t piss you off? How about you try not to piss me off? In fact, I’ve had enough of this conversation. I am going now.” And I left.

I went to relay the conversation to my friends. I delight in doing this kind of thing. Sometimes I take a perverse pleasure in having conversations like this, because they allow me to make fun of people who richly deserve it. While I was busy recreating my facial expressions for my friend Danny, my erstwhile admirer returned to my side.

“Rachael, I think we had a misunderstanding. I would like us to be friends. Can I explain?”

I thought that maybe I had actually misunderstood his comments about penises and lesbians, and so I sat down with him to have another bash.

“How did I misunderstand?” I asked him.

“I think that this is not so important. Can we talk about something else?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I fundamentally disagree with something that you have said, that pertains to my very existence in this world. We cannot talk about something else.” He clearly thought that we had had a minor disagreement, and that once I got over being silly, I would consent to sleep with him. I wanted to find a way to tell him that if I did, I would effectively be drowning my soul in a bath of acid.

Fortunately he solved everything himself, by taking a heavy silver ring from his thumb, and dropping it down the front of my top.

I looked at him, and then I looked down at my chest. I looked back at him.

“Oops,” he said, a creepy smile taking over his face. “Look, I seem to have dropped something. Let me just get that.”

I grabbed his wrist as he reached for my cleavage, and I put my face very close to his.

“Don’t you dare touch me, you total fucking lunatic”, I said clearly and slowly. I retrieved the ring myself, and slammed in onto the table top. When I got up to leave, he grabbed my arm in an alarmingly strong grip, and forced me to sit back down.

“Listen, I’m sorry, the ring was loose.”

“You really do think that I am that stupid don’t you?” I asked him. He said nothing. This time, when I tried to leave, he didn’t try and stop me.

Hours later, as I was pouring myself into a taxi, he came up to me and grabbed my arm. He wanted to come home with me. Obviously I told him where to go, but I have to confess that he scared me. I honestly think that a man like that would have no compunction in doing anything to a woman, in the belief that it is his penis-given right to impose his will on a (in his view) weaker being.

I hope that I never meet him again.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.