Daily Confession:
This one time, I was waiting for a bus in Downtown LA, super late at night. Being Downtown late at night always makes me feel like I’m in a zombie movie. It’s dark, the streets are empty except for newspaper blowing down the street, huge rats and cockroaches running along corners of buildings, the pungent smell of bum urine, and there’s NOBODY around… except for the occasional bum… which you can easily mistake for a zombie.
Anyway, it’s late, it’s cold, I’m tired, I’ve been waiting for the bus for forever, there’s nobody around but me. Then out of nowhere a big black SUV comes slowly rolling down the street and it stops in front of my bus stop. The tinted window comes down. A man peers out at me. Oh, this dude must need directions or something I think.
“Need a ride?” he says.
Oh. He wants to offer me a ride. That’s… weird. “Oh no I’m good. Thanks.”
“You sure?”
“Mmhm.” Of course I’d LOVE a ride. This bus takes forever, I’m cold and sleepy, and when the bus finally DOES come it’s going to be over an hour sitting on it. So yeah, I’d love a ride, but no, I’m not getting into an SUV with a random stranger in the middle of the night.
“Where you headed?”
“Home.” but my tone was more like “Dude, salutations already. Boo. Scat. Leave. Vanish.”
“Where do you live?” Now I’m starting to get a bit nervous
“Far.” I say.
“You sure you don’t need a ride? It’s no problem, I don’t mind.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sure I don’t need a ride, but thanks.”
“….”
“….” In my pocket I’m uncapping my pen just in case I have to stab a bitch.
“It’s really no bother, I could take you halfway. You sure?”
“I’m just gonna wait for the bus.”
At this point, you’d expect him to go “Well alright.” or some such, roll up his window, and go about his way. But no, he just stares at me for a few seconds that feel like an eternity. Staring. Uncomfortable, I look away. He’s still staring, I can see him out of my periphery. Staring. I’m guessing, either trying to think of a compelling argument to get me into his vehicle, or trying to calculate if he’d be able to get out of his vehicle and catch me and restrain me or knock me out and drag me back to his vehicle and toss me in the back and have his way with me. If he was thinking either of these things he eventually concluded correctly that there was nothing he was going to say to get me in his vehicle, and there was no way he’d be able to catch me as I am a very slender light man who would already have a good head start.
I can’t say for sure that this man wanted to sexually assault me. Maybe he was just a nice guy who saw a person out in the cold alone late at night and wanted to be a good Samaritan. All I know, is that the way he was looking at me creeped me the fuck out and as a man for the first time in my life I felt sexually vulnerable. I really can’t imagine what it must be like to live life as a woman and feel that way fairly often.
BONUS:
Another time I was walking in Downtown LA at an odd hour, and some man in a car rolled up alongside me and flashed a wad of money and asked “How much?” HOW MUCH WHAT MOTHERFUCKER??? DO YOU NEED ME TO COUNT YOUR MONEY FOR YOU OR WHAT??? I didn’t say that, but I wanted to. What the hell am I doing to give off male prostitute vibes? I know I’m not a super butch manly man, but I feel like I more or less don’t look like a gay prostitute right off the bat. T-shirt, jeans, hoodie, backpack. This isn’t gay prostitute attire is it? I admittedly don’t know much about gay prostitutes, please, some clue me in if I’m giving off any obvious gay prostitute signals.
Another time, in broad daylight, a weird older man drove by and made a kissy face at me. I didn’t even know how to react to that shit. I immediately looked down at myself to make sure I didn’t accidentally put on a dress before I left the house or something.
These are just a few examples of me being hit on or propositioned by creepy dudes. Being hit on by another man does not bother me, if it was a normal guy I’d be flattered and respectfully decline. But these dudes have just been sleazy weirdos. Why am I a magnet for sleazy older creepy potential sex offenders?
The curse of being beautiful :(
![This one time, a few years ago, this friend of mine wanted to commission me to do some drawings for this like feminism thingy being held on her campus. I guess it was supposed to be like a fun thing celebrating women, and there’d be art, and music, and other stuff I guess, I don’t know. What she wanted me to draw, were big close-ups of vaginas. Yeah.
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I was like sure, not thinking much about it. I mean, seemed easy enough… google image some vaginas and then draw them on some big papers. I was young and eager to have my art be shown anywhere, I was/am also down with feminism. Plus, ya know, there were BOUND to be a lot of female humans there, and if I was showing art I’d perchance be a person of interest for them.
Then when I really started to think about it I began to wonder why the hell I ever agreed to do this. Chief among my trepidations… I am a man. Would it not seem a tad skeazy, if I, a man, were at this celebration de la femme with a buncha big ol’ vagina drawings? “Hey ladies, I’m Jeff, proud penis owner, an I heard you were celebratin ya womanliness, so I thought I’d come on over and show off a buncha big ooooool’ vajay jayyys! Cause thats whats wimmenz is to me. I’ve paid artistic tribute to you by reducing you to your reproductive organs. Nice right?” That’s kinda how I was imagining me coming off to them. And I wouldn’t have blamed them.
This thing wasn’t even my idea, a girl had asked me to do this, she thought it would be interesting, but didn’t have artistic skill, and I guess she didn’t know any female artists and asked me to do it? It was her creative vision though, what was being expressed by a series of large vagina close-ups was all in her head, not mine. Even if these women didn’t immediately think I was an asshat, they quickly would if they started asking me questions about the pieces. I wouldn’t even know how to fake it, I’m not a person who really comes up with a lot of deep meaning to the things he creates, you’ve seen the work I do, it’s cartoon animals and miscellaneous fan art, I’m not very big on conveying nuanced messages. I’d probably sound really stupid trying to concoct some disengenous spiel about vaginas and empowerment or whatever, because I don’t have one of those things, so I really can’t speak from a legitimate authentic authoritative place about it. I can only speak of them as an obeserver/admirer, which would probably sound way creepy. What could I say besides “Uh, well this girl told me to.”
To be honest with you… I don’t really find anyone’s sex organs to be aesthetically appealing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of vaginas, they’re uh… ya know… fun, to say the least. But I wouldn’t necessarily say I care to just stare at them. Some people find them beautiful, or arousing, and that’s totally okay, fine, normal, healthy, and etc, I just personally think everyone’s junk, female or male, looks kinda silly and weird. But then again, some times I have the detachment of someone not from this planet and every other thing about humans seems bizarre to me.
Long story short, the next time I talked to her I asked her if I could do something different, something more “on the nose” so to speak, like different portraits of important historical women or something. She informed me that the whole thing had fell through and had been put off indefinitely until… I don’t know, what ever needed to change, changed.
So, that’s the story of how I almost drew a bunch of big ol’ vaginas for a feminism event.
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