Pretty Boy

A few weeks ago I was walking home at night through Alphabet City. I believe it was a Thursday night, the beginning of the party weekend in my neighborhood. There was a group of young men, early twenties it seemed, walking towards me on Avenue B between 4th and 5th Streets. They were clearly out partying and probably drunk. They were ogling me as they approached me but I could not understand what they were saying because they were European (I'm not exactly sure which foreign language they were slurring and cat calling in but it was certainly directed towards me). I believe there were about 9 of them and after the first 8 or so passed by me, the last one grabbed me by the wrist and stopped me.

This caught me so off guard and angered me so much that it has taken me weeks to get around to writing about it. I haven't even told my friends or family because the whole experience upset me so much.

I tried to shake him off of me and yelled, "Get your hand off me!" He said in heavily accented English, "My friend said I could kiss you, can I kiss you?" I finally had to twist my arm and use my other fist to knock his hand off my wrist to get him off of me.

THANK YOU to my high school and college gym teachers who insisted upon teaching self-defense classes!

Once I was loose and was able to take a few steps away from him, I was not longer scared but just angry. I started screaming at him. He just seemed amused by the whole situation. He kept asking if he could kiss me and I kept saying no. For a moment, I thought this was a wonderful opportunity to get a photo for this blog. As I dug through my purse with one hand, searching for my camera, I kept one hand free so I could keep him at a distance, if necessary (oh, what I will do for this blog!)

He kept bothering me but he kept his hands off me. I told him I was going to take a picture of him for my cat calling blog but that didn't seem to bother him! He was either incredibly drunk or incredibly VAIN (probably both since he was a "pretty boy"). I finally saw the pointlessness in the photo. I was just prolonging getting away from this creep and it was only going to boost his ego if I took the picture. Once I backed away enough I turned around and walked briskly home. He must have left to catch up with his other drunken friends.

So that's one less photo for this blog but at least I escaped unharmed and only slightly emotionally bruised.