Greece, the thirty-fourth day. Athens.
Sep. 14th, 2011 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbIn which your faithful correspondant is weirded out by a boy in a park.
Seriously, people, I did not realise five pm in the afternoon was pickup time. It is none of your business whether I'm male or female, and you can admire my hair all you like, but no touching the back of my neck and calling me friend.
I go for a walk in the park after lunch/dinner. This perfectly normal looking boy comes up alongside me, skinny little bastard with open and non-threatening body-language, and tells me his name is Raj from Mumbai. I put down my discomfort whole striking-up-a-conversation-with-a-stranger-in-a-park thing to different cultural norms.
And then the little fucker touches the back of my neck and starts asking about my gender.
Now, if his body language had been much different, rather than open and relaxed and the kind of floppy that reminds me of some people back home, I would've felt far more hostile. And, probably, I wouldn't have let him in arm's reach. As it was, I told him not to bother even asking and took off for a jog.
But I didn't feel comfortable again until I got back here.
Skinny little fucker, half the reason I let him close enough to talk to me was he pinged my "I can take him" meter rather than my "creep" one - so where the hell do I get off being nervous/uncomfortable and angry at myself for being nervy all the way home?
I think it's quite possible that I stumbled onto the gay cruising scene by accident. Pedion tou Areos (Ares Park) is apparently a hotspot, and historically I have been mistaken for a boy all over Greece. This doesn't make me any less freaked out, but it does make me freaked out for different reasons. I might be quite a butch girl, and despite my situational celibacy I'm quite happy to find persons of diverse gender presentation sexy... but I'm still female, dammit.
Oh, well. Life is occasionally interesting, yes?
Seriously, people, I did not realise five pm in the afternoon was pickup time. It is none of your business whether I'm male or female, and you can admire my hair all you like, but no touching the back of my neck and calling me friend.
I go for a walk in the park after lunch/dinner. This perfectly normal looking boy comes up alongside me, skinny little bastard with open and non-threatening body-language, and tells me his name is Raj from Mumbai. I put down my discomfort whole striking-up-a-conversation-with-a-stranger-in-a-park thing to different cultural norms.
And then the little fucker touches the back of my neck and starts asking about my gender.
Now, if his body language had been much different, rather than open and relaxed and the kind of floppy that reminds me of some people back home, I would've felt far more hostile. And, probably, I wouldn't have let him in arm's reach. As it was, I told him not to bother even asking and took off for a jog.
But I didn't feel comfortable again until I got back here.
Skinny little fucker, half the reason I let him close enough to talk to me was he pinged my "I can take him" meter rather than my "creep" one - so where the hell do I get off being nervous/uncomfortable and angry at myself for being nervy all the way home?
I think it's quite possible that I stumbled onto the gay cruising scene by accident. Pedion tou Areos (Ares Park) is apparently a hotspot, and historically I have been mistaken for a boy all over Greece. This doesn't make me any less freaked out, but it does make me freaked out for different reasons. I might be quite a butch girl, and despite my situational celibacy I'm quite happy to find persons of diverse gender presentation sexy... but I'm still female, dammit.
Oh, well. Life is occasionally interesting, yes?
