The Other Man Meat

When I was a young girl, a little girl even, maybe twelve or thirteen, I started getting attention from the other kind of man. The kind of man who slowed his car down in the middle of the hot street, cracked his window so that his blaring music streams out and would promptly ask my age. I always replied a year younger than I actually was, sometimes more, just so they might feel a tinge of embarrassment and leave me alone. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't.

This is the same kind of man, I found as I grew up, that would befriend me so I would let my guard down enough that I might sleep with him; as if I was incapable of making decisions about sex if not under false pretenses. This would be the man who was incapable of telling the truth, imagining in his head that he held a powers I never gave him. He would be the kind of man who might flash an obscene gesture at me on the train, not thinking of just how that might make me feel inside, or licking his lips at me during the lunch rush even though I'd tried my best to dress conservatively for work. The man with empty eyes, who requires rapture in everything he does, and begs for attention like a 5 year old in the church parking lot. These are the men who make the other kind of man feel like a blue light in the middle of a dark room.

I'm glad I have someone with no misconceptions, no pretend objective, no alternative motive. Someone with more than just the bedroom in his eyes. With more to talk about and less to say. Someone just like me.