In This Body: Women Uncomfortable
“there are always men on that street who will consider you theirs in one way or another”
Our monthly column "In This Body" is comprised of true stories about sex, gender, the body, and love, written by Fiona George, for NAILED.
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He was out front smoking a cigarette when I walked up, he’d just lit it. No, I didn’t want to make him put it right back out and ring me up. Felt bad about it. But I didn’t want to hang out for ten minutes while he smoked it either.
Big, dark sunglasses covered my eyes, my hair still tangled from the bed I’d just rolled out of. The jeans from the floor I’d pulled on. This was how I came to the corner store almost every morning, one hot fucking mess. I didn’t want conversation, or even eye contact. I didn’t want to interact with anyone more than I had to for my morning caffeine.
I went to the glass double doors into the store, almost every inch of them taped up with some advertisement or another. He stopped me, waved me over to where he was smoking. Most of what I understood came through body language.
He held out a cigarette to me. Smoke with me.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to, my throat was morning-dry and scratched. It always was when I came here in the morning. This was the routine: I’d go pick up my energy drink, start to drink it on the walk back home—my throat wetting, the caffeine fueling the urge for that first morning cigarette. I’d get home and take off my clothes, put my pajamas back on, go and sit on the back porch and light the first cigarette of the day.
That first cigarette: that was sacred. It was mine. A place in time I carved for myself wherever I had slept the night before.
And what I felt, was that he wanted that moment in time from me. He didn’t know what he was asking for. There was no saying no to that cigarette. No thank you. Shook my head no again. Come on, it’s okay. Or something like that.
It was my brand, a slow burning brand. It would last forever and when I lit it, my throat felt desert, like cracked sand. I kept my glasses on and smiled, said thank you. He said something about how expensive these cigarettes were. I nodded, nodded.
A woman rode past on a bike, colorful skin-tight bike pants. He made a noise, watching her. Something like mmmm. It was a short sound, like it almost didn’t happen. Something an absent mind lets out of lips without purpose.
He didn’t think I had a boyfriend; I wished he knew.
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A couple months after I moved into my mom’s, I went in to buy cigarettes like I always go to buy cigarettes. I was just starting a routine, making myself familiar to this particular neighborhood again.
Two packs of American Spirit Golds. The guy behind the counter kept his eyes on me, reaching back for the smokes. He asks, are you picking these up for your dad? The question was so strange to me I felt my head tilt, cartoonish, confused. No, they’re for me. Oh, did your boyfriend make you smoke? Really, I didn’t know what to think. This was someone who didn’t know me. I had never mentioned a dad or a boyfriend. I had been coming in for months to buy cigarettes. When I shook my head no, he asked, so you don’t have a boyfriend? And I kept shaking my head, even though I did have a boyfriend. I just wasn’t expecting for that question to come next. My boyfriend didn’t smoke.
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It’s happened at every corner store I’ve frequented. There is at least one male clerk. At least one clerk always gets a little too friendly, develops a crush on me. One even asked me out. It’s not just me; other women I talk to about it, they’ll tell me the same. My sister never goes to the same corner store on a regular basis.
It doesn’t matter that I show up to buy my smokes in footy pajamas sometimes: sometimes I show up in a little black dress, full makeup to head out to a party, the bar. Cancels out whatever level of disheveled I want to put forth every morning.
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When I bus home at night, I will walk for thirty minutes to avoid taking the bus down 82nd avenue. 82nd is Portland’s unofficial street-prostitution landmark. And, honestly, I don’t even know how much prostitution actually happens there—that’s just how everyone knows it. And everyone knowing that, is enough.
It doesn’t matter if you are a sex worker, or if you are just a woman or a girl trying to get from point A to point B on the bus line, there are always men on that street who will consider you theirs in one way or another. There are more cat-calls, there are more unsolicited conversations. Sometimes, late at night cars will drive by over and over again—waiting for some signal that you will get in the car and give them your intimacy for some cash.
And all you want to do is catch the bus.
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When other customers walk into the corner store, he has to put down his cigarette and go inside. He motions for me to stay, to finish my cigarette. I don’t want to and don’t want to and don’t want to, but I keep taking drags. It tastes metallic, dries my mouth, makes my spit thick.
People keep walking into the store so I put the cigarette out and go inside, too. I buy my energy drink and walk away. I don’t know if he expects me to stay.
And a block away from the store, towards my house, I realize this is going to be another place that I avoid because a man made me uncomfortable.
Maybe all women do this. Maybe most. My sister never goes to that corner store already. Maybe that wouldn’t have made other women uncomfortable. Maybe being uncomfortable isn’t enough of a reason to walk five extra blocks to the Plaid Pantry where older women work, and five extra blocks back. Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s just my sister.
But I know plenty of women who will go out of their way not to bus on 82nd late at night. And women who know which bars they can’t use the bathrooms in alone. And women who I work with who won’t deal with certain customers, because they are just a little too friendly, or they left a note with their number one time. A man can make a woman uncomfortable without being a bad person. A man can make a woman feel threatened by standing a little too close, by talking a little too friendly, by being a little too insistent on that cigarette.
It’s really easy to say that it’s not his fault. It’s really easy to say that and keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it, because it’s no one’s fault. Because it’s society's fault. Because it’s the fault of men who get rejected and switch to threats. Because it’s the fault of the woman with social anxiety, who can’t just have a short conversation over a cigarette like anyone else could.
And it’s really easy to think that because it’s not your fault, or because it’s no one’s fault, that it doesn’t need to stop, and women can move through the world uncomfortable: avoiding the places and people that have made them uncomfortable.
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To read the previous In This Body: "Showing Voice," go here.
Header images courtesy of Vanessa Moselle. To view her photo essay, "These Human Shells" on NAILED, go here.