Sexual Harassment training

Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar

Warning: This entry is rated PG-13. No animals were harmed in the making of this post. And all other standard disclaimers apply.
On Saturday, before the hammer fell, I was out chasing trains and airplanes in a train. Gatermann hadn’t ridden Metrolink (St. Louis’ light-rail system) on the East Side yet, so we went off sightseeing. Anyone from St. Louis will know the connotations the East Side has, but those weren’t the kinds of sights we were after. We were looking for modern ruins, not scantily-clad women. And we found some modern ruins, including an abandoned Drive-In Theater that must have been at least 30 years past its prime.

We took another friend along, female. I won’t say her name because she gets mad when I write about her.

We were on the train, with me sitting at a window seat, she in the window seat behind me, and Gatermann in the window seat across the aisle from her. Suddenly she tapped me on the shoulder. “Dave, help me.” I looked back at her. She was breathing OK, and as far as I could tell there wasn’t anything physically wrong with her. She beckoned behind her. I saw a guy sitting in a seat behind her, but he was looking the other direction and seemed to be minding his own business, reading (or pretending to read) a newspaper. I asked her what she needed. She beckoned in the direction of that same guy, whose face remained buried in that paper. Seeing the bewildered look on my face, Gatermann started wondering what was up, so he came over and sat next to her. She didn’t say anything. The train pulled to a stop, and the guy she’d been beckoning towards stood up and exited, giving us a quick sideways glance before heading off on his way.

Once the train started moving, she mouthed the words, “Is he gone?”

I said yes. She started to talk.

“That guy,” she said, pointing at the seat he’d been sitting in, “He motioned towards me, then he said, ‘Hi.’ Then he mouthed the words, ‘I want to lick you.'”

Gatermann and I started snickering, because, well, this guy wasn’t even close to being in her league, but besides that, the nerve of the guy! I’m the kind of guy who has trouble walking up to a girl I don’t know even if she’s acting extremely interested, and Gatermann makes me look like an extrovert, and here’s this skuzbucket saying that kind of stuff to a girl when he doesn’t even know her name?

That kind of stuff happens to her a lot, and she asked why. It’s pretty simple. There are a lot of creeps out there looking for girls who’ll take them up on those offers, and if 99 out of 100 girls say no, he’s still happy because of the one who didn’t. Maybe he’s even happy if only 1 out of 1,000 girls say yes. By the time he was off the train he’d written her off. It’s no knock on her. He probably literally does say that to all the girls–at least all the girls he sees who aren’t wearing a ring on their left ringfinger.

What made it really ironic was that she’d been griping all morning about having to go to sexual harrassment training last week, and Gatermann and I had been amusing ourselves by looking for signs or other things she wouldn’t be able to say at work.

But I think that creepy guy came up with the most blatant violation.

And now I know why no girls I know want to ride Metrolink alone.

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One thought on “Sexual Harassment training

  • March 26, 2002 at 8:58 pm
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    Well Metrolink isn’t all that bad Dave. Our friend just has a habit of drawing strange men toward her with out her trying. There are a lot of women who ride metrolink alone, and do it safely. It’s one of the cleanest and safest around. Not the most perfect mind you, but no worse than walking down a street alone. Though it does depend on where you get off the train. I would’t recomend Emerson Park or Washington park for a female along int he day or night.

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