Art Beauty Fun

littlebirdleanna:

At heart I am a cross between a middle-aged British woman and a geeky 14-year-old.  Which is why I drink teapots full of Earl Grey while I marathon Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

The story I’m about to tell is simultaneously one of the most upsetting stories I’ve told, and also one of the most ridiculous. This is true to the point that if, for example, it had happened to my sister and she told me about it, I would be laughing my ass off, instead of sitting here tasting blood in my mouth and wondering when I’m going to have a panic attack. That has a lot to do with how my sister tells a story and how she deals with adversity, but it also has a lot to do with how I feel right now. Maybe I’ll laugh later, who knows.

I went to a party on Sunday night, like the cool kids do. It was a birthday party for a friend, but her flatmate had also invited some people over, so it was kind of an odd mix. I was a little nervous given that I didn’t know many people, but I was having a good time attempting to mingle and make new friends. It was a small room and people I knew were never very far away. I decided to make nice with a gentleman in a baseball cap (which instantly marked him out as not one of my friend’s set). It emerged that he is (was? tenses are hard) a Captain in the Royal Electrical Engineers and had recently returned from Helmand. He still had the tan and everything. I have an acquaintance who is in the Royal Engineers so I attempted some military chat, including learning how to salute British-style, which I hoped made me look fun. I wasn’t interested in being sexy, given that I’m married and so retiring that the idea of making out with a stranger at a party fills me with nausea.

Captain and I drifted into and out of conversation over the course of the party, as you do, including one weird interlude where a woman I had never met before tried to seduce me (um, thanks?) and one rather horrible vignette where some of Captain’s louder friends, including a young man who had a piercing in a strange place in his ear, presumably to give the impression of having a personality beyond being The Guy To Whom You Cannot Entrust The Barbeque, shouted at me about American comedy vs (superior) British comedy as exemplified by Anchorman vs Monty Python. To use a phrase from Grey’s Anatomy, seriously, you guys? Seriously? Soon after this, the CD on the stereo finished playing, and I decided to change it. Captain and his crew of undesirables voted for the Beastie Boys, which is stupid for the following reasons:

1. It was not a Beastie Boys kind of party. People were wearing lipstick and long velvet dresses, for heavens sake. Prosecco was involved. Some people were swing dancing! This was not the kind of crowd that would fight for its right to party. It would fight to defend the Empire against the Hun, but late Eighties white rap was kind of beyond it.
2. There were no Beastie Boys CDs in my immediate area.
3. Who plays the Beastie Boys in a one-room party? It is a conversation and dance killer, unless you’re really interested in pushing something/someone over.
4. I don’t like the Beastie Boys. There, I said it. My general rule is not to listen to bands with ‘Boys’, ‘Girls’ or ‘Kids’ in their description.

So, I turned around to Captain, who was sitting on a sofa on the opposite wall, and said something to the effect that the Beastie Boys suck, and though it was sad that one of them recently died, no Beastie Boys were being played on my watch.

Then, as I turned back around, hoping that my light-hearted attempt at joshing with someone to get them to like me had succeeded, I found that in fact I had failed titanically. Captain, without having been seen to move, was sitting right next to me looking directly down into my face, serious as death, saying “Take it back.”

I should mention that I am, though not petite in a Kylie Minogue way, slightly on the shorter side, and I was certainly shorter than Captain. He was very close, towering over me in a way I associate with movie monsters, telling me to take it back. My instincts ran as follows:

1. Evidently my attempt at joshing has backfired.
2. This man is going to squish me like a bug.
3. You don’t care enough about the Beastie Boys to get squished over it.
4. Any attempt at further joshing in order to get yourself out of this mess will only be met with more intense staring and consequent fear.
5. Don’t make a scene, just get out.

So this is what I did: I apologized, saying that I didn’t know it was so important to him, which is a sneaky way of saying “I’m sorry you got offended” rather than “I’m sorry”. I had to say this two or three times in order for him to back off and move more than 6 inches away from my face. As soon as he did, I began to cry, and I beat a hasty retreat with my very understanding husband, who informed the birthday girl that the guest in the hat was “a prick”. I cried all the way home.

Isn’t that ridiculous? I got into a disagreement which ended in tears and an angsty blog post about the Beastie Boys, three men known for a style of rap which, to my ears, sounds an awful lot like shouting words at odd intervals. Listen to ‘Intergalactic’ and tell me I’m wrong. So here are the feelings I am currently having:

1. I have absolutely been bullied. ‘Assaulted’ might be a strong word for what happened, given that he didn’t touch me, and if he had tried he would have been thrown over the balcony as soon as an angry mob could be formed, which isn’t long in a single room. Still, whatever the vocabulary, I feel really shaken and knocked.
2. Whether he intended to or not, and whether or not he also was joshing in an aggressive army-boy kind of way, Captain certainly gave me the impression that he could hurt me, and maybe even would if I continued in my contrary opinion of a band obviously dear to his heart.
3. Is this because I’m a girl? Is this part of that rape culture I’ve been reading so much about? Or would he have done it to anyone? Is it just that I’m a girl and so can’t jocularly punch him on the arm and say “Nah, bro, you’ve got shit taste in music!” and then we’d laugh? Would he have done the same to my 6’2” husband? The way I behaved was certainly influenced by the fact that I’m a girl, and maybe he decided he could do this to me because I’m less likely to fight back, but I suppose I’ll never know.
4. Am I overreacting? He was mean, I know you get it, but the fact that I’m sitting at work trembling just thinking about it two days later seems absurd. People who are actual victims of actual violence and actual sexual violence have so much more reason to be upset and disrupted than I do. Why can’t I just brush him off as “that prick from the party”? Oh, boo hoo, someone was mean to me at a party, white girl problems!
5. He’s a member of the armed forces and deserves my respect. After all, I’m always being told that these people are fighting for my freedom, and even though I know that’s more or less nonsense he’s still doing a dangerous job that my governments have asked him to do. Maybe his best army buddy loved the Beastie Boys but unfortunately was blown up in some sort of battle-related tragedy and so he feels a little bit raw and defensive about it. Every army person I’ve met has been pretty abrasive, so maybe this is just how people are when they come back from somewhere horrible. That’s the Army’s fault for not preparing them properly to come back into normal society.

But mostly what I’m thinking is this:

I go around in my life thinking I’m so strong and modern and tough and don’t take shit from people, but also fun to be with at parties and not a total downer and good at conflict resolution (some of this is more wishful thinking than independently confirmed fact). Then one little thing happens and I become some quivering mess apologizing for what couldn’t have been more than three short sentences to the wrong angry tipsy person at a party. This is what I want to have done but, probably owing to my desire to make everyone like me, didn’t. I want now to address Captain’s angry, battle-tanned face via the void of the Internet as a way of getting this angry, slightly racist, too-late voice out of my mind:

What are you going to do, Captain? Are you going to hit me? Go ahead and see how that works out for you. I’m not some goat-herding, burka-wearing foreigner you can menace into obeying you, you aggressive, self-important, tanned ape in a stupid hat. I don’t have to take your shit. This is a civilized country, and you do not belong here among these charming people who can dance and make polite conversation. You repulse me, and you’re not worthy to wear any sort of uniform which demands respect. Oh, and I think the Beastie Boys SUCK. Deal with it.