Over the weekend, my pal Jeff and I went to a Tom Petty concert. It was an outdoor venue in Irvine, and was really enjoyable, if you don't mind cigarette smoke and thousands of sweaty, stumbling strangers.
I think you and I will all agree: people are scum. Seeing my peers in a public setting only reinforced this belief, as I saw people pushing, cursing, shoving, groping, arguing, fumbling, and spilling beer on each other. And talking on their cellphones (but hey, that's a different rant).
About halfway through the intermission, the cluster of youths to my right started getting even more vocal, and I looked over to see what was causing the commotion.
Turns out there was a girl, around nineteen, standing up the way, that would turn and face them (and us) and flash her ample bosoms.
When she did this, the guys would cheer. Then she would turn around and go back to her business. She was cute-ish, blushing and whooping, and I thought it was kind of neat. Hey, boobs are cool.
The guys would shout at her to repeat the act--maybe one of them missed it, maybe they didn't have a good vantage point, maybe they didn't have enough short-term memory to remember, I don't know--and eventually, she would turn around and do it again.
I'm not exaggerating, I counted seven times during the next half hour that she pulled up her blouse to reveal her assets.
An odd phenomenon occurred: somewhere along the line, I went from titillated at the sight to satisfied, then from satisfied to mildly annoyed. Finally, I went from annoyed to feeling sorry for her.
The drunken and/or stoned dudes lounging around her called out for more, screaming it, whooping when she'd show them, then calling her a whore when she put them away.
Does it make sense that I felt sorry for her?
While fairly ignorant, I guess I understand some of her motivation: hey, boobs are cool, everybody likes to be center of attention, and every girl wants to feel attractive. But what might have been a funny, daring act, quickly descended into exploitation Girls Gone Wild style.
Didn't she know that she was no longer a person to these guys? Did that not bother her? That there was no respect, no consideration, not even admiration for her sizable feminine attributes?
Well, I wanted to go over there and bitch-slap each and every one of those guys, and bastard-slap the girls with them for being with them. But more than that, I wanted to go over to the girl and put either a blanket on her or my arm around her and say, "Hey, kid, call it a day. Let's proclaim you the winner by TKO. Gather up your pride and don't turn around again." Of course I did no such thing.
I guess I'll commend my pal Jeff, who neither commented nor stared as this went on. Granted, the guy is happily married and libidinously flaccid, but I respect him nonetheless. He's a good man, and there aren't a hell of a lot of them out there.
I'm reminded of a party I went to last year. A girl I didn't know was there, she was attractive, and she clearly had esteem issues from a (brief) conversation I had with her.
We were all dancing to some godless Hip-Hop song or other when a bit of commotion drew my attention. It seems that the girl (I'll call her Belly Dancer, because that's how she was costumed) had lost her top in the midst of the dancing. Embarrassed, she was telling people to step back so she could retrieve it from the floor. And what did the big drunk bloke she was dancing with do to help her? He pulled out his cellphone and took pictures.
Now, clearly, this guy was a lowlife, but who did she end up screwing later that night in the bathroom? Same dude.
He came out afterward and all his moron friends hooted and gave him five. Belly Dancer drunkenly swayed on the dancefloor for a while, then, when the dude got it up again, he led her into the bathroom (a place of much pissing and puking that night) to nail her again.
Even though I gladly would've hit the horse at this guy's lynching, some of the blame has to fall on the girl. It has to. We are all individuals, with consciences and brains, and must be responsible for our actions. I think all that is part of the definition of adulthood.
Doesn't mean I don't feel sorry for her, though. Almost as much as I do for myself.
Wow, if I ever had a point, I think I lost it somewhere on the trail.
Rish "Angels In The" Outfield
