Ladies and Gents, let me tell you what it’s like to be a moderately attractive, sufficiently intelligent girl in the city of San Francisco: shitty; it’s shitty. If you don’t spend most of your time tweezing your eyebrows, manicuring your nails, and working out after not eating for days to have that perfectly toned, waifish figure, you can kiss the high-rolling assholes good bye (which is no skin off my back, really). If you don’t dress like an Olsen twin in careless flannel, painted on black jeans, and cultivate the perfectly manufactured air of nonchalance, then you aren’t “arty” enough for all the hipness musicians are laying down. And those are the two extremes: Marina Girls and Mission Minnies.

Middle-Town Girl, USA

So how does a girl seated comfortably in the middle of these two extremes fare? Well, I get hit on by geriatrics, foreigners (not sexy ones), socially incompetent perverts, the mentally disabled, and the list goes on. And on. And on. And it’s a list that hasn’t been exaggerated, sadly enough. This, as you can imagine, gets incredibly disheartening after a prolonged period of time, and in order to boost my self-confidence, I’ve always told myself it was San Francisco’s fault and not my own. My city is amazing in the way it embraces the crazies: the way it gives them shelter and helps them feel at home. This is the very reason we have such a diverse and stimulating cultural landscape, but (unfortunately for me) it also means there is a large portion of the male population that has nothing left to lose when approaching women; these are the men that routinely decide it’s a good idea to talk to me. Without fail, these men seek me out in bars, in coffee shops, and at bus stops.

But that was okay. I brushed my shoulders off because San Francisco was to blame. Or was it? After a recent sojourn to Seattle for a mixture of business and pleasure I’m beginning to doubt the validity of my explanation. Let me paint the picture for you, lovers:

It was my first night in town. The sky had just cleared for my arrival, and I was given a brisk and breezy Seattle as seen through a lens proffered by the most adorable tour guide on the planet: Sam. Sam is a man’s man, lady’s man, man-about-town, and he whisked me from the airport to an ElectroBama Rally ?at a downtown bar where he knew the DJ. After his DJ friend, Jack, was done with his set, we headed to a delectably hip bar that had six months prior to this time been a private art gallery and bar; creaking wooden stairs and exposed brick walls covered with art you don’t entirely understand and a jumble of neon letters adorning the walls adjacent to the actual bar equals good times, good times with plush suede lounges. Mmmmm…lounges.

To get back to the story, though, we walked up to the bar and I was feeling good. I’m sure all you ladies can attest to this: when you walk into a crowded bar with four hot-properties who are dressed to kill and in the know, you feel good. It’s a chemical reaction: you’re suddenly thinner, prettier, and sassier than ever before, and you’re making eye contact with any one who owns a pair of boobs in the bar. So, as Sam saddled up to the bar to get us some beers, I turned to my right to be social with the other gorgeous men in our little party when, to my horror, I practically rammed into a sweaty, bespectacled, plump little man who barely cleared my northern lady parts. As I stammered out an apology for careening into him, I realized he wasn’t displeased with the transaction and the dread seeped in as I realized he was using this as an opening to start a conversation. Ugh. Double ugh. I had just gotten into town and I really, really didn’t want to be a heartless bitch in front of a group of people with whom I was barely acquainted. But sometimes…well…sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

As soon as we made contact, the little goblin nervously blurted out, “Oh…hey…didn’t I see you at the ElectroBama Rally?”

“Uhm, yeah…you may have,” I curtly responded, and at this point I could feel Sam turn around behind me to figure out who was talking to me (because I knew no one in town), as did the other members of our party.

“Yea…I was there too, but I left, you know, ‘cuz things were dying down and it was dying over there…you know…the good part of the show was over…I mean…you left too, obviously, so it was, don’t you think it was over?” he continued.

“Uhm…I guess…I don’t know, I left because I’m with the DJ,” I said as I pointed Jack out immediately behind him, at which point he looked straight at the ground and walked away without even an awkward adieu or an annoyed recognition of Jack; poof…gone.

Praise the lord. As I took my beer from Sam, he asked what had just transpired and I explained to him that I came all the way to Seattle to be instantaneously hit on by the only degenerate in the bar, thereby proving that it is NOT the great city of San Francisco that is at fault for my parade of creepers, but instead some strange musk that emanates from my very being, god damn it.

But, all in all, I suppose it could be worse: I could never be approached at all and then I wouldn’t have these amusing little anecdotes to share with you fine folks. And…I did have those precious few moment on arrival when I felt like the pick of the litter, and my, oh my, was it a priceless piece of time.