Who Knew I Was Such A Feminist?

The other night I received a 3 am (so I guess the other morning) phone call from a guy I had gone on one date with two months ago. I chose not to answer the call since I probably would have yelled obscenities I would later regret. It was Saturday morning, the first time all week I could sleep soundly through the night with no alarm clock, and I am tossed from my slumber by a loud ringing on my IPhone – I know, my fault for not silencing the phone. I was hesitant to respond in the morning since the communication we had previously shared had not gone well…

He contacted me three days after our date to say “Happy your people’s day” on St. Patrick’s Day, I wrote back a cheery thank you. Asked me a week later why I hadn’t blogged about our date. I wrote back that I kept some things private…until now, of course. He responded one day later “Want to see each other again?” I responded with a “sure” but that he didn’t seem too eager to see me since two weeks had passed since our last date. He responded 24 hrs later saying his family had been in town. I “forgot” to answer him.

But curiosity got the best of me, and I thought perhaps I had written this guy off too soon. Why else would he think it was okay to call me at 3am? We never did any of the things that people usually do at 3am, so I thought naively, “maybe he’s just up late and wants to chat.”(How many of you are rolling your eyes right now?) I text him when I woke up and asked if he needed to be bailed out of jail – another plausible explanation. He apologized for the call and stated his reasoning was that “my friends were in town and asked if I knew a cute redhead.”

Huh…That’s why you called?!

I was immediately turned off, but couldn’t quite figure out why. He had done this before we met each other too. When we had started chatting on OkCupid, one of his first comments was, “You’re cute!” My response was to change the subject. I wasn’t sure exactly what my problem was until I started to work it out in my head. At first I thought it was a self image problem. “Don’t call me cute, because I’m not” sort of deal, but that wasn’t it. Looks are important in any relationship – it’s a fact that you must be slightly attracted to someone for there to be chemistry. However, at least in my world, there is so much more to a person and it’s that extra “stuff” that I fall for. I’ve liked other guys in the past. Head over heels, infatuated, dressed up, put make-up on and straightened my hair so he’d notice me liked guys. And I found them attractive. Very attractive. But they were also smart, sweet, funny, caring, creative, motivated guys. The attraction grew from all of those other great qualities.

So turns out I don’t enjoy being objectified (Apologies if anyone has stopped reading because they feel I’m being over dramatic.) This person had met me once. He knew nothing about me, and when his buddies came over and asked for a “cute” redhead, he called one up not caring that he had never offered to take her out again and not caring that he was probably waking her up. I know, he was drunk blah blah blah. What exactly did they think would happen? The cute redhead was going to put on her shoes and come over for a group hug? I’m sure he didn’t realize he had offended me, and I played it off. I kept chatting like the nice, easy going girl I pretend to be, and when he left the conversation with no need for me to respond, I didn’t. I won’t see this person again. I considered it before, but now the chemistry is gone, my annoyance would probably be apparent and there are just too many fish in the sea (note square peg, round hole metaphor from a few posts back.)