That's going to be really hard (grapefruit).
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Quandry.
Yesterday as I was buying a slice of pizza to eat on my way to auditions, in a hurry and I needed portable food. The guy behind the counter told me the only pizza they had ready right then was spinach and garlic. I told him that was fine. He said he wasn't sure he should sell it to me because I might have to kiss somebody later. He was flirting with me. It was a fun, light encounter and I didn't mind it a bit. I probably have 20 years on they guy. To be perfectly honest, I was flattered that a pizza guy was still willing to flirt with me.
What's my quandry? As someone who professes to be a feminist who is very anti-harassment, I don't care when youngish men flirt with me in pizza shops. Cognitive dissonance? Am I a traitor to the cause? Or is it just that I can tell when an exchange is harmless and I'm Ok with harmless flirting?
As someone who is woefully under-qualified to answer this and is perfectly happy to be told to sit down and shut up (#mediocrewhiteguyalert), I would think perhaps it's a matter of degrees. I don't care how old the person is, how attractive or unattractive the person is or even what the gender of the person is. If I get mildly flirted with I'm flattered and I'm as liberal as a southerner can possibly be. So I would guess most people like some level of attention as long as it doesn't get weird. I saw weird this weekend when someone came on too strong to someone I didn't even know and I offered my assistance. I'm short, but I at least look crazy with the shaved head and tattoos.
We are in agreement. It didn't get weird with the pizza guy, it was a flirt. I had to learn when I was a Duke student that not everyone understands the rules of "a flirt", particularly those who did not grow up in the South. But in the pizza shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we both understood the rules - neither of us was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ;)
You're good. People who would be offended by that need to unclinch.
Do you remember the uproar when some Duke students were offended by the cafeteria ladies calling them Honey? Dude, you're in the South. Get used to it, it's not an insult.
Geez, I've been called Shoog all my life by men I may or may not know. You can tell when it's creepy.. When it's not, get over it. I never mind it.
I have really earned this week's Friday cheeseburger.
As someone else who is unqualified to reply, let me mansplain my take...
I'm married and middle aged. I'm no one's target demo. I look borderline homeless when I'm out and about most days.
On the *extremely rare* occasion that I can tell someone - anyone - is interested in me, I find it endearing and alarming.
Quick story time: back when I was about fifteen years more attractive, I was a regular at a brew pub, as in "there three or for days a week." One of the incredibly cute and friendly servers who worked there was talking about how much fun New Years was going to be - a bunch of staff were headed out together after work and planned on a wild night of drinking and dancing.
She knew full well that I was married - my wife frequently joins me there - and that I probably had somewhere between fifteen and twenty years of age on her. But she asked if I wanted to be her "plus one" for the night.
I don't know what was more endearing - that she thought I might be fun to have as a plus one for New Years, or that she thought it might be an innocent enough thing to invite a married old man like me to spend the evening with her.
Regardless, I very politely declined. But clearly, it made an impact on me, ad I'm telling this story all these years later.
My wife thought it was hilarious and that it was testament to how incredibly unthreatening I am - not to how wildly suave and attractive I am. But what does she know?
I'm not saying that was the last time someone invited me out, but... It might have been.
What were we talking about again?
OK, the story doesn't even stop there. There were several 20 something young men, probably Harvard students, sitting at a table in the same pizza shop speaking a language I did not know. I told them I was being nosy and wanted to know what language they were speaking. Hindi. I told them I could say one thing in Hindi. What? I said it. One responded, "I love you too". They then wanted to know how I knew that. I told them about my hobby. I told them I could say "I love you" in Punjabi, Nepalese, Bengali, and Tamil too. They turned to one of their group, "He's Tamil. How do you say it in Tamil?" He didn't know. I taught him.