Though New York has an immense population of some of the kindest people I’ve ever met; I’ve also experienced some pretty offensive behavior while living here. Some new Yorkers will plow you over at crosswalks, even if they see that your arms are completely burdened with bags. Or how about the driver that took me from the airport to my apartment on a damp night that threw my two 50lb bags out on the street (not even the curb) and drove off leaving me, struggling with my luggage, stranded in the middle of oncoming traffic. Absolutely rude!
The kinds of guy I’m talking about is the typical club-going guy. These guys are usually in their late 20s to early 30s. Most of the time they’re rather wealthy because of making it big in the worlds of business/finance/insurance. I think because of their wealth, a lot of times they have girls throwing themselves at them–but hey–a girl’s got to eat. Recently I’ve had a few bad experiences with these men. They become outrageously unkind when you turn them down for a drink or a dance. Usually it’s the latter because, lets be honest: when someone offers you a drink in New York City, you take it because it would cost around $16 to buy it yourself.
Bars reserve the right to close whenever they feel convenient, so my friend and I had the misfortune of being kicked out of an uptown place around 2:00am. We were in search of another bar until we ran into some guys who looked disheveled, like they had just came from drinking unhealthy amounts of alcohol. We asked them if they could point us in the direction of a cool bar and they told us to follow them. At the entrance, we realized it was all a hoax and that the bar they were leading us to was, in fact, their hotel mini-fridge. We told them we were not following them up and their only response was, “whatever, you girls are fat anyways.” There were several other people in this entrance courtyard that tried to tell us that we weren’t actually fat. We knew that these assholes were just mad because they got nixed.
It happened again near my house as I was getting out of a cab. It was around 3:00am on my walk home from the clubs. A Korean man ran up, reached his arm out, and lurched toward me saying, “Oh my God, you’re gorgeous!” If you don’t know me, please refrain from reaching out to me; it’s uncomfortable for both of us. I told him not to touch me and kept walking without any direct eye contact with this creeper. His automatic rejection comeback was, “You’re not even that gorgeous.” Seriously, like I care a whole lot about what a 5’2” Korean man thinks of me.
Here comes the most disturbing offense. I had been casually talking to this guy through out the night, but I wasn’t acting interested in him at all. He asked if he could buy me a drink, and I didn’t refuse. While on the terrace my friend and I witnessed one of his friends literally grabbing a girl’s hair while bending her over a couch. She got free of his grasp and acted like nothing had happened though everyone around her was giving them both dirty looks. My friend and I had seriously just finished talking about how gross that situation was when suddenly someone grabbed my butt. I whipped around fast and gave the guy an extremely dirty look. It was the guy that had bought me a drink earlier. I yelled at him in front of everyone there, but at least I was respectable as opposed to the girl that just let it happen.
Always,
Alena Netia Horowitz
