Projections
January 31st, 2022
I’m on edge today. I’m so easily agitated. And it’s only the second day that the sun doesn’t shine. The buses didn’t ride according to plan, nor did my plan succeed to see the Ennis house. Yet funnily enough, the people annoy me the most today. Perhaps it’s a writer’s cliché, to criticize the people around you and pretend to be the gold standard of people. So, I want to assure you that I also felt low today - not LA worthy.
I’m so tired of the men over here. I know I was sick and tired of the men back home, but I’ll take them back anytime. At least they don’t honk at you the moment you touch your hair, or shout at you the moment you laugh at a memory. Sometimes it’s agressive, like a condescending ‘Barbie!’, or it’s an unnecessary ‘I like your smile’. Even in the hostel I’m not safe. I can’t even take the elevator without two men hitting on me while I’m backed up in the corner. I can’t eat my breakfast without a guy, coming out of nowhere, sneaking up from behind me and demanding about my afternoon plans. It happened twice today that someone joined my table, unnecessarily, and started coughing, unnaturally, to attract my attention.
After a conversation with a friend who had similar experiences, I knew I wasn’t crazy. The men here aren’t as bothered by emancipation. Or by the very least, there are just more creeps here.
The guys back home don’t make any moves. If anything, they run the very moment that you take the reins in your own hands. But they do generally respect your personal space. They know that women will give a sign when they are interested and it is safe to approach. Do these men pick up on that signal? Not often enough, but that’s another problem.
Perhaps it’s not necessarily the guys that I miss, but just the people back home. These two days I listened to a lot of the conversations around me. They were entertaining yet cringy. I now understand where the SNL-writers get their characters from. They just roam around freely here. There’s the bored LA musician, the insecure fangirl, the yoga-and-latte mom and the barista-who-talks-like-a-radio-host. I could continue this list forever you see, but that’s not the point. The point is: People around here become such caricatures. Perhaps it’s because of all the flat surfaces here, that we become more two-dimensional. Not that these people wouldn’t have an important story to tell, or an intricate history - it’s just the way that they’re presented to the outside. At least, that’s how it seems compared to Dutch culture.
[Update] Another creepy guy harassed me in the hostel before I could finish this blog post. I was just sitting with a friend and two British guys who we just met when he came on to me, out of nowhere and all of a sudden. I hadn’t even seen him in the room. He kept rambling random things at me about going out together, shouting for my Instagram and that kind of stuff. The guys at my table saw I was uncomfortable, but I didn’t dare to ask them for help. I didn’t want to instigate aggressiveness. When the guys left and I was alone with my friend, I burst into tears.
It feels self-absorbed writing this, like I’m full of self-pity. Perhaps it can even come off as arrogant. But after all that happened in the Dutch media lately, I feel like being honest about it. I’m just tired of being objectified, of being viewed like a sexual object without having a say in it. It’s like my own desires are pushed away the moment someone is projecting onto me, like I become one sexless blob. In these moments, I just want to exist and keep on existing the way I am, untouched and unscathed. They make me shut off.
Nevertheless, in the context of today LA seems to be a place where people just shout at each other. They scream out the boxes they want to be put in and project their expectations onto others. There’s no conversation, no talk and listen. People just take as there is no receiving.
Tomorrow, I hope to see a better side of LA. For now I’m just happy that even here, across the Atlantic, I have friends with a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on.
