images-1.jpegJust when you think you’re no longer a desirable woman that gross guys would be compelled to sexually harass on the street, you are proved wrong! Yay! I think.   

Today I was waiting for the bus at Union Square, and a guy craned his neck to catch my eye.  “Shalom,” he said, but he said it more like “Sha-LOAMMME,” with a lurid inflection. “Shalom, shalom, shalom,” he then added. Shalom? 

Men used to say all kinds of salacious things to me.I’d be going by on my bike and I’d hear “Oooh, [sucking sound], I wish I was that seat!” Or some slimy, potbellied pig would stop in his tracks, pivot as I walked by and say, “Mmm, mmm, mmm. Baby, don’t change a thing!” Or the ever-popular, “Yo, lemme get a piece of that big, wet p**sy.”  

Now they mostly can’t be bothered. Not that I miss those odes, those tributes, and they certainly never made me want to take the conversation any further. But…shalom?

This may or may not be relevant, but I doubt the guy was Jewish, as he was black and wearing traditional West African print garb. I am and look Jewish, so I deduced he was trying to connect with me in what he supposed was my native tongue. Which is actually kind of sweet and beats rhapsodies on of the size of my ass.   

But I can’t help but think that the older a woman gets, the closer she becomes to marginalized sexuality, someone’s fetish, and the more she gets hit on in Aramaic. And she doesn’t half mind. ÂÂ