Just so we’re clear, I don’t have a habit of letting men into my hotel room. I actually don’t have a history of staying in hotel rooms period, and I most certainly don’t routinely let my colleagues into them when I’m staying in one. But somehow last year I found myself in that awkward position while being hit on by a white man I worked with simply because it never crossed my mind that a text asking to borrow a toiletry was a gateway to flirtation.
In the spring of 2011 I was working in a different sector of publishing and attending a professional conference out of town that related to the journal I edited. Not long after I touched down and grabbed dinner with my coworkers, I received an email from a colleague that worked for a partner professional society. He was asking if I’d made it in yet and told me if I had I should join him in the lobby for drinks with one of his coworkers who’d come in to town for the meeting as well. To say I was pleasantly surprised by the email would be an understatement. I was always the only person under 40, if I’m being generous, at these meetings so I was grateful to have someone to chat with who was actually my same age. Plus I had just met *Mike the month before at a prior meeting so I was glad we had established some rapport and I wouldn’t be introducing myself and making random small talk with yet another stranger as I’d be doing for most of the meeting.
One drink and an hour or so of conversation later, Mike, his colleague, and I parted ways and retired for the night to prepare for three long days of lectures and expos. After I changed out of my suit into a pair of sweats, I received a text from Mike asking if I had any chapstick. That’s odd, I thought, but as someone who carries about five different lip glosses in her purse, keeps a tub of Vaseline on the bedside table, and has a jar of lip balm just for the office, I cannot handle the dry lip struggle and figured Mike must be the same. I texted him and told him I had a plethora of lip-moistening products to choose from (not literally, I really just said “yes”) and when he replied that he was on his way down to my room to get it, I chuckled to myself. For one, I thought it was funny my coworkers had been raving about this guy for so long and I had no idea who he was and now all of a sudden we were fast friends sharing lip treatment. Two, I thought, if this was a black man I would totally think he was trying to game me. (Not because black men are indiscriminate aggressors, but part of me knew it wasn’t totally normal for a man to ask a woman for chapstick in the late evening but the other part was like, ain’t no way)
Little did I know, there was a way. Borrowing chapstick turned into sitting on the foot of my bed, which turned into complimenting my eyebrows, which turned into asking me about my tattoos, which turned into discussing career aspirations, which turned into, “why are you single, you’re so great,” which turned into stretched back on the bed, which turned into “lay down with me,” as I try to pull you down beside me, which turned into “well I can just leave in the morning,” when I said “no, I have to get up early tomorrow” — not to mention I don’t make it a habit to sleep with people I work with. In a nutshell, yes, there I was at 25 getting gamed up like a virgin or college freshman who didn’t know boys only come to your room for one thing.
I’ll spare you the time of asking me why I let this man into my room in the first place, it’s because it never crossed my mind that his innocent question was really game. Yes, I know white men are attracted to, date, marry, love and like black women all the time (though not as much as the media would have us believe) but I’d never been on the receiving end of that attraction to my knowledge, which I know is now shaky. But in reality I didn’t feel any reason to be on alert because I didn’t feel like I was any white man’s type no matter how many varieties they come in. In my mind, Mike asking me for chapstick was on the same wavelength as me getting copies of my journal from my white male boss’s hotel room earlier in the day: a professional, non-sexual interaction that was strictly business. Except in this case, that was exactly what this wasn’t.
Despite the overt let-me-stay-the-night tactics that had been pressed on me, I was still somewhat questioning if what I thought happened really happened. Part of me was like, wait did this red-head white boy really try to get fresh with me? The other was like, let’s figure out where your antennae were so the next time someone of a different persuasion tries to run that line on you you’ll know better. If there was any shadow of a doubt in my mind about homeboy, the next day it was put to rest when I tried to ask Mike details about an event later in the day. When he failed to respond to me, I thought, Okay, I may not know the signs when I’m being hit on, but I definitely know when I’m being ignored. That was something I’d experienced many a time before when a man tried to get on and I rejected him. For me, that action confirmed that I did in fact get hit on by what I thought was the unlikeliest of suitors and when I thought about it, it was clear white men and black men aren’t as different as I thought. They’ll both try sneak tactics to get in your bedroom and they’ll both act like you never existed when you say no. Oh, well at least I know what to look for from now on.
Have you ever been caught off guard my a white suitor?
*Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.
