Why My Friends Blamed Me When a Guy Was a Creeper

Two days after returning from a work trip, I leaned against the kitchen counter at my friend Brittany’s apartment. While she washed the dishes, I told her how a guy I met made an aggressive and scary move on me. 

“Well, what did you do to make him think that was okay?” Brittany raised her eyebrows at me. That was not the reaction I was expecting.

“Me?!” I glared at her, mouth agape. “How the fuck am I getting blamed for a guy being a creep?” She kept calmly scrubbing the inside of her water bottle. I frowned, replaying the story in my mind… 

Richard was a fellow flight attendant in my new employer’s training class. We met at Starbucks in the hotel lobby, where all the trainees stayed. On the first day, I was waiting for my almond milk latte, scanning the business casual crowd, trying to spot other flight attendants. The company had asked trainees to share Ubers from the hotel to the headquarters, but they failed to connect us.

“Are you with [private jet company]?” A man dressed in a tailored plaid button-up and coordinating slacks asked me. No hair was out of place, so I knew some pomade was at work. His whole aura had a prim tidiness that gave off super nerd. 

“Yes.” I held out my hand to shake his. “I’m Claire.” 

“I’m Richard.” He smiled. “So, I have a rental car. Do you want a ride to training?” 

“That’d be great.” 

He had room for two more in the car, but we found no other flight attendants amongst the mingling crowd. We started the twenty-minute drive. Claire, you just got into the car of a strange man in a city you don’t know, and you didn’t verify if he is who he says he is. I eyed him up and down from my peripheral vision, completing a more in-depth vibe check. No alarm bells went off. He wasn’t a large man. We were similar in height and size, but I wasn’t discounting his ability to overpower me in the strength department. I began a casual interrogation to gain more intel.

“So, Richard, how long have you been in aviation?”

The more we talked, the more reassured I felt. A person would have to be a spectacular and researched bullshitter to achieve the level of depth and detail Richard gave. He started in aviation in the Air Force, working as a flight attendant. On top of the Air Force training, he also went to culinary school.

“I must admit, I’m a little nervous about cooking on a jet,” I confessed.

“It’s not hard at all.” He didn’t really have any facial expressions when he talked. Slight lifts of his eyebrows were the only indication of any emotion. “I can send you some recipes and links to my favorite tools.” 

“Dude, that’s awesome! Thank you.” In contrast to Richard’s deadpan face, mine was a little beam of sunshine. 

Once at the training, Richard and I went our separate ways. I didn’t speak to him until it was time to return to the hotel. Even though there was room for more, the ride back was again Richard and me.

“What are you doing for dinner tonight?” He asked.

I shrugged. “Probably Uber Eats or something.”

“Wanna grab dinner? I know a spot not too far from the hotel.”

Hmmm. Before training ended, the lead flight attendant told the group who was going home and who would be kept in the L.A. area on standby. Everyone but me got to go home the following morning. I didn’t feel like Richard was my new bestie. However, knowing I would be stuck for five days with no rental car in a city where I knew nobody, I decided to go. New to the industry, I figured some networking wouldn’t be a bad idea either. 

or dinner, Richard took me to a bougie fast-casual place. I was expecting a little more since he was a chef, but the food was good. As we cut into our grilled chicken and steamed farm-to-table veggies, we shifted our conversation to our personal lives. Richard told me about his divorce and how his new marriage caused tension with his daughter. Being divorced and also having gone through a period where I didn’t talk to my dad for two years, we did some solid trauma bonding over wine. He insisted on picking up the check, even though the company reimbursed our meals. 

Back at the hotel, the lobby was full of people waiting for the elevator, but I really had to pee.

“I’ll catch ya later!” I waved to Richard and beelined to the lobby bathroom.  

Two women from my training group walked in as I washed my hands.

“I know you two!” I smiled at their reflections in the mirror. We decided to grab a drink together at the hotel bar. On our way, we ran into Richard.

“Oh, hey, Richard.” I furrowed my brow. “What are you still doing down here?” I figured he’d already made his way to his room for the night. He joined us at the hotel bar, and we stayed until the last call. I was the first person in the elevator, so I took on the role of button pusher. In addition to the four of us, there were about six or so more people on the elevators (so many buttons to push!). In between getting the floors of my fellow riders, I covertly slipped in the button for my floor, all the security warnings from flight attendant training fresh in my mind. At the first stop, Richard got off. 

“Have a good night!” 

The elevator ascended floor by floor until I was the only one left. The doors opened, and I turned down the hallway to my room. 

A voice stopped me. “Claire!” 

It was Richard.

I shook my head like I’d just watched a magic trick that seemed impossible. “How did you get up here so fast?” He had gotten off on the third floor, and we were now on the fifteenth floor. Did he run up the stairs? “What are you doing here?” I never told him what floor I was on… 

“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you tomorrow before I left, so I wanted to say goodbye.” He held his arms out for a hug.

“Oh! That’s nice!” I smiled. Our hug was the usual embrace of two people who’d just met and enjoyed each other’s company, with minimal front-to-front body contact and a gentle but loose hold of the arms. “It was great to meet you.” 

“You, too.” He moved his mouth closer to my ear, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do you want me to come to your room with you?”

The fuck? “No.” I gave a nervous chuckle. “I’m good, thank you. Safe trip home.” I bolted to my room, glancing over my shoulders to ensure he wasn’t following me. Safe in my room, I slammed the door shut and flipped the safety latch. 

I scowled at Brittany. That was all Richard. “I can’t think of anything a woman could do that would make it okay for a man to follow her to her room uninvited. He’s married! And I never told him what floor I was on. He watched me push the elevator buttons to figure it out. That’s creepy!”

“He wouldn’t have run up like ten flights of stairs if he thought you would say no.” Brittany shrugged, drying her hands on a dishtowel.  

We went back and forth about what I did or didn’t do to entice Richard.

“This is exactly like when that guy insisted on driving you home. You got in his car and then wondered why he sent you a text offering his dick.”

“That guy said he had a girlfriend! And I wouldn’t have been alone if someone hadn’t left me to go get dick.” Despite my clapback, Brittany held firm that I gave hook-up vibes. I wondered if she would ask a sexual assault victim what they were wearing the day of their attack. Since I wasn’t getting support from another woman, I decided to get a guy’s perspective. That weekend, I tagged along with my friend, Adrian, as he shopped at a beachwear boutique. 

“Did you do that eye fucking thing you do?” he asked. He held up a pair of swim trunks covered with sharks.

I swatted the trunks down. “What are you talking about?!” 

“I don’t like that swimsuit either.” He tossed them back on the table and picked up a striped pair. “You eye fuck people. You have a very expressive face.” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“Actually, you do.” He jutted his head forward, eyes wide, and nodded like a dashboard bobblehead.

I leaned toward him over the table of boardshorts. “You’re telling me,” I spoke softly, not wanting the other shoppers to hear me, “I’ve been walking around eye-raping people, and I had no clue?” 

“Exactly.” Adrian pointed at me like a calculus professor who is satisfied when his student finally solves a nearly impossible problem. “Why do you think I walked up to you the night we met?” 

“Oh, no.” I covered my mouth with my hand, keeping my slutty eyes on the floor. 

“And.” He flipped through a rack of T-shirts. “Most beautiful women aren’t as nice as you.” 

“So if a pretty girl is nice to a guy, he thinks she wants to sleep with him?”

“Yup.” He held a yellow shirt up to his body. “What do you think?”

“Meh.” My mind reeled. I wasn’t sure how to use this info. Stop being nice? That didn’t feel right. Maybe getting control of my eyes was a good place to start. “Adrian.”

“Hmm?” He searched through a stack of shorts, but I said nothing, so he looked up. 

My chin was tilted down just enough, so I had to look up ever so slightly through my eyelashes to meet his gaze. One corner of my mouth looked like it wanted to curve up into a smile but was waiting for the right moment because the smile was a secret meant only for one person. The only clue was a sparkle dancing in my eye. Basically… I eye fucked the shit out of him. “Claire. Stop.”

“Stop what?” I gave an innocent flutter of my lashes. 

His head whipped right and left, moving his hands to cover his crotch. “You know what.” He hissed through clenched teeth.

“Mmm… I don’t.” 

“Damnit! At least wait until I’m sitting down to do that.” 

I threw my head back and laughed like I was Dr. Evil after laying out his brilliant scheme to destroy the world unless he was paid one million dollars. “Let’s go get coffee. C’mon.” 

Despite my playful torture of Adrian, I didn’t feel like I’d discovered a superpower. More like an Achilles heel. As I thought about Brittany and Adrian’s reaction to my Richard story, I wondered: What vibes had I given off? 

Flirting to lure and entice the opposite sex was something I’d given little to no thought to for almost the last decade. I was as playful and funny as I wanted because I had a husband. I was joking around — not flirting. The distinction between comradery and coquetry blurred to the point where they became one and the same to me. If you were fun to be around, I was down to banter, joke, and jest, regardless of sex. Now divorced, I no longer had the husband buffer.  I was using the same rules but playing a different game. I was as ignorant of this new game as Dr Evil was of inflation. I didn’t want to become a stone-cold bitch like Frau Frabissina, but parading about like a Felicity Shagwell and unknowingly luring men to my hotel room was so not groovy, baby. Being kind and playful are parts of my personality I can’t and don’t want to change, but maybe I could be more discerning about how much and when I let those qualities shine. 

Part of me still felt it was unfair of Brittany and Adrian to hold me completely liable for Richard’s Stairmaster sex sprint. Then I remembered the words of my favorite mentor: “The common denominator in all your problems is you.”   

Since then, I’ve made sure all my eye fucks are consensual.