We are the sort of people who will tolerate just about anyone, only because we don’t have the courage to tell them to piss off. 

Melissa and I have known one another since the third grade.  I asked to borrow her ruler, she borrowed my crayons, and ever since, I have been able to call her my good friend.  During our second year in college, we enjoyed lunch together everyday.  Every thing was swell.  Lots of girl talk.   

I vividly remember one afternoon when a classmate from my computer class intruded on our lunch gossip to ask me about a question he had on an assignment.  I had never talked to this classmate, but I of course, was not going to deny the man some help.  He sat himself at our lunch table asking some vague question that I was unable help him with.  It turned out that he also had a trigonometry class with Melissa.

After that initial meeting, he continued to join us. 

At first, we did not mind.  Although it was a bit strange to include this man into our conversation, we assumed that if he was uncomfortable or unintrigued with it all, he would simply leave.

Slowly, however, we began to sense some kind of desperation in him.

He would spend a large part of his conversation with us talking about his family members, a brother who was in the C.I.A. and a sister who worked for Dell in Austin and had secret ties to the government, apparently.  Needless to say, there were many strange and unbelievable stories that emanated from this man. 

We tolerated it, at least it was interesting.

Then it started to get weird.     

 We asked him how old he was.  It was innocently asked and we expected an honest answer.  He said he was twenty-one.  I’m not sure if the look on Mel’s face was one of held-back laughter or horror.

He was obviously not twenty-one. 

He was a thin man.  He liked to jog and cycle.  He didn’t have a car so he was always on foot or on his bike.  He did look like  a fit man but not fit enough to pass as twenty-one.  His face was exploding with wrinkles.  Deep, creased obvious wrinkles.  Around his mouth, his eyes, his forehead.  He had long hair which he wore in a ponytail.  A greying ponytail.  Melissa and I had absolutely no problem with the fact that he was an older man.  We had a problem with the fact that he thought us gullible enough to believe he was twenty-one years old (he could have at least said 30..perhaps we would not have gotten suspicious).  After that, his lies and perpetual come-ons started becoming both creepy and outrageous.  Not to mention completely unwarranted.  

He brought me a silver ring and Melissa, gold earrings.  We insisted that the ‘gifts’ were unecessary and asked him to take them back, but he proclaimed them as a symbol of friendship.  Melissa and I, being the ’too nice’ girls that we are,  did not want to offend him so we accepted the gifts but never used them.  Later, he followed me onto the trolley, sat next to me, put his arm around my seat, and told me of a quiet little place he knew of where we could go have lunch. I said I wasn’t hungry. Days later, he borrowed a book from Melissa and started phoning her place to ask inane questions and make presumptous courting statements.  He asked her if it would be okay with her if he bicycled half way across the city to drop of the book. She said he needn’t bother. When he asked me out to the movies, I reminded him I had a boyfriend.  Another day, out of nowhere, he brought Melissa some hand lotion (which looked used by the way), and as soon as he disappeared around the corner, she trashed it.  We were convinced he was trying to bewitch us.  (He had told us of a witchcraft lady he knew of, after all.) 

We literally began dodging the old man.  We moved from our usual eating place, to another part of the eatery.  Time and time again, though he would find us.  When it became obvious that we were uncomfortable with his come-ons, he would then announce that he had a girlfriend.  She was a nurse.  When we probed for more information, he had nothing more to say about her, but he let us know that he was not interested in us romantically, only on a friendship level. 

We didn’t want to be his friend.  We no longer wanted to know his stories.  We had enough of getting weirdly hit on.  We hated his smile, for it no longer looked like a smile, but a sly grin of deceit.  We never actually told him to leave us alone.  One day, when he mentioned that I had a ‘nice figure’ but that I could stand to do some tone up exercises that he could teach me, Melissa lost it.  She ridiculed him for daring to speak to me like that, for making me feel bad about my body, and for thinking that he could teach us anything.  After that, he left us alone.

 We never spoke to him again.  Even in passing, whenever we would see him, we completely ignored him.

 It might seem callous.  Maybe the poor man was just trying to find friends, but we didn’t think so.

We later found out that after us, he began a ‘friendship’ with Melissa’s friend Virgina.  He pulled the same tricks on her.  Told her that he was twenty-one.  The whole shebang.  Virginia worked in the tutoring lab.  To receive services you have to show your id.  She caught a glimpse at his once.

 He was actually 53.

He was a 53 year old man, trying to pass off as a man half his age.  Literally.

We were eighteen at the time.

After Virginia, we saw him ‘courting’ other groups of girls.  He quickly became known as the ‘creepy old guy’.    

I don’t like to use the word to describe a person nor do I appreciate someone else using the word to describe someone in my presence.  I don’t let my daughter use the word ugly.  If my partner uses the word ugly in front of my daughter, I will quickly interject that ‘ugly’ is not a nice word.

If I do use the word ugly, it is solely to describe an emotion.  My mom and I both say, “It felt super ugly.” Or, I may use the word to describe objects, such as fabric or noise or the weather. 

My aversion to the word stems from two incidents in my life.

 At the age of fourteen, I remember spending an evening at my aunt’s house next door.  I’m not sure why we all convened there, as we were not in the habit of doing so, but it was probably a holiday or someone’s birthday.  My father had been drinking that night and had by the evening’s end become very liberal with his words.      

I am not sure how or why the topic of conversation turned to me.  Being a shy and quiet girl in front of those who are not in my immediate family, all I could do was stare away as my aunt mentioned that I was a very good girl.  My dad chimed in that I was, indeed, a good girl and a smart one too, but then he said something that numbed me.  He said, “Esta un poco feita, pero she’s nice”.  (Translated: She’s a little ugly, but she’s nice (In Laredo, Texas, we code switch all the time))

I felt my face turn red.  He was drunk mind you, but I took it to be the truth.  I came to the realization that my father, the most important male figure in my life, thinks that I am ugly.  His own blood, his own kin, and he thinks I am aesthetically unpleasant.   

I didn’t say a thing.  My aunt just looked at me with pity eyes and said, “No, no digas eso Jorge. No es verdad”.  (Translated: No, don’t say that George. It’s not true.”)

It was a very uncomfortable moment.  What do you do when you’re told your ugly in front of others and you believe it to be true.  I had nothing to argue against.  I knew I was not pretty.  I knew I had bad skin and kinky hair.  My body was formless. I was weird.  I dressed like a frantic hippie and was not very popular in school.  Yes, boys had taken an interest in me at that point.  My freshman year in high school, I had never had so many boys come out of the woods to try and talk to me.  Me, being the good girl that I was however, did not take a real interest in them back.  Only one, but that’s another story.

The second incident took place when I was a Junior in high school, in one of the worst places you would ever want to have an ‘incident’ in, my Spanish 1 classroom.

By the time I was a Junior I was full fledged weird.  If I was weird my freshmen year, I was even weirder as a junior.  I had friends, but inside classrooms where I didn’t know anyone, I did not attempt to make new friends, so I was overly quiet and shy.  Usually, I sat in the back corner and did my work. 

In this particular Spanish class, Mrs. Martinez sat us according to our last names.  I ended up in the very front, very middle of the class. I hated it, but I still managed to go on overlooked.

One day, we had a new student in our class.

Her name was Erica, like me.   A name is the only thing we had in common.  She was light-skinned, blonde, and very feminine.  Did I mention gorgeous? Yes, gorgeous.  I think she would later go on to do local modeling.  I was her complete opposite.  If we were enemies, which we weren’t, we would have been each other’s nemesis. 

A few weeks after she arrived, one of the class idiots named Hector was reprimanded by the teacher for cheating and was told to sit in back of Erica.

“Which one,” he asked aloud, like those loud boys were wont to do, “the hot one or the ugly one?”

The classroom was silent.

I’m not sure, as I did not have the gall to turn around and check but I could feel everyone’s eyes piercing the back of my head.  

I had my head lowered before the comment, and after it, I put my head down even further.  I just sank into myself. 

I was too shy to lash out and say something hurtful back.  He had a uni brow, he was overly hairy, he was dumb, but I could say nothing.  I just sat there, making the moment uncomfortable for everyone.

 The only one who came to my rescue (sort of) was Mrs. Martinez.  She broke the silence by saying “They are both pretty. Now be quiet and take your seat behind that Erica.” (The hot one. He was more than happy to.) 

I’ve always disliked that guy for making me feel that way, especially in front of my peers.  But, I’ve disliked myself even more for not having any courage.  For letting some idiot call me ugly and make me feel as if I was.  I let some dumb kid make a definitive statement about me, and I never challenged it.  

The other Erica was very nice to me the rest of the year.  But how I wish that she had never walked into that classroom. 

I have since come to terms with …the term.

Although the Spanish class incident was more embarrassing and impacted me in a more publicly vulnerable way, I still to this day, look for clues from my father that support his drunken statement of fourteen years ago.  

My fixation was on a shoe salesman who worked at Baker’s.  I think he was sixteen at the time, and he resembled Eddie Furlong a la Terminator.  He was short, with a mushroom haircut, and light skinned.  My three cousins and I all swooned over him, but to my shock, he seemed to take an interest in me.  Maybe I imagined it, but if so, then I was not the only one imagining it, for my cousins pointed out the fact that ‘he’ was mine.  We did that.  For instance, I stated my passion for Jon Bon Jovi first, so he was ‘mine’…Sandy had Richie Sambora and Sebastian Bach.  I don’t recall Vero’s celeb crushes, I guess cause she always had real boys in her life.  Anywhichway, it was soon common knowledge within our circle that I had a crush on a guy, whom we named ‘Shortie’, and whom it seemed, liked to flirt with me back.   

Adolescent crushes are pretty ridiculous.  We named him Shortie, for Christs sake, and I remember we would sit on the bench in front of the shoe store for a good solid thirty minutes, take a stroll around the mall, and come back to the bench where ’Shortie’ would smile and stare.  In my twelve year old mind, he was in love with me too.  He wanted me.  I was just too shy to actually go in the store and speak with him, but I was not unsilly enough to sit on a bench and giggle like…well…a schoolgirl.        

My cousin Vero did me the favor of going into the store once to find out his name for me.  (Actually, my cousin is a pretty sneaky girl, for while she proclaimed to be my ambassador, she was undoubtedly going in there to flirt with him and to sway his flirtations her way.)   She did however, fulfill her duty in finding out his name at least.  It was James.  James the Shoe Salesman.  Shortie. My first adolescent crush.

 These sort of pointless flirtations with him went back and forth for a while.  A few months, perhaps.  I was enamoured with him, in the most innocent and ridiculous way.  Before the shoe salesman, I had had a few crushes, but never one that actually seemed to be interested in me back. Funnily enough, James, a sixteen year old male, probably wanted nothing to do with a twelve year old girl, but in my mind, it was the perfect union.  We were of similar heights, and well, we both seemed to like the mall.  That was the gist of our relationship.  A few times, I would proclaim to my cousins that I was no longer interested in him.  I noticed him smiling and flirting with more than a few of his customers. (Remember, that a twelve year old girl does not know the capricious ways of a salesman at this point.)  As soon as he looked my way and smiled however, I was back on board with the Shoe Salesman. 

 Until one shattering day at the mall. 

 He was not a salesman.  He was a civilian.  Strolling the mall, in civilian clothing, with of course, his sixteen year old civilian girlfriend.  They were of the same height, and she had short dark hair, very trendy and cool looking.  I was completely shattered.  I had never even imagined that the shoe salesman, had a counterpart.  I had always imagined him mine. 

In the coming years, there have been many strange connections to this shoe salesman.  He turned out to be an older brother of my little brother’s best friend, Oscar.  I never told them I had a crush on his brother, but I remember having to listen to Oscar tell stories of finding girls underwear in his brothers guitar case.  I couldn’t contain my laughter, and horror, at the thought that I had a crush on him.  

 I have been embarrassed of crushes more than once, but I think this one is at the top of the list. 

To make matters worse, when I became employed at Old Navy while attending college, He! (James, Shortie, the Shoe Salesman) was one of the supervisors.  Yes, I had to work under the man.

We ignored one another for most of my time there, of course we spoke, but it was always truncated by the fact that I was once foolishly, stupidly, and ridiculously enamoured by him.

 He married the cool girlfriend and together they had three or four small children.