I do not exist for your sexual gratification

Last Saturday I had a lunch with one of my favorite professors from last semester, an old (I'd say late 50s, early 60s), bald, rotund Sudanese man that reminded me of a teddy bear. I really liked him and was like, "Cool, I'll have someone to help me make some education and career decisions and stuff."

So we meet after my morning class at a Chinese buffet, and it was fine, though he seemed to be making a few too many rather inappropriate jokes. And asking a few too many pointed questions about my personal life. I decided to chalk it up to cultural differences, and would just say, "I'd rather not talk about it," when he was being weird.

That is, until we were leaving and he went to hug me, only this time his face seemed to be closing in. I thought, "Oh, right, the foreigners cheek kiss," so I went to do that. All the sudden, his nasty-ass lips are on my mouth! Oh dear god, I freaked. I tried to get away, but he had hold of me, and said, "Come on, I want a deeper one."

"No! I need to get going." I didn't want to make a scene in the restaurant lobby, but whoa. Whoa whoa whoa, this was not going well. "Come on, just one more." I just walked out the door, which by the way slammed very quickly and painfully on my foot, but I couldn't even react I was so freaked out by the unwelcome kiss. It's still so gross to even think about.

So we're heading toward my car, I'm trying to be normal and salvage some sort of good feeling out of this whole episode without both of us feeling like complete idiots. But he grabbed the back of my head and tried to kiss me again. I had to shove him off of me and scream, "NO, I DON'T WANT TO!" and even then, it took him a few seconds to let go of me. My glasses were all smudged up and my hair was askew from him manhandling my face and head.

Finally, I got away and into my car, with him saying, "OK, fine, I don't want to kiss someone who doesn't want to kiss me anyway, it's OK. Call me or email me and we'll get together and talk again soon..."

I was shaking and upset, I called my mom and sisters and a friend. I was just SO disappointed. I know this kind of thing happens every day to everyone, but it had never happened to ME before and it was just so frustrating to know that someone I thought valued me for my intelligence and conversation and just as a person, only wanted me in a sexual way. I'm still disgusted.

He called me a couple of days later (using a different number so I'd pick up) to thank me for our Saturday "lunch date" again. I said I was on my way to meet a friend and had to go and hung up quickly. People have told me I should confront him, but I would just rather never see or talk to him again.

On a quasi-related note, on the bus last week I think a guy standing above me as I sat was taking photos of my cleavage with his cell phone camera. And on another day the bus driver called me back after he let all of us off at Pentagon City. I got back on the bus and said, "Yes, what's wrong?" thinking he wanted me to help with something, or that I'd dropped something. "Oh, you didn't have to get all the way back on, I just wanted you to back up so I could look at you again. Have a good day."

I'm through with this - I'm gonna start catcalling men on the street and treating them like the useless, meat head, oversexed slabs of flesh that they are. Unfortunately, they'd love that.