Popeye’s Spinach

For many years I’ve regularly visited my neighborhood gym.   My workout consists of a combination of treadmill and weight machines, usually lasting about ninety minutes.   It’s a routine I enjoy as much for the exercise as for the opportunity it provides away from my desk (whatever I’m working on at the moment continues to develop in all sorts of productive ways while working out).

Several months ago, while on the adductor machine, I noticed an older man talking at – as opposed to speaking with — a young woman.  It was evident by her body language that she was barely tolerating him.   It was also evident, as he continued his monologue, that he was absolutely indifferent to her disinterest.

In subsequent gym visits, I saw him many times continuing to annoy more young women.  I mentally dubbed him Annoying-Old-Guy (AOG).  I recognized in the women’s attempts at evasion some similar tactics that I had used when I was in my twenties – a weak smile calibrated to disinvite further engagement without triggering a confrontation, averting eye contact, curt responses.  But none of these worked with AOG.  I felt relief and gratitude that I had aged out of this all-too-familiar scenario where strange men demand attention and refuse to read basic social cues.  Luckily, I’m older now and men are less inclined to insert themselves so aggressively into my life.

Or at least that’s what I believed until last Sunday.   The gym was particularly crowded, which usually indicates long waits for certain exercise machines.   From across the room I had my eye on the leg lift.   It was occupied.  From my angle, I couldn’t see who was using it but I could see a pair of legs lifting the bar.   When I saw the legs disappear – signaling the machine was free — I made my move, quickly dashing over before anyone else could.   As I came around the corner, there he was, Annoying-Old-Guy.   And he was delighted to see me.   He smiled broadly at me and made a grand show of gallantry, cleaning off the seat for me (it wasn’t dirty), all the while telling me “I will clean seat for you.  See?  See?”  He spoke broken English.  I gave a polite nod, then turned away, reaching down to set the weights — a cue for him to move away.   But he remained and announced proudly, “I lift 180 lbs.”

I gave him a perfunctory nod then sat and placed my legs and hands in ready-to-begin position.  I noted he was not moving.  He remained standing very close to me, pleased with himself.   He thumped his chest and announced: “I’m 85, can you believe it?”  I could feel myself growing irritated.   I said politely, “Okay, I’m going to exercise now.”  Instead of moving away, he displayed his bicep, slapped it hard and said, “Do you know Popeye?”   He didn’t wait for a response.  “I am Popeye and women are my spinach,” he trumpeted proudly.  Then he leaned in closer, in conspiratorial mode and ‘confided’: “Not all women at this gym are nice like you.”  Using his index finger, he pushed his nose up, indicating that the women in this gym are snobs.   And he repeated the gesture several times for emphasis as if I’m-in-on-this with him.   I tried to illuminate him by saying “Well, you never really know what’s going on inside a person–”   Suddenly, he interrupted me, raising his voice, becoming enraged and bellowed, “I know women!  I know women!  I’ve been married eight times!”  (You can’t make this stuff up.)  He continued yelling at me for another five or six seconds before abruptly walking away.

I was shaken.  My nervous system battered.   But I continued my work-out, no longer snug in my own thoughts.   I replayed the incident over and over again – just as I did when I was younger – asking myself what could I have done to prevent this?   How wrong I was to believe that age would inoculate me from these encounters and their subsequent psychic fallout.

On my next gym visit, I purposely went at a different time so as not to run into him.  And then I was angry – and ashamed — at myself for allowing his behavior to change my behavior.  I resolved to return to my normal schedule.  But I spent a lot of time, way too much time, obsessing over the incident.   I reported it to gym management.   They listened with concern and assured me “we’ll talk to him.”  And I hope they will.

I wish I could say I’m over it.  I’m not.   A strange man felt free to rage at me.  A strange man felt free to yell at a woman he doesn’t know.   In a public place.   And why?   Because the encounter didn’t go his way.   Although this kind of episode doesn’t happen on a regular basis, it’s not without precedent.

I found myself thrown back to memories of my twenties, living in Manhattan, when strange men frequently invaded my personal space, were entirely indifferent to my wishes in the matter, and when the encounter didn’t go their way, felt entitled to yell out verbal insults.

I could be waiting for a bus or just walking down the street and a standard strange-man-incident involved a man calling out to me, “Smile,” with zero consciousness that I might not feel like smiling.  Zero consciousness that I was actually an “I,” a subject, much like him, fully human, possessing an interior life and not just there for his pleasure.   I used to believe these men were in need of female attention to bolster a fragile masculinity.  It never occurred to me that they might also see me as ‘spinach’ to their ‘Popeye.’   Most of the time, I would ignore these men and continue walking as they often yelled at me “Bitch” and other unprintable invectives.

Most women have experienced comparable unpleasantness.   Most men may only have a vague inkling that this is part of a woman’s reality.   Far fewer acknowledge the aggregate toll it takes over decades.  The information it imparts to a woman is “You don’t have the right to walk down the street or to be in public without the possibility of a strange man yelling at you.”   But the deeper, more pernicious message underlying that is:  if a strange man thinks that it’s okay to yell at you, what else may he think it is okay to do?

Being an Annoying-Old-Guy isn’t a crime.   But the underlying values, which provided AOG with a claim on female attention, exist on the same continuum that condones all sorts of bad conduct against women, including criminal misconduct.

These values may be subtle but they operate in plain sight – like in a neighborhood gym.  They reveal how masculinity is imagined and how entitlement plays into securing it.  They also reveal how women are still seen as things-to-be-consumed in a male narrative.  When the values change, the behavior will follow.   We’re still so far from that happening.