Last night I had a really fantastic dream.

I was reading on BART, my Grado SR60s cupping my ears. As usual, I was reading a book and ignoring the people around me. The train was only somewhat populated by other BART riders, and all of us were able to sit sparsely spread out. I had my own seat. Things seemed so normal about the ride it was difficult to figure out that this memory was a dream.

As I was sitting, reading, and being unavailable, a smarmy older White man came over and hugged the back of the seat in front of me. Clearly, he was looking at me. Straight at me and creepily. I don’t know why I recall these details, but he was scruffy and wore a frumpy salmon-colored crew neck sweatshirt. He wore a dumpy khaki-colored baseball cap and just sat there and stared at me. I think he was modeled after a belligerent homeless man I was once accosted by in Santa Clara. Anyway.

Though my eyes never steered away from my book, he asked me over the sound in my headphones (I think it’s cool that I could hear music and hear dialogue in my dream – It’s like real life!), “Will you go on a date with me?”

I didn’t skip a beat. I said, rather loudly, so that I drowned out my own dream headphones, “NO. NO. GO AWAY.” I enunciated my words like I was teaching a kindergarten class how to spell, and the older White man gathered himself up with one of those “I have successfully creeped someone out” smiles and walked back to a few rows ahead of me.

This story of Access Denied was a dream, but I have been approached in really inappropriate ways in real life, as well. Once I was walking back to work after having bought a hair dryer at Macy’s. I was in a rush because I wanted to return before the appropriate end of an adequate day’s lunch. I was by myself and thinking Point A to Point B, see but do not be seen. As I hustled my very straight and linear path to the office, I saw a pair of feet head diagonally toward me. They didn’t veer from their own linear path, and soon I heard in a Mexican accent “Hey, you wanna fuck?”

I don’t know if the man was actually Mexican American or if someone was just playing a sick joke because I didn’t even raise my eyes to see the culprit’s face. I kept walking on, reasonably shaken, because what the fuck goes on in someone’s head when they say something like that to you? All you can do is continue walking.

All this backstory has a point. When you’ve been through weird instances that shoot totally outside of the acceptable realm of “flirting,” you become naturally hardened to flirting itself. (At least, that’s what happened to me.) I am incredibly uncomfortable with flirting and the experience of “being hit on.” I like to stop any such instances before they start.

The VDA Alert.
A few years ago, Brooklyn and I were talking about the types of guys you run into at clubs, and how there’s one personality we just can’t stand. The “VDA” in “VDA Alert” stands for “Verizon Dumbass Alert.” I know the title I use is misleading because spelling out “Verizon Dumbass Alert” actually causes repetition in the last two words: “Verizon Dumbass Alert Alert.” But maybe girls should take it that way, as a doubly cautionable caution.

“VDA Alert” is just easier to say and is less likely to be confused with other such V-D combo acronyms that might elicit alerts.

Remember back in the 90s when you first got permission to walk around the mall by yourself with your junior high and high school friends? I don’t know about you, but my mall was pretty lame. It wasn’t as ghetto as much as it was incredibly uninspiring. But one thing about my hometown mall that seems to have only barely changed is that mobile phone kiosk, the one with seemingly deadbeat young men who don’t enjoy their job and feel displaced in the mini-mecca of retail. They don’t get a storefront; they just get this random shelf-lined island in the middle of a wide hall. Thus they are left calling out to random passersby, trying to meet whatever quotas they needed to reach in signing shoppers up for contracts.

The ones I remember in my mind were local Asian American youth, typically male with gelled spiky hair. I feel like they always wore the same blue button-up shirt from Structure before it become Express Men. (I think every boy on my high school debate team also had this blue Structure shirt.) They also often wore fake leather jackets over their blue Structure shirts, which was the biggest tip-off to being “stuck,” so to speak, behind that mobile phone kiosk of life. I’m pretty sure those jackets came from Costco. (I’m not knocking – I love my Kirkland Signature.)

When it comes to interpersonal communication, the most common statement I heard from these young men was “Hey, girl, do you need a cell phone?” Mind you, this was in the days before cell phones were a standard for middle school and high school students. I’m fairly certain that current mobile carrier laws persisted then as well, requiring a legal adult to be the one who sets up a new mobile account. Still, though, these guys would call out to my friends and me.

Even if we were already talking on our family cell phones to arrange being picked up.

Maybe they were just required to ask “Do you want/need a cell phone?” 100 times a day? I don’t know. Although it sounds like a horrible comparison, they were like the senior citizens being paid to hand out nail salon flyers on the street corner. Always to be avoided. If it wasn’t for that kiosk job, you know they’d just be the mallrats loitering at the Food Court goin’ “Hey, girl, can I get your number?”

I don’t know if customer service at mobile phone kiosks has improved since a decade ago because I still avoid them. And yes, this is overgeneralization to the nth degree, but the VDA Alert became my friends’ way of saying “This guy seems shady. Like he wants to get ahead in a I-work-on-a-commission kind of way. Except he wants to get ahead in your pants.” If you’re not into sales-y types, the Verizon Dumbass is not for you.

Editor’s Note: I can see why this entry may sound snooty. Personally I don’t think I’m one of those hot or pretty girls who warrants getting hit on in broad daylight; it just so happens that when you’re a female who sometimes runs around on your own, creepy inappropriate people attract themselves to you.

Also, no offense to Verizon. I love my Samsung U740. I love “the network.” This is all tongue-in-cheek, people, tongue-in-cheek!